WASHINGTON - 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."
Didn't John Ashcroft bring this case to the SC?
Stevens then continued, "But we don't want to hear about any of this crap about the democratic process and the voices of the voters as it applies in the state legislatures or voter initiatives." < /satire on the actual quote, truth on the brown shirt in black robes attitude>
This is the best decision of the year.
Imagine. Laws made by the legislature.
Yes, so if I grow pot in my back yard, and smoke it, I am somehow doing something related to interstate commerce.
Men In Black had a statement about how one court case they found against a guy who grew his own wheat to feed his own animals, ruling that if he didn't grow his own he would have to purchase it, so he was "effecting interstate commerce".
But in this case there is no market for marijuana to regulate.
We need to get back our individual state rights. We are too diverse a people to have one set of laws governing all of us. This would be like trying to make all christians worship in the same denomination. Most of our contentious political and social fights happen simply because we can't move to a place where the laws are to our liking.