Compiled by Drug Policy Alliance. October 21, 2004.
The Drug Policy Alliance has played, and continues to play, an active role in two important ongoing medical marijuana cases, which could affect the future of the medical marijuana movement in the United States. The Alliance serves as counsel in County of Santa Cruz et al. v. Ashcroft, a case concerning the rights of medical marijuana patients who are members of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) collective in Santa Cruz, California to use their medicine without fear of federal harassment and arrest. The Alliance has also partially funded the landmark case Raich v. Ashcroft, concerning the rights of individual medical marijuana patients to obtain and use their medicine, that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this fall.
The Santa Cruz case involves the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), a collective of medical marijuana patients and their caregivers. WAMM was raided by 30 armed DEA agents on September 24, 2002. DEA agents held the collective's founders and a patient at gunpoint while they confiscated 167 plants. The founders, Valerie and Mike Corral, were taken into police custody but never charged with a crime. After the raid the City and County of Santa Cruz joined WAMM and seven patient members in suing the federal government. The Drug Policy Alliance, along with the firm Bingham McCutchen, the Santa Cruz City Attorney and co-counsel Prof. Gerald Uelmen and Ben Rice represent the plaintiffs in the Santa Cruz case.
County of Santa Cruz et. al. v. Ashcroft challenges the authority of the federal government to conduct medical marijuana raids and focuses on the constitutional right of terminally and chronically ill patients to control the circumstances of their own pain relief and ultimately their deaths- a right recognized by the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs asked for a preliminary injunction to protect the collective from future raids while their lawsuit is pending.
On August 28, 2003 Judge Jeremy Fogel of the Northern District of California denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction and granted the government's motion to dismiss the case, however Judge Fogel reversed that decision this April in light of a recent ruling in Raich v. Ashcroft. The reversal granted the WAMM Plaintiffs a preliminary injunction and denied the government's motion to dismiss Plaintiffs' complaint. The April ruling protects the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) while the lawsuit is pending, and allows the collective to resume cultivation and begin distributing medicine to members again.
The Santa Cruz plaintiffs had asked Judge Fogel to reconsider his August ruling in the WAMM case in light of a landmark December 2003 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Raich v. Ashcroft. The Raich case was brought by two seriously ill women who use medical marijuana with a recommendation from their doctors and two anonymous individuals who grow medicine for one of the women. The Ninth Circuit decision prohibits the federal government from inappropriately applying the Interstate Commerce Clause to arrest medical marijuana patients acting consistent with the laws of their state who grow their own medicine or obtain it from others as long as 1) all related activity remains within a state that has legalized medical marijuana, and 2) the individual does not seek to obtain their medicine from others through commercial activity. The resulting injunction orders that no federal employee, or anyone acting on behalf of the federal government, may arrest, prosecute, seize, sanction, or otherwise penalize the plaintiffs Raich or Monson "with respect to the intrastate, noncommercial cultivation, possession, use, and obtaining without charge of cannabis for personal medical purposes on the advice of a physician and in accordance with state law, and which is not used for distribution, sale or exchange..."
The facts of the Santa Cruz case are almost identical to those in Raich; the WAMM collective is a group of terminally and chronically ill patients and their caregivers who grow and use their medicine with the recommendation of their physicians in compliance with state law and local ordinances. No one is charged money for the medicine, and therefore there is no effect on interstate commerce. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Raich specifically criticized Judge Fogel's initial decision in the WAMM case, stating that the Court had erred in its analysis.
The Bush administration appealed the 9th circuit decision in the Raich case and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the case during the fall term. The Court's decision in the Raich case will likely determine the course of the Santa Cruz case. The Alliance has drafted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting the 9th circuit decision.
|
