SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Medical Mary Jane has legs, long distracting legs, especially when the only
other news story is Dubya trying to get his war on Saddam. Or is medical
marijuana really the big story we should be tracking, yet another example of
the struggle that states and individuals face in fighting the überfeds, a
fight Bush would rather we forget (along with the energy crisis) as we watch
him play at being a God of War?

These questions were on Nüz's mind as every media outlet in the known
universe converged on Santa Cruz last week to witness the green stuff being
given away outside City Hall to members of WAMM, whose medical marijuana
crop was destroyed by chain saw-wielding DEA agents Sept. 5.

The giveaway even made it onto the Tonight Show, where host Jay Leno showed
actual footage of Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelman
praising WAMM for "grassroots activism." But then Leno went off on the
predictable jokes-about-dope path, injecting fabricated footage of people
toking up, then raiding supermarket aisles for junk food. (Not exactly the
point WAMM founder Valerie Corral was hoping to make on national TV, but
maybe Jay can make it up by inviting her on as a special guest?)

Also spotted in the actual footage was local resident and constitutional law
professor Paul Sanford, who is on the legal team that Uelman has put
together to defend Corral and her husband Michael, who could be indicted and
their property seized any time in the next five years, according to existing
federal law.

"Their case could be a turning point in the federal-state power balance,"
said Sanford. "This country started out having a very small central
government, with the states having all the power, but that shifted radically
after the Depression, so that now we have the exact reverse of what the
founders contemplated."

Sanford says that since the 1930s the federal government has exploited what
he calls "the interstate commerce clause" whenever it wants to override
state law. But according to Sanford, the U.S. Supreme Court has recently
questioned this policy and suggested that the 10th Amendment (which says
that powers not regulated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or
to the people) actually does mean something.

"The question is, what power gives the feds the right to deny marijuana to
people who've been legally prescribed it and who are getting it in an
exchange within one county where no money is involved?" says Sanford. "In
100 years, this could be seen as one of the defining cases that started
giving people their rights back from the behemoth of central government
which our founders so feared and is why they cut away from the king in the
first place."