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Supreme Court Declines to Hear
Government Appeal
in Medical Marijuana Case:
Affirms First Amendment Rights
of Doctors and Patients
In a victory for medical marijuana
proponents, the United States Supreme Court today declined to hear the
government’s appeal in Walters v. Conant, a case in which California
physicians challenged the federal government’s attempts to revoke their
power to prescribe medications if they discussed medical marijuana with
their patients. The Court’s decision means the
Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeal’s unanimous ruling that such a regulatory penalty would violate the
first amendment rights of both doctors and patients stands. The federal
government is barred from investigating doctors solely on the basis of
making medical marijuana recommendations.
In 1996, shortly after the passage of voter
initiatives decriminalizing the medical use of marijuana in California and
Arizona, the federal government promulgated a policy declaring that a
medical doctor’s actions in recommending Schedule I controlled substances
was “not consistent with the public interest.” The government has argued
that such recommendations aid and abet patients in violating federal law,
which recognizes no legitimate medical use for marijuana. But the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeal remained unconvinced that all recommendations would
necessarily lead to illegal conduct, and thus reasoned that the government
could not prohibit speech based on the mere probability that it may
encourage criminal conduct.
“The First Amendment protects the right to
receive information as much as it protects the right to transmit it.”
said Richard Glen Boire, Director of the
Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, a nonprofit law and policy center in
Davis, California. “For patients coping with debilitating illnesses,
obtaining candid information about potential remedies is essential,” said
Boire.
By hampering doctors’ ability to recommend
medical marijuana to their patients, the Ninth Circuit found that the
government would compromise those patients’ ability to meaningfully
participate in public discourse. “Petitioning Congress or federal agencies
for a redress of a grievance or a change in policy is a time honored
tradition. In the market place of ideas, few questions are more deserving
of free-speech protection than whether regulations affecting public health
and welfare are sound public policy. In the debate, perhaps the status quo
will (and should) endure. But patients and physicians are certainly entitled
to urge their view,” said the court, “To hold that physicians are barred
from communicating to patients sincere medical judgments would disable
patients from understanding their own situations well enough to participate
in the debate.”
For more
information contact:
Richard Glen Boire, J.D. or Julie Ruiz-Sierra,
J.D.
Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics
Tel./Fax (530) 750-7912
E-mail:
info@cognitiveliberty.org
The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics The CCLE is
nonprofit law and policy center working in the public interest to foster
cognitive liberty—the right of each individual to think independently, and
to use the full spectrum of his or her mind. The CCLE
encourages social policies that respect and protect the full potential and
autonomy of the human intellect. For more information on our
organization and the issues we investigate, visit the CCLE’s Web site at
www.cognitiveliberty.org
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