DOCTORS, PATIENTS FREE TO TALK POT

Physicians No Longer Face Reprisals For Discussing Alternatives

The U.S. Supreme Court handed a major victory Tuesday to the nine
states that allow the medical use of marijuana, refusing to let the
federal government punish doctors for recom-mending the drug to patients.

The justices without comment declined to review last year's ruling by
the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that said
doctors should be able to speak frankly with their patients.

It means "that patients can truly get and physicians can truly give
advice about medical marijuana even if the president and the
attorney general dis-agree with that advice," said Daniel
Abrahamson, the Oakland-based legal director of the national Drug
Policy Alliance, and co-counsel for the doctors and patients who
brought this case.

Plaintiff and patient Valerie Corral of Davenport -- who also
co-founded the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, raided last
year by federal drug agents -- noted that California's 1996 medical
marijuana law allows possession and use only with a physician's
recommendation.

"Without a physician's recommendation, we have no medical marijuana --
we have no access to it, Proposition 215 would be moot," she said,
adding she was "savoring this sweet victory" of the high court's
decision Tuesday.

And plaintiff Dr. Stephen O'Brien, medical director of the East Bay
AIDS Center at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley, said the
court's rejection of the case means "a load off my mind in terms of
my ability to discuss whatever I need to discuss with my patients."

"We're all very pleased about it. I think it's a good day for people
with HIV, people with chronic illness, and it's a good day for
people who want privacy of communication in their doctor's office."

The ruling was a setback for the Bush administration, which had
threatened to punish doctors who recommend marijuana -- or who
simply discuss the drug's benefits -- by revoking the all-important
federal licenses needed to write prescriptions, or even by criminal
prosecution.

Besides California, the other states that have passed medical
marijuana laws are Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada,
Oregon and Washington. All but Maine fall within the 9th Circuit and
are bound by its ruling.

It's still illegal under federal law to grow, sell or possess
marijuana, and federal prosecutors can still go after cultivators,
dealers and users, just as they have done in raids on "cannabis
clubs" and other locations in California over the past few years.

Abrahamson said the ruling signals that "medical marijuana laws at the
state level are alive and well," while it also "gives a green light
to other states that are considering medical marijuana laws."

But he also said the high court's rejection of the case transcends
medical marijuana or any other specific drug, and addresses the
broader issue of how doctors and patients communicate.

"Today's decision really strikes a strong, principled stand for the
integrity of the First Amendment even when it comes to controversial
issues," Abrahamson said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft had no comment on the decision, while
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan restated the Bush
administration's position, saying: "As a matter of policy, we oppose
any efforts to legalize marijuana."

John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, noted that the high court's decision concerned the
doctor-patient relationship, not benefits of marijuana.

Public officials and medical professionals must "continue to protect
the health of American citizens and reduce the harms caused by
marijuana and other dependency-producing drugs," Walters said in a
statement, adding that growing and selling marijuana remain offenses.

After California voters approved the medical marijuana law as
Proposition 215 of 1996, the Clinton administration said doctors
recommending marijuana could lose their federal licenses to
prescribe medicine, could be excluded from Medicare and Medicaid
programs, and could be prosecuted as criminals if they helped their
patients actually get the drug.

Seven California doctors and some of their patients sued during the
Clinton administration, and the Bush administration continued the
fight. The justices on Tuesday let stand the 9th Circuit's decision
that doctors have a constitutional right to speak candidly with
their patients about marijuana.

In their appeal, federal prosecutors argued that doctors who
recommend marijuana are interfering with the drug war and
circumventing the government's judgment that the illegal drug has no
medical benefit.