San Francisco - An American appeals court has handed a landmark victory to patients who use marijuana to ease their pain by ruling that the United States' government could not prosecute two women who grew it, advocates said on Wednesday.
Proponents of medical marijuana hailed the decision made late Tuesday by the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, saying it could set a precedent on the thorny issue of medical use of the drug.
Some US states have found themselves at loggerheads with the federal government over the issue of growing and using marijuana for medical reasons, with liberal states such as California and Washington passing laws allowing the practice in defiance of federal laws that strictly outlaw it.
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"I am totally ecstatic about what this decision will do not only for me, but for hundreds of thousands of patients across the country," said medical marijuana patient Angel McClary Raich who brought the successful lawsuit.
"Not too many people get to come up against someone who is as evil as (US Attorney General) John Ashcroft and actually win and that feels very good," she said.
US government prosecutors have long argued that California's 1996 law allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes was superseded by the US laws which ban the use or cultivation of marijuana for any purpose.
But the court panel ruled 2-1 that prosecuting medical marijuana users under a 1970 federal law is unconstitutional if the marijuana is not sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes.
The ruling covers seven western states that have passed medical marijuana laws - Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
Another three states with medical marijuana laws lie outside the court's jurisdiction.
| The two women argued that their use of marijuana constituted a medical necessity |
The ruling was prompted by a lawsuit filed in 2002 by Raich and fellow patient Diane Monson and Raich's two anonymous caregiver growers.
The suit charged US Attorney General John Ashcroft and US Drug Enforcement Agency administrator Karen Tandy with exceeding their authority by embarking on a campaign of seizing privately-grown medical cannabis from Californian patients and caregivers.
The complaint charged that the US government harassed, arrested or prosecuted patients, mounted paramilitary raids against them, and targeted patients for other civil or administrative actions.
If the case is not appealed, it will be returned to district court which will issue a preliminary injunction that protects Raich and Monson from arrest by federal agents.
The two women argued that their use of marijuana constituted a medical necessity.
Raich says she has an array of serious medical conditions including an inoperable brain tumour and a life threatening wasting syndrome. Monson suffers from a degenerative disease of the spine. - Sapa-AFP
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