BUSH LAWYER BLASTS STATE MARIJUANA LAWS

SAN FRANCISCO - California and other states that want to make
marijuana available to sick or dying patients are flouting federal
drug laws in much the same way that Southern states defied national
civil rights laws, a senior Bush administration lawyer said.

California is ground zero in a long tug of war with the federal
government over the medical value of marijuana and the power of state
governments and voters to make exceptions for people who may benefit
from the illegal drug.

Five major federal lawsuits involve those who grow, use or recommend
marijuana for medical use in California.

The Bush administration has asked the Supreme Court to settle the
latest fight by agreeing that Washington has the power to revoke
medical licenses of doctors who invoke state laws and recommend pot
for their patients.

States cannot choose when to abide by federal law and when not to,
Justice Department lawyer Mark Quinlivan said Saturday.

"You cannot cherry-pick," said Quinlivan, the top federal trial lawyer
in three of the pending cases and a panelist at an American Bar
Association discussion of medical marijuana.

California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, legalizing marijuana
for medical use. Eight other states followed suit.

Federal law recognizes no medical purpose for the drug and bans its
private production, sale or use.

"There is a basic question of what power does California have," said
lawyer Gerald Uelman, Quinlivan's opponent in two cases. The federal
law regulating drugs "is not a federal takeover of the medical system"
or the duty of doctors to help the very ill, Uelman said.

Uelman and a California attorney general's office lawyer objected to
the civil rights analogy and the notion that California is asserting
the same kind of states' rights argument that Alabama used to try to
avoid desegregating its schools.

When government agents shut down marijuana growers who serve sick
people, it is "not acting with the same degree of moral propriety as
it did to end civil rights abuses," said Taylor Carey, a California
special assistant attorney general who wrote a friend-of-the-court
brief backing medical marijuana.

California's fight with Washington has extended through the Democratic
Clinton administration and the Republican Bush administration. The
Supreme Court ruled against an Oakland marijuana distribution club two
years ago, finding the federal drug law allows no exception for people
to use pot to ease pain from cancer, AIDS or other illnesses.

The high court has not yet said whether it will hear the latest
California case. The Bush administration wants the court to strike
down a lower court ruling blocking punishment or investigation of
physicians who tell patients they may be helped by the drug.

The administration's appeal, filed last month, argued that the ruling
of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals keeps the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from protecting the public.

The ruling licenses doctors to treat patients with illegal drugs, and
physicians who urge patients to use pot are no different from a doctor
who might recommend heroin or LSD, Solicitor General Theodore Olson
argued.

At issue is a Clinton-era policy that requires revocation of federal
prescription licenses of doctors who recommend marijuana.

The appeals court said the policy interferes with free-speech rights
of doctors and patients. Physicians should be able to speak candidly
with patients without fear of government sanctions, the court said,
but they can be punished if they help patients obtain the drug.