Posted on 11/02/2002 1:10:11 PM PST by The FRugitive
Washington Effort To Undermine California Voters On Marijuana Dealt Another Setback
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Tuesday that federal drug police may not revoke the licenses of doctors -- or launch investigations of those doctors -- based on their recommending marijuana to their patients.
This had been the most pernicious tactic in the federal government's attempts to frustrate the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly approved the medical use of marijuana.
The court did uphold the draconian federal theory that a doctor might be held to be engaging in a criminal conspiracy under federal law if he or she prescribed marijuana. But California's Proposition 215 got around that difficulty by simply authorizing doctors to "recommend" marijuana to patients with conditions for which the M.D. believes it might be of use.
And the appeals court, quite properly, held that any attempt to outlaw a doctor's "recommendation" would violate the vital First Amendment guarantee of the right of free speech between doctor and patient.
There was no immediate word whether the federal government will appeal. The decision is not expected to have an impact on the tactic which federal drug police have continued to use to defy the will of California voters on the issue since 1996 -- raiding medical marijuana farms and cutting down their crops with chainsaws as sick people stand by on their crutches.
The unanimous ruling by Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder, Judge Betty B. Fletcher and Judge Alex Kozinski "accepted every major argument offered by the plaintiffs, who are California doctors and patients with serious illnesses," reports The New York Times.
Even opponents of the decision called it "sweeping." Significantly, Judge Kozinski, in his concurring opinion, described what he called "a legitimate and growing division of informed opinion" on the medical uses of marijuana, citing reports by the National Academy of Sciences, the Canadian government and the British House of Lords ( "a body not known for its wild and crazy views," he noted ).
Quoting Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court, Judge Schroeder added that federal courts have been instructed to defer to the states in "situations in which the citizens of a state have chosen to serve as a laboratory in the trial of novel social and economic experiments."
It's called the 10th Amendment. But Washington would rather pretend that doesn't exist. Washington would prefer all the states operate as uniform subdivisions of the federal government -- kind of like the "departments" of France.
Has anyone ever warned us that, should the federal government ever get away with thus crushing the independence of the sovereign states, we would then know we had descended into "Bonapartist tyranny"?
While I agree with the decision, I wonder about this. I thought that the First Amendment guarantee of free speech delt with political speech. Anyway it is great to see the 9th actually do something to restrict Federal power.
And a nice little 10th Amendment touch at the end. As though this is the first and only time the feds have ignored it.
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