San Francisco Examiner - May 15, 2001
Dan Evans Of The Examiner Staff

The 8-0 decision upholds an injunction against the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative that prohibits the not-for-profit group from distributing marijuana. Though Department of Justice officials refused to comment on enforcement issues, the ruling raises the possibility that similar clubs could be closed down. Still, the ruling is a narrow one, with the Supreme Court only saying the clients' need for the drug is not a defense.

San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan said he was disappointed, but not surprised by the decision. A number of issues in the case -- including the right of individual states to make laws unfettered by federal oversight -- have yet to be litigated in the lower courts. Any number of those issues could reopen the club, said Hallinan, a longtime proponent of medical marijuana.

At a news conference at Oakland City Hall on Monday, cooperative attorney Robert Raich, flanked by founder Jeff Jones and Oakland resident Angel McClary, stressed the ruling only affects pot clubs. It does not affect individual medical users, he said.

Jones, his blue suit adorned with a small medical marijuana pin, decried the decision as "heavy-handed and misguided."

The justices who heard the case repeatedly referred to his cooperative's product as "medicine," Jones said. "If it's a medicine, where are they going to get it from? People are going to have to get it on the street."

But the strongest rhetoric came from McClary, who started using cannabis in 1998 to control her anorexia and pain from her brain tumor. Without cannabis, said McClary, 35, she would die.

"I have to tell my children that my government has given me a death sentence," said McClary. She said she would not abide by the court's decision.

In a statement issued shortly after the ruling, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft called it "a victory for the enforcement of our nation's drug laws." But department officials refused to comment on whether it would lead to a crackdown on other California pot clubs.

Attorneys for the club and the Justice Department faced off in March before the federal high court, trying to somehow reconcile a federal law that deems marijuana illegal with a California law that permits it for sick people. The answer, penned by Justice Clarence Thomas, came down loud and clear: it doesn't.

Quoting the federal Controlled Substances Act, Thomas said there are no exceptions allowed for the use of marijuana. The fact it is a "Schedule I" drug, he noted, means, under the act, that cannabis has no accepted medical use.

The ruling ends, for now, a battle between six Northern California clubs and the Justice Department. In 1998, the Clinton administration filed the injunction to test the issue, and it has been slowly making its way through the system since then.

The Supreme Court was asked to look at a 1999 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court, which sets the law for nine western states, held that "medical necessity" superceded federal drug laws, allowing marijuana legally to be given to patients in dire need.

As happens often enough, California is at the forefront.

Though eight other states have passed laws allowing cannabis to be used for medical purposes, and a number of others are gearing up to do the same, pot clubs in Northern California were the first to raise federal ire.

Because the issue before the court was so narrow, the decision does not negate Proposition 215, the 1996 law allowing ill Californians to grow and use marijuana. But the case will likely have a shockwave affect, indicating how the court is leaning, and providing a clearer picture of the ultimate fate of medical marijuana.

It is also possible that the decision will influence a case currently before the California Supreme Court, which agreed earlier this month to consider whether Prop. 215 provides immunity from criminal prosecution for medicinal marijuana users.

Though this was the first medical marijuana case to reach the Supreme Court, the law seemed headed to the courthouse almost immediately after its passage. And that's partly due to its controversial and occasionally outrageous proponent, Dennis Peron. Peron has been publicly criticized for his attempts to legalize marijuana, a stance some say unnecessarily complicates and clouds the issue. Peron, who would often light-up before television cameras, ran against stringent medical marijuana opponent and then-state Attorney General Dan Lungren on the 1998 Republican ticket for governor.

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