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.
Since seeing Marc Emery, a Canadian cannibis crusader, appearing on 60 Minutes March, 2006, and reading the concurrent Free Republic thread, I’ve been reading off and on about the subject.
There is a lot of data out there now and it is amazing how the Freeping WODettes never read any of it.
They’re just here to irritate serious people.
I have been aware of the vast history of the use of cannabis in mercantile and medicinal products for about seventeen years or so. New historical uses continues to come to light as well as new research.
From your last article posted; it is interesting that the human body produces endocannabinoids (and of course has receptors for them.) AFAIK no other plant produces cannabinoids with the possible exception of hops (humulus lupus) which is cannabis' only close plant relative.
Good propaganda gone bad. There will be no retractions.
Emery reignited a search I was doing in the late 60s. I was in college, kids were smoking pot and like I’ve always done, I had to find out about it, so I bought a book. I bought a couple more and before I knew it, everything to do with pot was banned. Couldn’t buy anymore books.
Sometime later I turned my interests to legislation for profit and why a lot of laws teach citizenry to be cynical, like prohibition.
Emery’s appearance is the first time I looked into it in 40 years.
From what I’ve read, I’m getting the impression that marijuana has long been railroaded and in many cases where opium was prominent, pot was usually been considered a low class intoxicant.
And you know, try as I might I can't find the UMiss Potency Project's data online to give it the once over myself. And believe me, I've looked before today. I started looking when the info came out and have found nothing online yet.
Primarily it increases its psychotropic effects. The rate of duration isn't effected much at all. It might seem longer due to the enhanced effect being more noticeable but the liver breaks down high grade just as fast as it does ditch weed. Nor does the amount smoked significantly prolong the high. You can't put enough in your system smoking to tax the liver. Eating it would be another matter as you could put a lot more in your stomach than you could you lungs. Smoke inhalation from the burning of basic plant fibers limits that.
From my searches on the subject, I’ve come to realize that it’s one that is censored.
Time after time a clue to a larger report surfaces, a graphic for example, and I can’t find its parent. It has happened many times.
Decades ago, found during my 60s studies, I believe the study was Canadian, using dogs, scientists tried to determine the toxicity of pot. Official report stated that smoking the equivalent of 800 joints in one hour killed the dogs.
Now, to me that says they died of smoke inhalation, not marijuana intoxication.
This plant has half the THC of Bubbleicious...
You’ve got that right. And it will be a cold day on the surface of the sun when we hear retractions too.
I would say so. I'm trying to imagine the time frame and the amount of smoke that would be. I don't think it would be possible to take that many breaths in one hour. There would be no time for even one breath of clear air and every inhalation would have to be super thick smoke. That still wouldn't get one anywhere near to inhaling the smoke of 800 joints.
Let's have a look at the other side of the aisle, too. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, now there's a trustworthy bunch.
800 joints must be close to two pounds. They must have had some sort of ramjet oven.
Unless they fudged the test and stole the pot...
That would be about 1.76 grams per joint. Sounds about right. So, even ingested that would be enough dry plant material to bind the intestines and very likely be fatal without emergency treatment regardless of THC content.
I think one thing can be said with certainty; scientists are lethal to dogs, cats and rats.
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