Supreme Court Outlaws Medical Use of Marijuana

In a 6-3 ruling Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court justices found that people who use marijuana for medical purposes can be prosecuted because of a federal ban on the drug, even if they are using it under a doctor’s supervision. The decision is a blow to advocates of medical marijuana usage, who have been successful in having medical marijuana statutes passed in at least 10 states over the past few years. Writing for the majority, Justice Paul Stevens said that Congress has the power to change the law allowing medical use of the drug. Under the new ruling, federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease their pain and suffering. 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." But in a dissenting view, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said, "The states' core police powers have always included the authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens." Her opinion was shared by two other staunch defenders of individual states’ rights, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas. O’Connor said that if she were a voter or a legislator in the state of California, she would have opposed the state's medical marijuana law. But she said the high 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 decision came in response to an appeal by the Bush administration regarding a California case that was lost in 2003, involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana. Angel Raich, an Oakland woman, suffers from various ailments including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue, and pain, and she smokes marijuana every few hours to gain relief from her symptoms. She has said that she was partly paralyzed until she started smoking pot. Diane Monson, an accountant who lives near Oroville, Calif., has degenerative spine disease and grows her own marijuana plants in her backyard. Two years ago the women sued U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, petitioning for a court order to let them smoke, grow, or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home raids, or other intrusion by federal authorities. When their petition was denied, they took their case to the Supreme Court.

The issue involved was whether or not it is constitutional to prosecute medical marijuana users under the federal Controlled Substances Act, if such usage is legal according to state laws. California's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 1996, allows people to grow, smoke, or obtain marijuana for medical needs as long as they have a doctor's recommendation to do so. Similar laws have been passed in Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington State. In most of those states, doctors can give written or oral recommendations involving the use of marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV, and other serious illnesses. Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state’s economic activities if they involve interstate commerce that crosses state borders. Because the marijuana in the case of the two women was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge, and without crossing state lines, the legal question posed a dilemma for court conservatives. The three dissenting justices have pushed to broaden states’ rights in recent years, and they have succeeded in invalidating federal laws dealing with gun possession and violence against women, holding steadfast to their beliefs that such activities were too local to justify federal intrusion. But in writing for the majority, Stevens raised their concerns about the potential abuse o marijuana laws. "Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who over-prescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so," he said.