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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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US: Supreme Court to Hear Case on Medical Pot
David Kravets Associated Press
Monday 28 Jun 2004 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the federal government can prosecute sick people who smoke marijuana on the advice of a doctor. The case involves the Bush administration's appeal of a case it lost last year involving two California women who say pot is the only drug that eases their chronic pain and other medical problems. The case also affects Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state, which have medical marijuana laws similar to California's allowing patients to grow, use or receive marijuana if they have a doctor's recommendation. Thirty-five states in all have passed legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value. Patients' rights groups immediately hailed the high court's decision to hear the case. ``The Supreme Court has a chance to protect the rights of patients everywhere who need medical cannabis to treat their afflictions,'' said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access. The high court will take up the case sometime next winter. Doctors are already free to recommend marijuana since the justices refused last fall to let the Justice Department punish physicians for discussing marijuana with their patients. The case the Supreme Court accepted Monday began after several raids on California medical-marijuana clubs and individual growers over the past few years. Two ailing marijuana users, fearing their supplies might dry up, sued Attorney General John Ashcroft and won injunctions barring the Justice Department from prosecuting them or their suppliers. ``I'm real excited and I'm real nervous and real afraid because my life is on the line here,'' said one of the plaintiffs, Angel Raich, 38, of Oakland, who suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain. She and her doctor say marijuana, which she uses every few hours, is the only thing that keeps her alive. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, ruled in the women's favor in December, saying the federal law outlawing marijuana does not apply to patients whose doctors have recommended the drug. Circuit Judge Harry Pregerson wrote that states are free to adopt medical marijuana laws so long as the marijuana is not sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes. He said using marijuana on a doctor's advice is ``different in kind from drug trafficking.'' The Bush administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that state laws making exceptions for medical marijuana are trumped by federal drug laws. The federal Controlled Substances Act says marijuana, like heroin and LSD, has no medical benefits and cannot be dispensed or prescribed by doctors. The case is Ashcroft v. Raich, 03-1454.
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