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Court's ruling on marijuana reeks of 'reefer madness'

Posted 6/6/2005 9:25 PM

Diane Monson has suffered for years from degenerative spine disease and painful muscle spasms. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court told Monson that she can be prosecuted for trying to relieve her own pain.

Three years ago, federal agents barged into her house, seized and destroyed the six marijuana plants Monson was growing at her doctor's suggestion. Monson, an accountant who lives in Oroville, Calif., had been getting relief from the active ingredient in marijuana that no ordinary drug had been able to provide.

It was all legal under the laws of California, one of 10 states that since 1996 have authorized patients to grow or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. But the high court ruled that Congress' blanket ban on marijuana trumps the states' compassionate desire to create a limited exception for medicinal reasons.

Monson and Angel Raich are the latest collateral damage in Washington's indiscriminate war on drugs. Raich, an Oakland mother of two, is subject to severe, debilitating pain from an inoperable brain tumor and more than a dozen other ailments. Her desperate measures, seeking relief in using marijuana grown for her at no cost by her two caregivers, caused her to join Monson's court case three years ago — and now could make her also liable to federal prosecution.

The Court's 6-3 decision was a stretched interpretation of the clause in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.

Under Monday's ruling, growing marijuana at home for medicinal purposes, with no money changing hands, is somehow now a form of interstate commerce. It makes you wonder what the majority was smoking. As Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissenting opinion, "If Congress can regulate this ... under the commerce clause, then it can regulate virtually anything."

That warning ought to be a rallying cry for conservative members of Congress elected under the banner of small government and respect for states rights. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the court's majority, told Monson, Raich and anyone in a similar fix that their recourse is to get Congress to change the 1970 federal law that bans possession or distribution of marijuana.

Given the "reefer madness" in Washington that has led to an overemphasis on marijuana prosecutions in the war on drugs, the prospects for early congressional action seem remote. In the meantime, surely federal prosecutors and drug-control agents have better things to do than to swoop down on critically ill people who are abiding by state law and haul them off to court.

© Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. (emphasis added)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-06-06-marijuana-edit_x.htm