Federal justices
hear arguments for
medical marijuana

Nine states, including Hawaii,
have laws allowing the use of
pot to treat ailments

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By Anne Gearan
Associated Press

WASHINGTON >> The Supreme Court took a first look at prescription pot yesterday, hearing arguments on an issue that has pitted the federal government against patients with cancer, AIDS and other diseases who sometimes regard marijuana as a wonder drug.

As far as the federal government is concerned, marijuana is illegal and should remain so. Federal enforcement efforts have led to confrontations and arrests in California and other Western states.

The issue for an openly skeptical Supreme Court is whether a patient's need for marijuana trumps a 1970 federal law that classifies it as an illegal substance with no known medical value.

President Bush supports federal prohibitions on marijuana but also respects states' rights to pass voter initiatives, as was the case in California, spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

"The president is opposed to the legalization of marijuana, including for medicinal purposes," he said yesterday.

Lawyers for the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative in California want to make what they call a "medical necessity" defense in federal court, and argue that federal judges and juries have the power to decide if the drug is warranted.

Several justices seemed to think that approach was a stretch at best.

"I thought the medical-necessity defense was for an individual," Justice Antonin Scalia said. "You would extend it to the person prescribing the drug and even to opening a business" to dispense it.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy seemed to agree. "You're asking us to hold that this defense exists ... with no specific plaintiff before us, no specific case," Kennedy told the club's lawyer, Gerald Uelmen.

A ruling for the Oakland club would allow special marijuana clubs to resume distributing the drug in California, which passed one of the nation's first medical marijuana laws in 1996.

A ruling for the federal government would not negate the California voter initiative but effectively would prevent clubs like Oakland's from distributing the drug openly.

One of the most vocal opponents of legalized prescription marijuana is Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's drug policy director. He once dismissed the practice as "Cheech and Chong medicine," a reference to the comedy team that celebrated pot-smoking.

Advocates of medical marijuana say the drug can ease side effects from chemotherapy, save nauseated AIDS patients from wasting away or even allow multiple sclerosis sufferers to rise from a wheelchair and walk. Nine states have laws allowing the legal use of marijuana to treat a host of ailments.

Several states are considering medical marijuana laws, and Congress may revisit the issue this year. A measure to counteract laws like California's died in the House last year.

The case is United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, 00-151.