Court Rules Against Sick People

[groover]

Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People

Supreme Court Rules Authorities May Prosecute Sick People Who Smoke Marijuana on Doctors' Orders

By GINA HOLLAND

The Associated Press



Jun. 6, 2005 - Federal authorities may prosecute sick people who smoke pot on doctors' orders, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state medical marijuana 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 that it lost in late 2003. At issue was whether the prosecution of medical marijuana users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.

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.

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 respondents 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.

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

"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 by other states' rights advocates.

The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years, invalidating 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 was 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."

The case concerned two seriously ill California women, Angel Raich and Diane Monson. 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.




Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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I guess this "conservative dilemma" should be discussed in the political thread.

[Monte Smith]

Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor and Thomas dissented.

[groover]

Well, I'll bet ol' Clarence has had a puff or two while watching his favorite porn movies.

[Monte Smith]

And I guess all the liberal justices who voted for this are just squaresville drug war hawks.

[Brian Olewnick]

It is rather interesting, from a media analysis point of view, that in a case where roughly speaking the liberal side of the case itself is represented by the dissenting vote that the AP only references O'Connor, not Rehnquist and Thomas. Wouldn't want to confuse people, I guess...

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

It is rather interesting, from a media analysis point of view, that in a case where roughly speaking the liberal side of the case itself is represented by the dissenting vote that the AP only references O'Connor, not Rehnquist and Thomas. Wouldn't want to confuse people, I guess...

Reuters carried that information, helpfully:

Court: Government can bar medical marijuana use
By James Vicini

The federal government has the power to prevent sick patients from smoking home-grown marijuana that a doctor recommended to relieve their chronic pain, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a setback for the medical marijuana movement.

The high court ruled that a federal law outlawing marijuana applied to two seriously ill California women, even though California is one of at least nine states that allow medical use of marijuana.

Justice John Paul Stevens said for the court majority that the federal law, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, was a valid exercise of federal power by the Congress "even as applied to the troubling facts of this case."

By a 6-3 vote, the justices set aside a lower-court decision in favor of the two women.

It represented another setback for the medical marijuana movement. The high court ruled in 2001 that California cannabis clubs may not distribute marijuana as a "medical necessity" for seriously ill patients.

The latest ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought in 2002 by Angel Raich, who has an inoperable brain tumor and other medical problems, and Diane Monson, who suffers from severe back pain. Their doctors recommended marijuana for their pain.

Monson cultivates her own marijuana while two of Raich's caregivers grow the marijuana and provide it to her free of charge. In 2002, Drug Enforcement Administration agents destroyed six cannabis plants seized from Monson's home.

Their attorney, Randy Barnett of Boston, argued that medical use of home-grown marijuana falls outside the power of Congress to regulate trade among the states and that only marijuana provided relief from the pain the two women suffer.

The ruling was a victory for the Bush administration, which appealed to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court in California said that marijuana used for medical purposes was different from drug trafficking.

The administration estimated that as many as 100,000 Californians would use marijuana for medical purposes if the Supreme Court ruled for the two women.

Government lawyers said it would be difficult to enforce the nation's drug laws if there was an exception for medical marijuana. They said the federal ban trumped the California law, which the voters adopted in 1996 to allow "compassionate use" of medical marijuana.

The appeals court said states could adopt medical marijuana laws as long as the marijuana was not sold, transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal purposes.

The Supreme Court set aside that ruling.

Stevens said the power of Congress to regulate commerce among the states includes the authority to prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana in compliance with California law.

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

"This case exemplifies the role of states as laboratories," O'Connor wrote.

"Relying on Congress' abstract assertions, the court has endorsed making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use," she said. "This overreaching stifles an express choice by some states ... to regulate medical marijuana differently."

(Reuters)

[patricia]

I guess that the rationale is that pain is something sent by God to be borne with dignity.
That theory is usually offered by people who are not in chronic excruciating pain and never will be.........they assume. Better to rely on Percadon, Demerol and other prescription pain-killers which are proven to be addictive, but line the drug companies' pockets.

[Brian Olewnick]

I'm sure the issue was rights jurisdiction, whether the state's laws could supercede federal ones, no more, no less.

[Enforcer]

I didn't read the story, but hey, anything that goes against sick people, I'm in favor of it.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by patricia

I guess that the rationale is that pain is something sent by God to be borne with dignity.

With the exception of Scalia, I don't think the majority justices in this opinion have ever manifested any sort of rationale in their decisions before.

[tristano's ghost]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

I'm sure the issue was rights jurisdiction, whether the state's laws could supercede federal ones, no more, no less.

As the federal government becomes more and more conservative, and some states become more liberal (witness the recent move to increase the minimum wage at the state level, simply because the GOP Congress won't lift a finger to do it--not, that is, unless said increase is accompanied by a raft of perks for the corporate community), I think we're going to see a lot more ideological twist 'n shout.

[moneyp]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

I'm sure the issue was rights jurisdiction, whether the state's laws could supercede federal ones, no more, no less.

Bingo. You liberal conspiracy theorists can take the tack that the Conservative judges want to increase state control of laws, especially criminal codes. If states can define drug laws (typically defined by federal guidelines), then they can define gun laws and education laws (i.e., urban defunding/privatization, evolution content, prayer, etc.) When the states become specifically empowered to administer more and more rights, it becomes ok for them to define a lot of the variables that determine our civil rights without being in violation of the U.S. Constitution (and amendments) because the precedents exist to give them the leeway.

This decision becomes about the ability for Federal law to trump State law, regardless of a law's content, or rather, whether Congress is leads the country, or if they're just a bunch of toothless figurehead-monarchs. If the courts signed onto the states' ability to trump Federal laws of this sort, it would be a total coup by the states against Congress.

It might seem odd for the so-called liberal contingent to come down against medical marijuana in this case, but that's not what happened. What happened here was a showdown between Federalists and States' Rights advocates. But it's even more complex than that. There was a split among the States' Rightsers themselves. Some of the states' rightsers, like the more moderate O'Connor, dissented, saying that growing a small amount of cannabis in one's home shouldn't fall under the Federal prohibition because it doesn't rise to the level of Interstate Commerce, or even of Commerce in general. (Part of the debate centered on whether or not the Federal laws applied, since their empowerment arose from the Fed gov't ability to regulate "Interstate Commerce" under the Constitution. Most of the Justices agreed that if you grow it for yourself, or for others within your state, and don't traffic across state lines, this doesn't fall under "Interstate Commerce." So then the question becomes whether the release of it into a supposedly state-limited market qualifies as the kind of commerce in general that can be federally regulated, especially since a truly state-limited market is nigh-impossible to enforce. It may become "Interstate" by implication.)

The other states' rightsers (Scalia, et. al.) appear to take the hard-line stance of "If it's illegal, it's illegal. We're not going to make laws apply inequally and vaguely to allow a few sick grandmothers for whom we have sympathy and thusly let a bunch of hippies make it under the radar."
Since Scalia has historically supported State law over Federal law, I'd be interested in reading all the opinions when they're officially published to see if he enumerated on his stance a little better.