COURT TELLS FEDS TO BACK OFF

Washington Effort To Undermine California Voters On Marijuana Dealt Another
Setback

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Tuesday
that federal drug police may not revoke the licenses of doctors -- or
launch investigations of those doctors -- based on their recommending
marijuana to their patients.

This had been the most pernicious tactic in the federal government's
attempts to frustrate the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly
approved the medical use of marijuana.

The court did uphold the draconian federal theory that a doctor might be
held to be engaging in a criminal conspiracy under federal law if he or she
prescribed marijuana. But California's Proposition 215 got around that
difficulty by simply authorizing doctors to "recommend" marijuana to
patients with conditions for which the M.D. believes it might be of use.

And the appeals court, quite properly, held that any attempt to outlaw a
doctor's "recommendation" would violate the vital First Amendment guarantee
of the right of free speech between doctor and patient.

There was no immediate word whether the federal government will appeal. The
decision is not expected to have an impact on the tactic which federal drug
police have continued to use to defy the will of California voters on the
issue since 1996 -- raiding medical marijuana farms and cutting down their
crops with chainsaws as sick people stand by on their crutches.

The unanimous ruling by Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder, Judge Betty B.
Fletcher and Judge Alex Kozinski "accepted every major argument offered by
the plaintiffs, who are California doctors and patients with serious
illnesses," reports The New York Times.

Even opponents of the decision called it "sweeping." Significantly, Judge
Kozinski, in his concurring opinion, described what he called "a legitimate
and growing division of informed opinion" on the medical uses of marijuana,
citing reports by the National Academy of Sciences, the Canadian government
and the British House of Lords ("a body not known for its wild and crazy
views," he noted).

Quoting Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court, Judge Schroeder
added that federal courts have been instructed to defer to the states in
"situations in which the citizens of a state have chosen to serve as a
laboratory in the trial of novel social and economic experiments."

It's called the 10th Amendment. But Washington would rather pretend that
doesn't exist. Washington would prefer all the states operate as uniform
subdivisions of the federal government -- kind of like the "departments" of
France.

Has anyone ever warned us that, should the federal government ever get away
with thus crushing the independence of the sovereign states, we would then
know we had descended into "Bonapartist tyranny"?