A disappointing ruling, to say the least.
WASHINGTON Jun 6, 2005 -- 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.
I just find it ridiculous that it is now up to the "left" to defend states' rights. I also find it a bit insane that marijuana is criminal in the first place, of course, but that's another issue. The real issue at play here is states' rights, and "conservatives" seem to verify here that they when they say they support states' rights they really only mean they support the right of the state to do things they agree with.
Unfortunately I cannot find the actual opinion of this story up online yet, once I do I intend to at least peruse it and post some more analysis. Check Google News for more if you want, but there really isn't too much to say. None of the stories seem to really give a good reason for the court ruling the way they did, likely because there isn't one. The articles seem to hint that Stevens argued that Congress shouldn't be overruled as it represents popular opinion and that the people should go through it, but that seems to ignore the whole purpose of ballot measures and invalidate the entire mechanism through which these laws were passed. After all, these laws are the epitome of popular opinion, for the states they are in at least, and under the doctrine of states' rights it seems that states should be allowed to keep such laws so long as they don't violate the constitution (which last I checked does not mention marijuana).
Stevens argument, from what I can dredge from the one-liner summary repeated in all these articles, depends on allowing the majority of this country (which, including the red states, likely is against medicinal marijuana) to arbitrarily override state majorities. Really quite unsound reasoning, and it's disappointing that this was 6-3. Imagine when an actual Bush justice or two gets in the court: the judicial branch is supposed to run 20-30 years behind the times, not 50-100...