cannabisnews.com: The Supremes' Pot Decision -- Who Can Enforce It?





The Supremes' Pot Decision -- Who Can Enforce It?
Posted by FoM on May 16, 2001 at 08:59:14 PT
By Peter Schrag
Source: Sacramento Bee
There were no great surprises in Monday's Supreme Court ruling allowing the government to shut down organizations that invoked a medical necessity defense in distributing marijuana. Federal law, which regards marijuana as a dangerous and medically useless substance, allows no exceptions other than research.But the decision doesn't appear to invalidate the medical marijuana laws, among them California's Proposition 215, which are now on the books in nine mostly Western states, much less close the growing gap between voters and federal drug policy. It merely shifts the battle into other arenas.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the decision, may not believe in the medical necessity defense, but if any federal prosecutor chooses to follow him, he may have a hard time finding many sympathetic juries.If anything the court decision, combined with the recent nomination of John Walters, a hard-line conservative, as the nation's new drug czar, can only intensify the battle between a federal government committed to a $20 billion "drug war" emphasizing crop eradication abroad, interdiction at the border and prosecution at home, and voters who see that war as a costly failure and favor much greater emphasis on treatment. Call it the left-wing sagebrush rebellion.The rebellion has been spreading ever since California and Arizona passed their medical marijuana initiatives back in 1996. Since then, similar laws have been approved by voters in Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Nevada, Colorado and Maine and by the Legislature in Hawaii. All told, one of every five Americans now lives in a place where state laws allow patients with serious illnesses - cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, multiple sclerosis -- to relieve their symptoms or the side effects of treatment by smoking marijuana.In addition, drug-law reformers, backed by billionaire financier George Soros and other deep pockets, have also successfully pushed through asset forfeiture reforms in Utah and Nevada; bills authorizing over-the-counter needle sales in a number of other states; and, perhaps the biggest of them all, California's Proposition 36, which requires treatment instead of prison for those convicted of nonviolent possession of all illegal drugs.But with the Supreme Court's decision Monday, probably the biggest battlegrounds -- and certainly the most intriguing -- will be the distribution systems in the states that have enacted those medical marijuana laws. In Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii, the state operates a registration system of patients with a certified medical need for marijuana. A similar bill, SB 187 by Sen. John Vasconcellos, backed by the state District Attorneys Association and the state Sheriffs Association, is pending in the California Senate.In each case the registration and distribution systems reflect attempts by both drug law reformers and law enforcement to create order out of what could otherwise be -- and often already is -- a chaotic legal situation, with state law appearing to allow what federal law absolutely forbids. Absent congressional action, this week's Supreme Court decision, though sound on legal grounds, makes such order still harder to achieve.In Nevada, the Legislature has been debating a measure that would put the state itself in the business of growing and distributing the marijuana. That move, prompted by language in the initiative that Nevada voters approved last November, is not entirely unprecedented: In what may be the ultimate irony, the federal government itself grows pot, and makes it into cigarettes that it distributes to a residual list of eight patients under its Compassionate IND (Investigative New Drug) Program.The program was created to settle a civil suit filed (in 1976) by Robert Randall, a glaucoma patient who had been prosecuted -- and acquitted on medical necessity grounds. He argued that the government left him no choice between a criminal act and the certain prospect of blindness. Some 34 others were admitted to the program before the feds, fearing it would get swamped (mostly by a new generation of AIDS patients) shut it down to new cases. Randall is among the eight who still survive. Each month, the government sends a tin of 300 marijuana cigarettes to a pharmacy near where each of them lives.The Randall story is just one episode in a long history of official ambivalence and hypocrisy about marijuana. Two years ago, the U.S. Institute of Medicine, following an extensive review of research, issued an official administration-sponsored report, "Marijuana and Medicine," that's quoted by both sides in the debate."Because of the health risks associated with smoking, smoked marijuana should generally not be recommended for long-term medical use," it concluded. "Nonetheless, for certain patients, such as the terminally ill or those with debilitating symptoms, the long-term risks are not of great concern." It then defines the conditions under which marijuana may be medically used.But in Washington, law enforcement still speaks louder than any medical approach. This week's court decision, combined with the appointment of Walters, indicates that despite the current of drug law reform running through the states, the feds remain almost as rigid as ever.Peter Schrag can be reached at: pschrag sacbee.comSource: Sacramento Bee (CA)Author: Peter Schrag, Bee EditorialPublished: May 16, 2001 Copyright: 2001 The Sacramento BeeContact: opinion sacbee.comWebsite: http://www.sacbee.com/O.C.B.C. Versus The U.S. Government News http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/mj.htmCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml 
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