Posted on 05/13/2007 1:17:59 PM PDT by JTN
Oakland medical marijuana patient and activist Angel Raich dropped her lawsuit against the federal government Thursday, ending a five-year legal odyssey which had taken her all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I've lost all faith in the judicial system, I don't understand how somebody can lose their constitutional right to life in this country," she said Thursday. "It's been really, really hard for me these last few months, and I wasn't happy about having to give up the case.
"But I'm really having a hard time medically speaking right now -- my brain tumor has finally started causing damage and I have to start radiation treatment in a couple of weeks at Stanford," she explained, adding she's lost some sensation in the left side of her face, including problems with blinking, chewing and swallowing.
"This is far from over, it's just a new beginning," Raich insisted -- the battle now moves from courts to Congress. "I'm not going to give up."
She said she's talking with lawyers and lawmakers about drafting "a right-to-life, medical necessity sort of bill. ... It's basically going to protect the sickest of the sick, and it's going to be narrow because there are other bills already out there." She's also continuing her work with medical-marijuana advocacy groups, and she'll go to Washington, D.C., later this month on a lobbying trip.
Besides the brain tumor, Raich, a 41-year-old mother of two, suffers from scoliosis, wasting syndrome, fibromyalgia and a host of other ailments.
Raich and Diane Monson of Oroville plus two unnamed providers sued the government in October 2002 to prevent any interference with their medical marijuana use, but this case's seeds actually were sown in the Supreme Court's May 2001 decision on the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative's case.
The court in that earlier case had ruled there's no collective medical necessity exception to the federal ban, which defines marijuana as having no valid medical use. But it didn't rule on constitutional questions underlying the medical marijuana debate, so Raich, Monson and their lawyers tailor-made a case raising exactly those issues.
A federal judge in San Francisco rejected their arguments in March 2003, but a 9th Circuit appeal panel later reversed that ruling, finding the plaintiffs could prevail at trial on their claim that the Constitution's Commerce Clause lets Congress regulate only interstate commerce, and that Californians' medical marijuana use neither crosses state lines nor involves money changing hands.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case in November 2004 and in June 2005 ruled 6-3 to uphold the federal ban, finding that even marijuana grown in back yards for personal medical use can affect or contribute to the illegal interstate market for marijuana and so is within Congress' constitutional reach.
But the 9th Circuit panel and the Supreme Court at that point had dealt only with the Commerce Clause argument, not other constitutional issues. Monson dropped out, but Raich pressed on as the case returned to the 9th Circuit for those other arguments.
Though clearly sympathetic to Raich's medical plight, a three-judge 9th Circuit panel concluded in March that medical necessity doesn't shield medical-marijuana users from federal prosecution, and that medical marijuana use isn't a fundamental right protected by the Constitution's guarantee of due process of law.
Raich could've asked that the March decision be reviewed by a larger, 11-judge 9th Circuit panel; or that it be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court; or that it return to U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins of San Francisco for a few unresolved issues.
But Robert Raich, her ex-husband and one of her attorneys, said Thursday the legal avenues left to them "did not look fruitful. It's a sorry commentary that right now we simply cannot depend on the courts to uphold fundamental rights, even the right to life."
Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., said Congress is where Raich is needed most, as the House this summer probably will take up -- for the fifth consecutive year -- a bill to forbid federal prosecution of patients in the 12 states with medical marijuana-laws.
Last year's vote on the bill by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, was 259-163 against the amendment. The measure received 161 votes in 2005; 148 in 2004 and 152 in 2003; it would need 218 to pass.
Are you high right now?
Your assumptions are insulting and evince your ignorance
Good thing he didn’t go after sisal and jute!
I don’t think they use it as a painkiller. I believe the point is that it restores their appetite, and allows them to eat. One of the biggest problems with cancer, is that your appetite can disappear. Chemo and radiation treatments are also appetite suppressors. At the same time, it is important for the patient to maintain a healthy diet, so they are strong enough to fight the disease.
Cancer is a painful, insidious disease. Those who face it, deserve every weapon they can get to fight it. If marijuana helps, why not? It isn’t hurting me at all. Do I think any teenager on the street should be allowed to smoke it? No, but we attempt to control distribution of many other drugs, while making them available to the public who need it. Why not make the same attempt for marijuana?
It's going to take the same approach to put an end to our ongoing inability to buy prescription drugs on the world market, and to put an end to the copyright/patent fiasco.
Please please please read the literature on this issue. Eric Voth, M.D. is the most respected expert in the field.
Please please please read the literature on this issue. Eric Voth, M.D. is the most respected expert in the field.
http://www.medicalmarijuanaprocon.org/BiosInd/Voth.htm
An excellent question.
Because like all the other quackery like coffee enemas, aroma therapy, laetrile and the others, it keeps the patient from getting other, much more effective therapies.
Knew an older gentleman who was playing 18 holes of golf and driving his golf cart with 5 days of his death from bone cancer, which is incredibly painful w/o intervention.
Do you honestly think her kids will be messed up or become addicts, because they saw their mother using marijuana to help her with her brain tumor?
Whether or not there are better analgesics, if using it relieves her feel symptoms, ie placebo effect, then why would you deny her some relief?
What if their oncologist recommends it?
I have two friends that have terminal cancer. One passed away last summer, the other may still have several months. (hopefully). Both of them have been told by their oncologists (2 different doctors at reputable hospitals in Atlanta) that smoking marijuana can help maintain their appetite while going through chemo.
I don’t know if it is common, or this is just coincidence. I doesn’t seem to be preventing treatment as much as augmenting treatment thought.
“MS Contin”
That is good to know. I would support anything that helps cancer patients endure the horrible pain, and the side effects of the treatment. Thanks for the info.
Really? Here's his bio, from your link:
Dr. Voth "is recognized as an international authority on drug use and lectures nationally on drug policy issues. He has advised the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations and has advised or testified for numerous Congressional offices on drug-related issues. He was recently recognized by the former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy General Barry McCaffrey with the 'Director’s Award' for his outstanding achievement on combating drug use in our nation."
Most respected, all right...by the WODies. If it were up to me, I'd revoke his M.D. and make sure he never comes within a mile of a sick patient. He bases his opposition to medical marijuana on its being a "Schedule 1 drug" (whatever the f*** that means) instead of his opinion of its medicinal properties, defers to the incompetent FDA, and won an award from Barry McCaffrey. In what parallel universe can this guy pass as impartial?
A lot of us who have fibromyalgia are on Vicodan. It’s more than the painkilling effect, the narcotic effect really helps by relaxing a lot of muscle spasm and calming the mind- there’s a lot of anxiety and depression associated with it also.
The problem with it is you can become habituated to a dose. I don’t know how I would feel about using marijuana, though. I don’t know if smoking anything wouldn’t just be adding a bad habit.
I wonder if it might not be an alternative to stuff like Vicodan, but don’t know how acclimated one would get to any positive effect on the disorder. Acetominaphen, which is in Vicodan, is a liver killer. Would MJ be better?
Also, would the cost to society by legalizing such a drug be worth the it? Anti smoking types scream about 2nd hand smoke. If you had children in the home, how would this effect them, physically, psychologically? These are legitimate questions.
I think if it’s actually effective then it should be made a prescription drug with the active ingredient only — no smoking. That differentiates between legal and illegal use. Though honestly I don’t think there’s any legitimate justification for having marijuana illegal for anyone, while alcohol is legal. I don’t touch either one, but objectively speaking, marijuana is less dangerous to society.
That “proof” is pretty shaky. When you’re dealing with patients who are suficiently mentally ill to require medication, it’s very difficult to tease out the effect of the medication and the effect of the illness. I think part of the apparent connection is the tendency of family, friends, counselors, etc. to start letting up on watching and supervising the patient once medication has been started (He’ll be fine, he’s on medication now”), leading to a timing of medication followed by suicide/violence, that looks like a causative effect, but probably often isn’t. Proof of the pudding is that while use of these drugs has been greatly increasing in both US and Europe in recent years, the teen and young adult suicide rate has been rising in the US but dropping in Europe.
Yeah, like no one at FR has an agenda.... LOL
From what I can tell her agenda is freedom, free to be able to use the drug of her choice to combat her illnesses. Wish we had more like her.
Are you a shill for Eli Lilly? I guess Harvard and other researchers are "idiots", eh? Well here is a sampling for you, Dr. Einstein...
Study links violence with antidepressants
Suicidal and violent behavior associated with the use of fluoxetine (Prozac)
Don't waste your time with that pharma shill ozzymandus.
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