Attorneys for the federal government and a small cooperative of cannabis growers and users yesterday finished oral arguments before the Supreme Court as the fate of medical marijuana in California hung in the balance.
The case, pitting the Justice Department against the Oakland Cannabis Buyer’s Cooperative, is the first test of a state law permitting medical marijuana use.
“This is not a scientific, dry, pharmacological debate; it’s about morality,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws.
Robert Raich, an attorney for the Cooperative, called medical marijuana “a matter of life and death.” The case, Raich said, boils down to “the right of patients to have the access to the medicine they need.”
In briefs to the high court, the Department of Justice argued the supremacy clause of the Constitution gives the federal government the right to prosecute users of medical marijuana, despite state laws allowing the private consumption of cannabis by chronically or terminally ill patients.
The federal government classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug which, by definition, has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” This, says the Justice Department, nullifies the Cooperative’s argument that marijuana is a “medical necessity.”
The “medical necessity” defense, around which the Cooperative’s defense revolves, stems from a centuries-old common-law principle that a person may choose the lesser of two evils, even if that lesser evil is illegal.
“An act of self-preservation or medical necessity is going to trump” federal law, St. Pierre said.
In response to the Justice Department’s arguments, cannabis supporters say California’s Proposition 215 was passed by a popular referendum, a more direct indication of the people’s will than federal legislation.
“What we have in this case is the people, in a public referendum, upholding the fundamental right to the possession of cannabis. … The state of California is not just trying to help a bunch of hippies trying to get stoned,” Raich said.
Raich also said Congress never intended the Schedule 1 classification to prevent access to marijuana as medicine, only to prevent its use by the general public.
“The federal government is really wrapped up in a post-reefer madness period. … They view any deviation in policy as akin to going to your building and ripping out the cornerstone,” St. Pierre said.
St. Pierre also responded to the government’s assertion of supremacy, pointing out the Supreme Court has steadily devolved power upon the states for the past 15 years.
Nine states, including California, currently have some sort of law allowing the possession and consumption of marijuana for medical marijuana. It is unclear what effect the Supreme Court’s decision, due out in June, will have on these states. If the court rules in favor of the federal government, California’s state law will not be affected, although those who continue to use or sell marijuana will be subject to prosecution under federal law.
The case began in 1998, when the Justice Department filed an injunction against six San Francisco marijuana distributors, including the Cooperative, in federal court. Despite the injunction, which forbade the sale or distribution of marijuana, Cooperative Founder Jeffrey Jones refused to shut down his organization on the grounds of medical necessity. Jones was found guilty of contempt of court, and U.S. Marshals seized the Cooperative’s building.
Jones appealed on the grounds that marijuana was medically necessary to members of the Cooperative.
On appeal, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court accused the lower court of ignoring the “strong public interest in the availability of a doctor-prescribed treatment that would help ameliorate the condition and relieve the pain and suffering of a large group of persons with serious or fatal illness,” and ordered the district court to reconsider its ruling.
The district court ruled the injunction on the sale of cannabis would not apply to patients suffering from a serious medical condition without a “reasonable legal alternative to cannabis for the effective treatment” of their symptoms, at which point the Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Justice Department refused to comment the case because it is ongoing.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
