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| Court Rejects DEA Press To Censor Doctors |
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Posted by CN Staff on October 15, 2003 at 08:46:28 PT By Lyle Denniston, Globe Correspondent Source: Boston Globe 
Washington -- In a major legal breakthrough for advocates of marijuana as medicine, the Supreme Court rebuffed an effort by the federal government to stop doctors from suggesting that treatment option to their patients.The justices left intact a federal appeals court ruling that doctors have a constitutional right to recommend marijuana, as long as they do not help their patients violate federal law in obtaining the illegal drug. The lower court blocked the Drug Enforcement Administration from taking away a doctor's federal license to prescribe drugs as a penalty for proposing that a patient smoke marijuana. The federal agency was also barred from starting an investigation of a doctor that could lead to loss of license. Dr. Marcus Conant, the San Francisco doctor who led the challenge to the DEA, said the court's action "means that I can do my job again and have real conversations with my patients about medical marijuana as part of their treatment options." The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, led by the nation's "drug czar," John P. Walters, said in a statement that the court order dealt only with doctor-patient relationships, "not the efficacy of smoked marijuana as medicine." The office added that the "cultivation and trafficking of marijuana remains a federal offense." The Justice Department declined comment. The movement to promote marijuana as a medicine has been frustrated for years by the federal government's refusal to relax its controls on that drug as an illegal substance. Marijuana has been on the most-restricted list of illegal drugs since the list was approved by Congress in 1970, and the government has denied repeated requests to reclassifiy it. Although there is an ongoing debate about whether marijuana has any value as a medicine, the government has steadfastly insisted that it has no accepted medical uses. The movement to promote the drug as a form of medical treatment began to gather momentum in 1996, when California voters adopted a ballot measure that made it legal under state law for patients to grow and possess marijuana for medical use after a doctor has specifically recommended it. Soon, other states began adopting similar measures, and now eight others, including Maine, have laws that decriminalize marijuana use in medical care. Those status laws have not affected the illegality of marijuana under federal law. The spread of that movement prompted a sharp response by the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration has continued that approach. The key tactic has been to threaten doctors with loss of their DEA-approved licenses to prescribe federally controlled drugs. A group of doctors, patients, and medical organizations sued the drug czar and the DEA in an attempt to free doctors to continue making recommendations that patients smoke marijuana. A federal judge, while finding that the government allows doctors to talk about the pros and cons of marijuana as a medicine, ruled that it violated the First Amendment to take action against doctors when they recommend its actual use. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, upheld the judge's order against revoking a doctor's license with the DEA and launching investigations that could result in that penalty. The appeals court rejected the government argument that a doctor's recommendation to smoke marijuana is the same as an actual prescription. If a patient's doctor suggests marijuana, the appeals court said, the patient might use that advice as a way to get into a federally controlled research program on the drug or use it as a way to lobby the government to change its policy. Nothing in the judge's order, the appeals court stressed, bars the government from prosecuting doctors who "aid and abet" their patients in the actual distribution and possession of marijuana. The Justice Department appeal to the Supreme Court argued that the lower court ruling "impairs the Executive's authority to enforce the law in an area vital to the public health and safety." There was no indication in the court's decision not to consider the case that any of the nine justices had voted to do so. Although the court chose to stay out of that controversy, leaving the doctors' and patients' victory intact, it agreed to decide a constitutional question raised by the Justice Department in a different case: the validity of the 1998 law seeking to protect minors from sexually explicit materials on the World Wide Web. That law was passed to replace one that the Supreme Court had struck down in 1997, and was somewhat narrower. Still, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, struck it down, finding that it swept too broadly across Internet speech and curbed access by adults to websites that they have a right to visit. The Justice Department appeal said the ruling leaves minors unprotected from "the harmful effects of the enormous amount of pornography on the World Wide Web." The case is expected to be decided by next summer. Source: Boston Globe (MA) Related Articles & Web Site: Walters vs. Conant, 03-40 - PDF Medical Marijuana Cause Boosted Justices: Doctors Can Discuss Pot Court: Ariz. Docs Can Talk Pot with Patients Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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