Looks like it'll have to be done the hard way--through Congress.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050606/ap_ ... _marijuana

Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People

By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state 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 involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana. At issue was whether the prosecution of pot 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 two other states' rights advocates: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice
Clarence Thomas.

The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years. They earlier invalidated 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 were 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 Californians, 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.

In the court's main decision, Stevens raised concerns about abuse of marijuana laws. "Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who overprescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so," he said.

what states rights? piss on that.

Its not so much as taking away medical marijuana rights, but the hypocrisy of the whole thing is unbelievable, but what should be expect from these old farts by now?

When all this is said and done, the moderates in the Republican party are the ones to blame for the right-wing's shenanigans.

As this case illustrates, the one thing I agree with arch-conservatives about is that there should be less federal laws that govern purely local activities. I'll have to read the opinion on this, but it seems evident that the more liberal members of the court want to preserve the power of the federal government to regulate, and this probably had little to do with marijuana specifically. Meanwhile, Scalia, who joined the majority, has once again decided a case based on the specific facts of teh case rather than on the ideals and strict construction of the Constitution which he so vocally espouses.

I'll read this opinion later today and see what the given rationales were.

FLIP FLOP
FLIP FLOP
FLIP FLOP
FLIP FLOP

Did you guys see who voted for the way of state's rights? O'Connor, Renquist, and Thomas.

Did you even read the article? It was the right-wing justices who DISSENTED in this opinion.

this whole debate really makes me ill, No Marijuana, but pfizer will let you have their really expensive synthetic opiates, and oh just to let you know they may cause anal leekage.

I meant the Bush administration, jackass

It's ok, it's easy to get confused. Bush proclaims himself to be conservative. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Bush is much closer to facism on the political scale.


If the Republicans could pry thier lips off of the religous fundamentalists collective asses, the party would most likely return to it's small government ideals. Clearly that's not happening.

Don't call me jackass. I responded to what you wrote, not what you meant. And as much as I hate the Bush administration, and as much as I hate marijuana laws, it's absurd to blame ANY of this on the right-wing. Marijuana laws have been around for nearly 70 years, and have been enforced and increased by both parties over that time.

Not that I support a crack down, but anyone that got a doctors note and then ran out and bought pot "on the record" is an idiot.

No more indo, gin and juice
I'm on my way to Chino, rollin on the grey goose
Shackled from head to toe
85 with an izzl, with nowhere to gizzo, I know
them niggaz from the other side recognize my face

funny, i seem to recall a poster by the name IEB who did this exact thing, or at the very least, claimed to do so

Sorry, IEB.

Ring my friend I said you call Dr. Robert.
Day or night he'll be there anytime at all, Dr. Robert,
Dr. Robert,
You're a new and better man, he helps you to understand.
He does ev'rything he can, Dr. Robert.

If you're down he'll pick you up, Dr. Robert.
Take a drink from his special cup, Dr. Robert,
Dr. Robert,
He's a man you must believe, helping ev'ryone in need,
No one can succeed like Dr. Robert.

Well, well, well, you're feeling fine.
Well, well, well, he'll make you, Dr. Robert.

My friend works with the nat'nal health, Dr. Robert.
Don't pay money just to see yourself with Dr. Robert,
Dr. Robert,
You're a new and better man, he helps you to understand,
He does ev'rything he can, Dr. Robert.

Well, well, well, you're feeling fine.
Well, well, well, he'll make you, Dr. Robert.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/06/scotu ... index.html


Can you say.....


"Protect the HMO & RX Company Distribution Chain"?

~I knew you could~

Oxycontin all 'round .....

But haven't several states passed laws making it legal in the past 15 years, and doesn't this just reverse those laws? And why is the current administration actively taking such a step (backward for people in pain) unless politically motivated (being politically pressured by the moral majority)?

c-

unless I missed something, not one member of the supreme court was appointed by the current administration, so you really can't lay this one on Bush jr. & co.