Medical Pot Advocates Sue Feds Over False Info

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A patient's advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access are suing the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that is demanding that the government stop misleading the nation about medicinal marijuana.

The lawsuit was filed today in federal court in Oakland. It comes a week after the release of a controlled, clinical University of California, San Francisco study that shows HIV patients who smoked marijuana found relief from chronic foot pain. (See post covering this story at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/122709/Medical_Marijuana_Helps_HIV_Foot_Pain)

"We are asking the courts to weigh in on the science ... and force the government to stop making false statements about medical cannabis," said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access.

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"The FDA position on medical cannabis is incorrect, dishonest and a flagrant violation of laws requiring the government to base policy on sound science," said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel for Americans for Safe Access. He says that the lawsuit is brought under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which provides for a judicial review and reversal of any agency action that is "found to be arbitrary and capricious".

"We aimed to file this lawsuit at a time when the country was talking about the science," Sherer said, but her group doesn't think it even needs the newly released UCSF study to bolster its case; it believed the science was solid enough when it petitioned HHS in 2004.

"The federal government has had enough information in front of it for years to break the gridlock on this issue," she said. "We're suing to demand that the FDA stop holding science hostage to politics."

Ms. Sherer is one of four medical-marijuana users who is used as an example in the lawsuit. She suffered a neck injury in 2000 and later developed kidney problems from using ibuprofen and other painkillers that she had been prescribed. The government told her marijuana had no medicinal use so she says that she was unable to seek a doctor's advice to the contrary and find relief.

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 215 allowing the medical use of marijuana. However, federal law still bans the drug's cultivation, possession and use. Despite years of lobbying by advocates, it remains on the nation's list of most-restricted drugs -- along with substances such as heroin and LSD -- without accepted medical use.

All this despite a 1999 federal Institute of Medicine study urging more research.

Medical marijuana patients Angel Raich of Oakland and Diane Monson of Oroville sued federal law enforcement officials in 2002, claiming the federal government lacks authority to prosecute California's patients and providers. The U.S. Supreme Court in June 2005 ruled 6-3 to uphold federal prosecutions, finding that even marijuana grown in back yards for personal medical use can affect or contribute to the illegal interstate marijuana market and so is within Congress' constitutional reach.

In June 2005, the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold the federal prosecutions of California's marijuana patients and providers. At the time, they said that eveb marijuana that is grown in backyards for a patient's personal medical use can affect or contribute to the illegal interstate marijuana market. However, the court added a footnote that did "acknowledge that evidence proffered by respondents in this case regarding the effective medical uses for marijuana, if found credible after trial, would cast serious doubt on the accuracy of the findings that require marijuana to be listed" among the most-restricted drugs.