WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday confronted a dispute between California's medical marijuana law and federal antidrug policy, with a Bush administration lawyer arguing that the government's zero-tolerance law trumps the state measure.
"Smoked marijuana really doesn't have any future in medicine," acting Solicitor Gen. Paul D. Clement told the court. If thousands of Californians were entitled to smoke marijuana to relieve their pain, he said, the federal ban on this illegal drug could collapse.
Eight years ago, California voters approved a limited exception to the state's drug laws. Seriously ill patients were given the right to use marijuana for medical purposes if they had a doctor's recommendation.
Federal authorities, however, have all but ignored the state law -- as well as similar measures since enacted in 10 other states -- and insisted that they retained the power to raid the homes of Californians who grow marijuana for their own use.
The Supreme Court took up the issue Monday, not to decide whether marijuana was a good medicine but to discuss whether the federal authority to "regulate commerce" extended to seizing homegrown drugs.
Outside on the court steps, one group of protesters called for liberalized drug laws to protect patients. Another sign-carrying contingent countered that stiff drug laws were needed to protect young people.
Inside the court, the justices debated the reach of their rules on federal authority. Although there was skepticism about the California law, no clear consensus emerged.
In the last decade, the high court's conservative majority -- led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist -- has insisted that the federal power to regulate commerce does not mean it can regulate everything. In 1995, for example, the Rehnquist majority struck down a federal gun control law and said "mere gun possession" was not part of interstate commerce.
In the medical marijuana case, the ideological tables were turned. Liberal advocates used Rehnquist's words to challenge the federal authority to seize homegrown marijuana.
"This is noneconomic activity and wholly intrastate," said Boston University law professor Randy E. Barnett, who represents two Northern California women who say marijuana has been uniquely effective in relieving their pain. They are "not buying or selling" drugs, and therefore their use of marijuana should be seen as beyond the reach of federal authority, Barnett said.
