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Oakland, Calif., Nov. 27 (AP) - Traditional drugs have done little to help Angel Raich. Beset by a nightmarish list of ailments that includes tumors in her brain and uterus, seizures, spasms and nausea, Ms. Raich, 39, says she has been able to find comfort only in marijuana, which was recommended by her doctor.
It eases her pain, allows her to rise out of a wheelchair and promotes an appetite that prevents her from wasting away, she said. Her doctor, Frank Lucido, said marijuana was "the only drug of almost three dozen we have tried that works."
On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that will determine whether Ms. Raich; another plaintiff, Diana Monson; and similar patients in California and 10 other states can continue to use marijuana for medical purposes.
At issue is whether Congress has the constitutional authority to enforce federal drug laws in states that allow the use of drugs the federal government has banned.
California passed the nation's first so-called medical marijuana law in 1996, allowing patients to smoke and grow marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. The Bush administration, which asserts that marijuana has no medical value, maintains that the California act violates federal drug law.
"I really hope and pray the justices allow me to live," Ms. Raich said as she crammed a blend of a marijuana variety known as Haze X into a machine that vaporized it inside large balloons. She then inhales the vapor.
The case will address questions left unresolved from the first time the court considered the legality of medical marijuana.
In 2001, the justices ruled against clubs that distributed medical marijuana, saying they could not claim "medical necessity" of the patient as a defense against federal law enforcement. The ruling led Ms. Raich's supplier in Oakland to close and other cannabis clubs to operate in the shadows.
The decision did not address whether the government could block states from adopting their own medical marijuana laws.
The federal government took the offensive after the ruling, often over the objections of local officials. It began seizing individuals' medical marijuana and raiding their suppliers. Nowhere was that effort more conspicuous than in the San Francisco Bay area, where the nation's medical marijuana movement was founded.
Ms. Raich and Ms. Monson sued Attorney General John Ashcroft. After a two-year legal battle, they won injunctions barring the Justice Department from prosecuting them or their suppliers.
"This has been a nightmare," said Ms. Monson, a 47-year-old accountant from Oroville whose backyard crop of six marijuana plants was seized in 2002. "I've never sued anyone in my life, never mind the attorney general of the United States of America. For crying out loud, here in California we've voted to allow medical marijuana."
She regularly uses marijuana on a doctor's recommendation to alleviate back problems. She says it also helps cope with the recent death of her husband, who had pancreatic cancer.
Last December, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled in the plaintiffs' favor. It said that controlling the noncommercial cultivation and use of marijuana exceeded the jurisdiction of Congress.
The appeals court said states were free to adopt medical marijuana laws as long as the marijuana was not sold, transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal purposes. The other states with such laws are Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.
The court ruled that marijuana for medicinal purposes was "different in kind from drug trafficking" and outside the scope of federal oversight.
The same court last year said doctors were free to recommend marijuana to their patients. The government appealed, but the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
In June, however, the justices agreed to hear the Raich-Monson case. A ruling is expected to decide the states' rights issue the court left unanswered in 2001.
Paul Clement, the acting solicitor general, told the justices in briefs that the government, backed by the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, had the power to regulate the "manufacture, distribution and possession of any controlled substance," even if such activity takes place entirely within one state.
Even some states without medical marijuana laws have criticized the federal government's position. Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi told the court they supported "their neighbors' prerogative in our federalist system to serve as laboratories for experimentation."
A number of medical groups, doctors and marijuana supporters also wrote the court, saying marijuana benefited sick patients.
But Calvina Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation, an antidrug group that filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, said in a statement: "We cannot allow individual states to undermine federal antidrug laws. Medical questions should be decided by the F.D.A. - in consultation with the medical profession - not by pro-drug activists preying on public ignorance."
The case is Ashcroft v. Raich, 03-1454.
- New York Times
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11-30-2004 08:27 PM
