In a landmark ruling yesterday, a federal court affirmed the right of seriously ill patients to grow and use marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation. The ruling is an unprecedented victory for patients, their caregivers and advocates and could put a grinding halt to the cruel arrests of medical-marijuana patients by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, actions which have intensified under Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The 2-1 decision by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco means that patients who use marijuana cannot be prosecuted by the federal government for growing their own medicine or obtaining it from others as long as all activity remains within a state that has legalized medical marijuana, and the individual does not seek to obtain their medicine from others through commercial activity.

The Ninth Circuit decision stems from a lawsuit filed against Attorney General Ashcroft by Angel Raich of Oakland, who smokes marijuana to help ease suffering from an inoperable brain tumor and several other illnesses, and Diane Monson of Oroville, California, who uses marijuana to treat chronic pain. The circuit court ruled the district court had erred in denying Raich and Monson a preliminary injunction which would protect them from arrest for using medical marijuana. The circuit court indicated that the Bush administration and Attorney General John Ashcroft have improperly used the interstate commerce clause to prosecute those who use and provide medical-marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. Since no commerce occurs and no marijuana travels between states in the case of Raich and Monson, the court ruled the matter to be outside of federal jurisdiction.

This decision immediately helps patients in the states with medical marijuana laws that are in the Ninth Circuit – Alaska, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Judy Appel, the Drug Policy Alliance’s Deputy Director of Legal Affairs, said that the Ninth Circuit’s decision, coupled with the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Conant v. Walters last month, “provides two tiers of protection for medical-marijuana patients and their physicians” – the Conant decision protects the rights of doctors to discuss the use of medical marijuana with their patients, while Raich allows patients to cultivate and use medical marijuana upon the recommendation of a doctor.

Dale Gieringer, Proposition 215 co-author, told the Los Angeles Times today that the decision “essentially makes Prop. 215 federal law in California.” Proposition 215, a ballot initiative passed by California voters in 1996, exempted state residents who use medical marijuana from criminal penalties. The Raich ruling paves the way for success in other cases currently being heard in the Ninth Circuit, including Ed Rosenthal’s appeal of his federal conviction and County of Santa Cruz v. Ashcroft, an effort by the Drug Policy Alliance on behalf of the city and county of Santa Cruz and the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM). WAMM is a medical-marijuana collective in Santa Cruz that was raided by DEA agents in September 2002. The Ninth Circuit decision in the Raich case specifically mentions the lower court’s decision in the County of Santa Cruz case, saying that the district court erred in finding that the Commerce Clause gave the DEA power to carry out the raid. Victories in these cases would expand the protections handed down by the Ninth Circuit to further protect medical-marijuana patients and their caregivers from federal action.

Neither the Drug Enforcement Administration nor the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy would comment on the decision when reached by the Alliance this morning and neither office has yet posted comment on their respective websites. Though the Bush administration is expected to appeal the Raich decision, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Ninth Circuit Court decision in Conant v. Walters to stand when it refused to review that case last month.