MEDICAL POT CLUBS DEALT A SECOND BLOW

Judge Backs Federal Effort To Close Them

After a loss in the U.S. Supreme Court, advocates for medical marijuana
suffered another setback Friday when a judge rejected constitutional
challenges to the federal government's campaign to shut down Northern
California pot clubs.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer snuffed efforts by marijuana
dispensaries in Oakland and Fairfax to mount new defenses against the
Justice Department's enforcement of federal drug laws.

The Supreme Court upheld the shutdown of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers'
Cooperative last year, ruling that the federal ban on marijuana did not
exempt cases of medical necessity. The court did not rule on other issues,
prompting the clubs' return to Breyer's San Francisco court two weeks ago.

On Friday, Breyer said the federal government has the constitutional power
to regulate drug activity, even if it takes place entirely within a state's
boundaries. Lawyers for the clubs had argued that such enforcement exceeds
federal authority over interstate commerce.

The clubs had also argued that barring marijuana distribution would violate
their members' fundamental right to relief from pain and the
life-threatening side effects of some treatments for AIDS and cancer. But
Breyer said the clubs had no legal standing to assert the constitutional
rights of individuals who obtain marijuana from them.

Lawyers for the dispensaries had expected the defeat and planned to take
the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. That court issued a
short-lived ruling in 2000 allowing distribution to patients who met the
criteria for "medical necessity" -- showing that the drug would relieve
severe pain or the side effects of treatment for AIDS or cancer and that
they had no legal alternative.

"We feel confident of a more favorable ruling in the Court of Appeals,"
Robert Raich, a lawyer for the Oakland cooperative, said Friday. "There
were a lot of issues that he ignored."

As a result of the Supreme Court ruling, the Oakland cooperative, which has
formal city sponsorship, was barred from distributing marijuana. The Marin
Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Fairfax and a club in Ukiah were also
affected.

The Justice Department sued those clubs, a now-defunct dispensary in Santa
Cruz and two others in San Francisco, after California voters passed
Proposition 215 in 1996.