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'Dagga helps us ease the pain'
07/06/2005 14:27 - (SA)
San Francisco - Two California patients who use marijuana to ease the pain of illness vowed on Monday to defy a United States Supreme Court ruling that could see them arrested for smoking the drug for medicinal purposes.
The pair, Angel Raich and Diane Monson, also sought a court order preventing the federal government from prosecuting them on drug charges after they lost their case to keep smoking the drug in the Supreme Court.
Raich said: "Just because the Supreme Court today had ruled against me does not mean that the war on patients should begin."
"It means that it is time for the federal government to have some compassion and have some heart and please use common sense and not use taxpayer dollars to come in and lock us up.
"We are not trying to be disobedient, we are using this because it is saving our lives."
Court rules against 10 states
The move came after the top United States court on Monday refused to sanction the use of cannabis for medical purposes, dashing the hopes of thousands of US patients using the substance for pain relief.
By a vote of six to three in the case brought by Raich and Monson, the court refused permission for 10 states, including California, to allow residents to use the drug with a doctor's permission and under highly regulated conditions.
The judges could enforce federal marijuana laws against patients who were protected under state laws, which allowed them to grow, possess and consume medical cannabis.
The majority of the 750 000 annual marijuana arrests in the US were carried out by state authorities and the ruling did not affect the medical cannabis laws in the ten states which permit the drug to be used.
But, activists were worried the ruling, which hinged on the government's ability to regulate interstate commerce, would result in federal raids against medical cannabis patients and the growers and dispensaries which provided their marijuana.
US house to vote on amendment
Raich said she would also urge the US congress to pass an amendment to a bill that bars the federal department of justice and its drug enforcement administration from using funds to prosecute medical cannabis patients.
The US house of representatives was expected to vote on the amendment in the next few weeks.
California residents voted in a popular poll in 1996 to adopt proposition 215 that legalised the use of cannabis for compassionate medical reasons in the state, despite a federal ban on the drug.
The state's top legal official, California attorney-general Bill Lockyer, meanwhile said he was disappointed with the Supreme Court ruling, but said that in effect it would change very little.
He said: "Today's ruling does not overturn California law permitting the use of medical marijuana, but it does uphold a federal regulatory scheme that contradicts the will of voters and limits the right of states to provide appropriate medical care for its citizens."
- AFP
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