Sugar420

Supreme Court outlaws use of marijuana for medical reasons
- By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
Monday, June 6, 2005


(06-06) 07:33 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --


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.

theorangejulius

"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"


there's some infallible logic for you. SOME of the prescribers MIGHT be prescribing it more often than its necessary. therefore, ALL of the patients must be denied (legal) access to their medicine. now, all of these tumor-ridden patients get to wheel themselves through the ghetto to get ripped off by much shadier providers.

i like how they say that it's up to congress to change the law now. how many congressmen do you know who will risk their image by promoting anything to do with marijuana? they get elected by championing the drug war and the evils of pot...there's no way they're going to make a contradiction like this when they've got to worry about getting elected for another term.

j-wonder

sorry didnt see this thread b4 i posted.

man wtf the supreme ct are too fucking old.

half of them are over 80!

Sugar420

its a strike against states rights and another attack on liberty, bigger federal government sticking its nose into the affairs of ordinary citizens and punishing people for using God-given natural resources to treat illness and suffering.

just another example of the big lie that is conservativism in action

kiWikkid

MWUHAHA. US Fed Govt has run amuck. Your lives dont belong to you any more. Welcome to ©SLAVERY2005.

If the Judiciary wont protect your rights, CONgress certainly aint going to. It is now up to you poor fuckers. If something like 70% of people support medical marijuana, and 50% support marijuana law reform, then I expect nothing less than 70% of juries to nullify medical court cases, and 50% of juries to nullify general MJ court cases.

fer fecks sake people.

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Pointy

Actually, the conservative view would have been one of state's rights. The liberals were in the majority on this decision.

Pointy

Unless you were protected under a medical marijuana bill, then your actions are no more legal or illegal than they were last week.

Pointy

Your statement was that because of the court's ruling, we are now even more of 'terrorists' than before said ruling. My point is that the ruling had nothing to do with pot smokers aside from those previously protected under medical marijuana bills, and certainly nothing to do with terrorism.

j-wonder

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and
JUSTICE THOMAS join as to all but Part III, dissenting.
We enforce the “outer limits” of Congress’ Commerce
Clause authority not for their own sake, but to protect
historic spheres of state sovereignty from excessive federal
encroachment and thereby to maintain the distribution of
power fundamental to our federalist system of government.
United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 557 (1995);
NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, 37
(1937). One of federalism’s chief virtues, of course, is that
it promotes innovation by allowing for the possibility that
“a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve
as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments
without risk to the rest of the country.” New State
Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U. S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis,
J., dissenting).
This case exemplifies the role of States as laboratories.
The States’ core police powers have always included authority
to define criminal law and to protect the health,
safety, and welfare of their citizens.

jamf

The decision sucks.

on a side note, Angel Raich is hot.

If they lock her up we have to break her out.

Frodo

I wonder how this ruling affects the seven people who receive medicinal marijuana from the federal government? There's a guy who stands outside the capitol and smokes all the time, can't remember his name off the top of my head.

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