Advocates say county should start issuing ID cards to users
By TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer | Thursday, July 31, 2008 7:12 PM PDT ‡
A San Diego appeals court handed medical marijuana users a victory Thursday, upholding a voter-approved law legalizing such uses and rejecting arguments that the law flies in the face of federal pot prohibitions.
The purpose of the federal law "is to combat recreational drug use, not to regulate a state's medical practices," wrote the 4th District Court of Appeals Associate Justice Alex McDonald.
The practical implications of Thursday's 3-0 ruling from the appeals court panel were not immediately clear, but it could mean that San Diego County must start issuing identification cards for medical marijuana users.
San Diego County officials, however, may choose to ask the state's Supreme Court for review.
The decision was met with applause by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented patients who opposed the challenge brought by San Diego and San Bernardino counties.
ACLU attorney Adam Wolf said his organization hopes the counties will not appeal the ruling and "waste further resources on their doomed and wrong-headed opposition" to the state law.
San Diego and San Bernardino counties may ask the California Supreme Court to review the case, but that is a decision left up to the Board of Supervisors in each of the two counties.
"We are obviously disappointed in the ruling," said attorney Tom Bunton, who represented San Diego County. "We think they should have found that state law was pre-empted by federal law."
County officials sued the state in 2006, arguing that federal laws that make marijuana illegal should trump the 1996 California law legalizing it for patients to use with a prescription.
Patients say marijuana helps them treat chronic pain.
The two counties appealed a 2006 court ruling from Superior Court Judge William R. Nevitt, who found that the counties failed to prove the state law was in legal conflict with the federal law.
Thus far, the county has declined to implement a 2003 directive from state legislators calling for counties to create medical marijuana identification cards.
The ruling found that the counties did not have standing to "broadly attack" the state's law, and were only allowed to contest provisions that directed them to create the identification cards.
And, the court found, the counties would not be running into conflict with federal laws by issuing the state-mandated cards.
"The law is legal, and the county needs to start issuing ID cards," said David Blair-Loy, legal director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.
If the counties appeal and the state's high court declines to take the case or sides with the lower courts, the counties could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decisions.
Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 740-5442 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/07/31//news/sandiego//z6d209ec916a6333f88257497006fa1a4.txt
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