High Court Considers Medical Pot
The Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for state laws allowing ill patients to smoke marijuana if a doctor recommends it. Justices turned down the Bush administration's request to consider whether the federal government can punish doctors for recommending or perhaps just talking about the benefits of the drug to sick patients.
An appeals court said the government cannot.
Nine states have laws legalizing marijuana for people with physician recommendations or prescriptions and 35 states have passed legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value. But federal law bans the use of pot under any circumstances. The case gave the court an opportunity to review its second medical marijuana case in two years. The last one involved cannabis clubs.
This one presented a more difficult issue, pitting free-speech rights of doctors against government power to keep physicians from encouraging illegal drug use. A ruling for the Bush administration would have made the state medical marijuana laws unusable.
Read more at wired
