COURT'S MEDICAL POT ACTION LEAVES ISSUE UNRESOLVED

THE U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to allow the Justice Department
to punish or intimidate doctors who recommend or discuss the use of
pot with patients was not a total victory for medical marijuana, but
half a leaf.

To have been a full leaf, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and his
colleagues would have had to address the distribution end of the
equation in states with laws legalizing marijuana. Since federal law
bans marijuana use under any circumstances, that battle for primacy
in the medical pot war was left for another time and case.

But it was an important decision. A ruling in favor of the
Bush administration could have negated medical marijuana laws in
nine states. Instead, the generally conservative high court "finally
.. puts to rest these federal threats against doctors and
patients," said Graham Boyd, an attorney with the American Civil
Liberties Union.

No wonder doctors who consider or prescribe medical marijuana for
patients they think it will help were greatly relieved by Tuesday's
action. It was the opposite of what many expected.

A 1970 federal law lumps marijuana with such strictly controlled
substances as LSD and heroin, giving little credence to proponents'
contention that marijuana can lessen pain, ease the nausea that
accompanies chemotherapy, stimulate the appetites of AIDS patients
and help with glaucoma.

It has been a battle of [state vs. federal] wills ever since 1996
when California voters passed Proposition 215, the nation's first
medical marijuana law. Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine,
Nevada, Oregon and Washington followed and 35 states have passed
bills acknowledging its medicinal value.

A couple interesting tidbits: by refusing to intervene, the nation's
top court upheld a year-old decision by the much-maligned 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, whose decisions are
frequently overturned. Not this time.

And, freedom of speech won out over arguments of federal prosecutors
that by recommending marijuana to patients doctors were interfering
with the drug war and disregarding the federal judgment that the
popular product of the hemp family is of no medical benefit.

The appeals court cast it as a First Amendment issue a year ago when
chief Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder ruled, "An integral component of
the practice of medicine is the communication between doctor and
patient. Physicians must be able to speak frankly and openly to patients."

In fact, doctors and patients who submitted filings supporting that
right compared recommending the use of medical marijuana to giving
advice on "red wine to reduce the risk of heart disease, Vitamin C,
acupuncture or chicken soup."

To rule otherwise would have been a bad precedent that by extension
could have been applied to other forms of advice a government found
undesirable between professionals and clients or among ordinary citizens.

Still to be addressed are distribution issues and questions raised by
a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that an Oakland cannabis club could not
defend itself by arguing it was dispensing marijuana to those in
medical need. Whether a state has the right to experiment with its
own laws is one of the questions.

Resolve those and the leaf, indeed the plant, may be
completed.