Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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The San Francisco Examiner - Sunday, Feb. 23, 1997
Eric Brazil of the Examiner Staff
"We believe that physicians have a right and a duty to discuss anything regarding a patient's medical health," said Dr. Toni Brayer, chief of staff at California Pacific Medical Center and immediate past president of the San Francisco Medical Society.
Federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey's December announcement that physicians recommending pot for patients face loss of their licenses to write drug prescriptions, exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid, and criminal charges quickly generated a lawsuit by several Bay Area physicians.
The petition for an injunction to block enforcement of the decree will be argued March 21 before U.S. District Court Judge Fern M. Smith. It was brought by Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights and Being Alive, an AIDS / HIV coalition.
Joining the plaintiffs as friends of the court in a brief filed late Friday are the 6,000-member California Academy of Family Physicians, the 1,800-member Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, and the San Francisco and Marin Medical societies, which have 1,500 and 400 members, respectively.
The physicians say that McCaffrey's decree, if imposed, would violate the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech, which, they assert, includes the right of physicians to discuss the full range of medical treatment with patients.
In their friend-of-the-court brief, the four medical groups contend that "the unprecedented application of the nation's drug laws to physician-patient dialogue has severely chilled vital communication between physicians and their patients. Forced to choose between the risk of prosecution and providing patients with potentially useful information, often the physician's only choice is to remain silent."
Brayer said the San Francisco Medical Society's initial vote on joining the lawsuit was close but negative. Subsequent developments and "a hard line by Washington" changed its position, she said.
"The point is that patients have to feel confident that their doctor will give them information on both sides of any subject that concerns their health," Brayer said. "Doctors should never be censured or censored from discussing even unpopular or politically incorrect (medical) opinions."
Earlier this month, McCaffrey's Justice Department attorney rejected a settlement offer in the lawsuit.
"Doctors cannot evade the prohibitions of the Controlled Substances Act by claiming that they are merely providing their patients with "recommendations' in accordance with their best medical judgment," Deputy U.S. Attorney Kathleen Muller wrote.
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