MARIJUANA SMOKERS FIND NO REFUGE IN COURTS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal judge has refused to block the U.S.
government from potentially prosecuting two marijuana-smoking women whose
doctors say the drug is their only medical solace.

In the first case of its kind, two California medical marijuana users sued
Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking a court order allowing them to
smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without threat or fear of federal prosecution.

The case underscores the conflict between the state's medical marijuana
law, which allows people to grow, smoke or obtain the drug for medical
needs, and the federal government's refusal to acknowledge the state's 1996
voter-approved initiative approving such acts.

The lawsuit opens a Pandora's box of legal questions that could reach the
U.S. Supreme Court, whose justices may not have written the final word on
the topic.

One of the ill women seeking the court order against the government was
Angel Raich, a 37-year-old Oakland woman suffering from a variety of
ailments, including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and
pain. She said she was partially paralyzed on her right side until she
started smoking marijuana.

She and her doctor say marijuana is the only drug that helps her pain and
keeps her eating to stay alive.

She vowed to take her case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and
possibly to the Supreme Court. She said she will continue smoking marijuana.

"I am not a criminal. I am just somebody who is really, really ... sick,"
she said. "I'm not going to stop. I'm not willing to die."

The Justice Department declined comment on whether it would arrest Raich,
who says she often smokes marijuana to muster the strength to get out of bed.

U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins said he was sympathetic to the women's'
plight, but said federal law and the Food and Drug Administration, which
does not recognize marijuana as a lawful drug, handcuffed him from issuing
the injunction against the Justice Department.

"Despite the gravity of plaintiffs' need for medical cannabis, and despite
the concrete interest of California to provide it for individuals like
them, the court is constrained from granting their request," Jenkins wrote
in a ruling that became public Monday.

Raich's attorney and husband, Robert Raich, said they filed the case and
exposed themselves to potential criminal sanctions because the federal
government, which says there are no medical uses for marijuana, has been
raiding the drug's providers throughout California. He feared his wife's
provider would be caught in the dragnet, and that his wife might be unable
to find marijuana.

Robert Raich, who is the same lawyer who lost the original medical
marijuana case before the Supreme Court nearly two years ago, said he is
"laying the framework to get to the Supreme Court again."

In May 2001, the Supreme Court said that pot clubs could not dole out
medical marijuana based on a so-called "medical necessity" need of
patients, even if they have a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that an Oakland pot club could not defend its
actions against federal drug laws by declaring it was dispensing marijuana
to the medically needy.

But the justices said they addressed only the issue of a so-called "medical
necessity defense" being at odds with a 1970 federal law that marijuana,
like heroin and LSD, has no medical benefits and cannot be dispensed or
prescribed by doctors.

Thomas wrote that important and unresolved constitutional questions
remained, such as Congress' ability to interfere with intrastate commerce,
the right of states to experiment with their own laws and whether Americans
have a fundamental right to marijuana as an avenue to be free of pain.

Justice Thomas wrote that the court would not decide those "underlying
constitutional issues today."

The other woman in the case, Diane Monson, 44, of Oroville, grows and
smokes her own marijuana for chronic back problems and has been raided once
by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

She said the court's decision won't stop her from using and growing
marijuana. "I'm pretty outraged," she said.

The case is Raich v. Ashcroft, 02-4872.