In a major victory for doctors, patients and the Drug Policy Alliance, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Tuesday not to review a lower court’s decision upholding a doctor’s right to recommend medical marijuana to patients. The Alliance helped initiate the class action lawsuit on behalf of California’s physicians and patients challenging the federal policy that threatened the licenses of physicians who recommended medical use of marijuana. After the Ninth Circuit Court decided unanimously last year that doctors have a right to recommend or approve marijuana as treatment for their seriously ill patients, the Bush administration’s Solicitor General sought to have the case reviewed before the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s decision not to review the case means that the federal government remains prohibited from pursuing a policy of threatening physicians who recommend or even discuss medical marijuana use with their patients.

“Federal police don’t belong in a doctor’s office,” said Daniel N. Abrahamson, Director of Legal Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance.  “Patients’ rights and the will of state voters have both been vindicated.”

Both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush have tried to stop medical marijuana in states that have approved the drug by threatening to remove the license of any doctor who even mentions medical marijuana to a patient. Currently ten states - Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon and Washington - have legalized some form of medical marijuana. Under this victorious court case the federal government’s intrusion into state-level medical marijuana decisions should hopefully come to and end in those states covered by the Ninth Circuit - California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Alaska, Hawaii.