Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People

Woodmonkey · 06-06-2005, 16:48

I put this in P/CP since pot is one of those issues that can polarize people. What do you think about medical marijuana? I think there are some people who really do benefit from it, but there are a lot of people who just want to smoke pot and find a doctor who will give them a prescription...for a fee of course. If this is kept strictly in state, should the federal government be able to stop it?

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Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People

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Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana. The court said the prosecution of pot users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.

"I'm going to have to be prepared to be arrested," said Diane Monson, one of the women involved in the case.

Stevens said the court was not passing judgment on the potential medical benefits of marijuana, and he noted "the troubling facts" in the case. Monson's backyard crop of six marijuana plants was seized by federal agents in 2002, although the California law was on Monson's side.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be allowed to set their own rules.

Justice Department spokesman John Nowacki said the department is pleased with the court's decision, but refused additional comment about whether federal prosecutors would pursue cases against people like Monson.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

"Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion. To date, science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective," John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy, said Monday.

Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, "but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these (California women) may one day be heard in the halls of Congress."

California's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 1996, allows people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state have laws similar to California.

In those states, doctors generally can give written or oral recommendations on marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV and other serious illnesses.

"The states' core police powers have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens," said O'Connor, who was joined in her dissent by two other states' rights advocates: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.

The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years. They earlier invalidated federal laws dealing with gun possession near schools and violence against women on the grounds the activity was too local to justify federal intrusion.

O'Connor said she would have opposed California's medical marijuana law if she were a voter or a legislator. But she said the court was overreaching to endorse "making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use."

Alan Hopper, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, said that local and state officers handle 99 percent of marijuana prosecutions and must still follow any state laws that protect patients. "This is probably not going to change a lot for individual medical marijuana patients," he said.

The case concerned two Californians, Monson and Angel Raich. The two had sued then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking for a court order letting them smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home raids or other intrusion by federal authorities.

Raich, an Oakland woman suffering from ailments including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain, smokes marijuana every few hours. She said she was partly paralyzed until she started smoking pot. Monson, an accountant who lives near Oroville, Calif., has degenerative spine disease and grows her own marijuana plants in her backyard.

In the court's main decision, Stevens raised concerns about abuse of marijuana laws. "Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who overprescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so," he said.

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Shooterman · 06-06-2005, 19:40

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Originally Posted by Woodmonkey

I put this in P/CP since pot is one of those issues that can polarize people. What do you think about medical marijuana? I think there are some people who really do benefit from it, but there are a lot of people who just want to smoke pot and find a doctor who will give them a prescription...for a fee of course. If this is kept strictly in state, should the federal government be able to stop it?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...customwire.htm

My personal opinion, and I've seen this discussed on several forums, is the SCOTUS is wrong. Being a basic conservative, I find it very disheartening to have just one more nail placed in the lid of the coffin of states rights, ( a misnomer, btw, as government does not have rights bit only powers ) The founders established the idea of very strong powers of a state as another check and balance on a would be usurpus federal government. Over the years, starting with the machinations of 'Honest Abe', passing through the era of the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, through Eisenhower's abridgement at Little Rock, until the present, we have seen a steady erosion of 'rights' of a state. The thought of the Feds losing money on the use of Mary Jane leads one to realize just how unwilling the SCOTUS can continue to be to change the status quo.

On a personal note, I believe the war against marijuana is grossly unjust, and has had such far reaching ramifications on society as to boggle the mind. I know few conservatives feel this way, but that makes it no less true.

Of course, it can be argued that as it is just my opinion, it is not necessarily true, either.

Woodmonkey · 06-06-2005, 20:59

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Originally Posted by Shooterman

On a personal note, I believe the war against marijuana is grossly unjust, and has had such far reaching ramifications on society as to boggle the mind. I know few conservatives feel this way, but that makes it no less true.

Of course, it can be argued that as it is just my opinion, it is not necessarily true, either.

Oregon has a pretty decent law with some commonsense safeguards built in. For example, they stated that no one could smoke medical marijuana in public. A man lit up in a family pizza parlor on the coast and claimed no one could stop him based on the ADA. The courts decided that the ADA did not require people to be allowed to smoke medical pot and then looked at Oregon's law excluding smoking it in public and his lawsuit went nowhere.

I'm not for legalizing pot, but do believe there is a place for medical marijuana. Just my opinion!

Snowden · 06-07-2005, 14:15

A Defeat For Users Of Medical Marijuana
State Laws No Defense, Supreme Court Rules

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 7, 2005; A01

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the medical marijuana movement yesterday, ruling that the federal government can still ban possession of the drug in states that have eliminated sanctions for its use in treating symptoms of illness.

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled that Congress's constitutional authority to regulate the interstate market in drugs, licit or illicit, extends to small, homegrown quantities of doctor-recommended marijuana consumed under California's Compassionate Use Act, which was adopted by an overwhelming majority of voters in 1996.

The ruling does not overturn laws in California and 10 other states, mostly in the West, that permit medical use of marijuana. In 2003, Maryland reduced the maximum fine for medical users of less than an ounce of the drug to $100.

But the ruling does mean that those who try to use marijuana as a medical treatment risk legal action by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or other federal agencies and that the state laws provide no defense.

Writing for the court majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the case was "troubling" because of users' claims that they needed marijuana to alleviate physical pain and suffering. But he concluded that the court had no choice but to uphold Congress's "firmly established" power to regulate "purely local activities . . . that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce."

Echoing an argument advanced by the Bush administration, Stevens expressed concern that "unscrupulous physicians" might exploit the broadly worded California law to divert marijuana into the market for recreational drugs.

The Bush administration, which has been emphasizing marijuana enforcement in its anti-drug strategy, hailed the ruling.

"Today's decision marks the end of medical marijuana as a political issue," said John P. Walters, President Bush's director of national drug control policy. "Our nation has the highest standards and most sophisticated institutions in the world for determining the safety and effectiveness of medication. Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion."

But California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said that "seriously ill Californians will continue to run the risk of arrest and prosecution under federal law when they grow and or they use marijuana as medicine."

The ruling, he said, "shows the vast philosophical difference between the federal government and Californians on the rights of patients to have access to the medicine they need to survive and lead healthier lives."

Supporters of medical marijuana, noting that Stevens wrote that "the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress," said the fight over federal drug policy will shift to a new battleground.

"The decision highlights the opportunity we have to go to Congress and change these laws," said Robert Raich, a lawyer whose wife, Angel Raich, was one of two women who had sued to block enforcement of federal marijuana laws against them.

A House bill that would forbid the use of federal funds to prosecute medical marijuana use in states that permit it was defeated overwhelmingly last year but will be voted on again soon, advocates of medical marijuana said.

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision represented a victory for the court's supporters of federal power over its proponents of states' rights.

In two cases in the past decade, the court limited Congress's power to make laws in the name of regulating interstate commerce, saying that it had begun to intrude upon local affairs. Backers of medical marijuana had hoped to apply those precedents in this case, Gonzales v. Raich, No. 03-1454.

But Stevens concluded that the court was still bound by a 1942 Supreme Court decision that defined interstate commerce broadly to include, under certain circumstances, even subsistence wheat farming.

Much modern government regulation exists because of this broad definition of interstate commerce, which permitted the court to uphold, as exercises of Congress's commerce clause power, laws including New Deal farm controls and the ban on racial segregation in hotels and restaurants.

Stevens was joined by the court's three other consistent supporters of federal power, Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. He also picked up the votes of two justices, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy, who usually support states' rights.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas dissented.

Writing for the three, O'Connor noted that she "would not have voted for the medical marijuana initiative" in California, but she chided the majority for stifling "an express choice by some States, concerned for the lives and liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana differently."

In a separate dissent, Thomas added that if "the majority is to be taken seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives and potluck suppers throughout the 50 states."

The two California women who sued to block federal marijuana enforcement in California are Diane Monson, who was prescribed marijuana for lower-back pain, and Raich, who said that she must take the drug at least every two hours or else she will lose her appetite and die from a "wasting syndrome" whose medical cause is unknown.

"I don't know how to explain it," she said yesterday. "I just can't swallow without cannabis."

Monson's home was raided and her marijuana plants seized by federal agents in 2002; Raich says she receives the drug free from caregivers and joined Monson's lawsuit because she fears that her marijuana could be seized. Neither woman has been criminally charged. Raich's suppliers are also in the case, as John Does One and Two.

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Woodmonkey · 06-07-2005, 15:12

What is your opinion about the use of medical marijuana, Marianne? Do you support its use? Do you agree with what the Supreme Court did?