A case for mercy.(the law )

MANY patients suffering from terrible diseases find that smoking marijuana provides them relief from their symptoms or from the side-effects of their treatment. The chief response to their plea for compassion, on the part of the drug warriors, has been to insist that the Food and Drug Administration has not determined that marijuana is a safe medicine, and that other palliatives are available. It is a despicable response coming from people who have never allowed researchers the freedom to conduct the detailed clinical trials that the FDA would need to verify safety. A cancer patient seeking a break from overwhelming nausea will hardly be consoled by the knowledge that the government is protecting him from the remote risks that pain relief might bring. Whatever the drug czar thinks, some of these patients say that marijuana substitutes do not work as well as marijuana in relieving their pain. Swallowing Marinol takes longer to work, is more expensive, and has more adverse side effects than smoking marijuana. Should we be happy that with marinol there is less risk that cancer patients will experience some illicit pleasure?

Several states have rejected this perverse logic in referenda. The Supreme Court has just ruled, however, that the federal government may continue to prohibit the medicinal use of marijuana. Whether marijuana-using patients in California will face the threat of jail time thus depends not on their state's laws but on the discretion of federal prosecutors.

Justice Scalia makes the best argument for the constitutionality of a federal ban. The federal government, he writes, has the authority under the ...