JUDGE RULES AGAINST POT-SMOKING WOMEN

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

In the first case of its kind, the 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.

U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins expressed sympathy for the women but
said federal law required him to rule against them.

"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 last week that became public Monday.

The Justice Department would not comment on whether it would seek to
prosecute plaintiffs Angel Raich, 37, or Diane Monson, 44.

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

Monson grows and smokes her own marijuana for chronic back problems and has
already been raided once by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Raich suffers from a variety of ailments, including scoliosis, a brain
tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain. Raich and her doctor say marijuana
is the only drug that helps her pain and keeps her eating. She says she was
partially paralyzed on the right side of her body until she started smoking
marijuana.

Both women say they will continue smoking marijuana. Raich vowed to take
her case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and possibly to the
Supreme Court.

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

Raich's attorney and husband, Robert Raich, is the same lawyer who lost the
first medical marijuana case - one argued on behalf of a cannabis club -
before the Supreme Court nearly two years ago.