Dying Woman Loses Appeal on Marijuana as Medication

Federal appellate judges here ruled Wednesday that a terminally ill woman using marijuana was not immune to federal prosecution simply because of her condition, and in a separate case a federal judge dismissed most of the charges against a prominent advocate for the medicinal use of the drug.
The woman, Angel McClary Raich, says she uses marijuana on doctors’ recommendation to treat an inoperable brain tumor and a battery of other serious ailments. Ms. Raich, 41, asserts that the drug effectively keeps her alive, by stimulating appetite and relieving pain, in a way that prescription drugs do not.
“It’s not every day in this country that someone’s right to life is taken from them,” said Ms. Raich, appearing frail during a news conference in Oakland, where she lives. “Today you are looking at someone who really is walking dead.”
In 2002, she and three other plaintiffs sued the government, seeking relief from federal laws outlawing marijuana.
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that while they sympathized with Ms. Raich’s plight and had seen “uncontroverted evidence” that she needed marijuana to survive, she lacked the legal grounds to exempt herself from federal law.
Eleven states have medical marijuana laws on the books, and the New Mexico Legislature is poised to approve a medical marijuana bill there, with the support of Gov. Bill Richardson. Medical-marijuana advocates estimate more than 100,000 Americans use the drug to treat medical conditions.
California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana, in a 1996 ballot measure, Proposition 215. That measure set off a decade-long fight over a variety of legal issues surrounding marijuana, including state rights and “common law necessity” defenses like the one Ms. Raich was trying to use.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/15marijuana.html?ex=1331611200&en=6f1d8b082954d6f0&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

War and Liquor a Perilous Mix for U.S. Troops

At an Army base near Baghdad, after a night of drinking an illegal stash of whiskey and gin, Specialist Chris Rolan of the Third Brigade, Third Infantry Division, pulled his 9mm service pistol on another soldier and shot him dead.
Alcohol, strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, is involved in a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries.
Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems.
“It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military,” said Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. He traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that they took after Vietnam,” Dr. Kosten said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs.”
The rate of illicit drug use also increased among military members in 2005, to an estimated 5 percent, nearly double the rate measured in 1998, a trend that the study called “cause for concern.”

Some military doctors and other mental health experts said the Army’s greater use of so-called moral waivers, which allow recruits with criminal records to enlist, may also be a factor in the increased drug and alcohol use.
Getting liquor or drugs in Iraq is not difficult. One of the most common ways to smuggle in brand name gin or clear rum is in bottles of mouthwash sent from friends back home, soldiers said.
In Iraq, liquor of a distinctly more dubious quality can be purchased from Iraqi Army soldiers or civilian contractors working on American bases, and Iraqi soldiers have sold locally produced prescription drugs to American troops for a tidy profit.
But at a time when the military is fighting two major ground wars, the often serious consequences of heavy drinking has emerged with increasing clarity as more troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health problems, military officials and mental health experts said.
More than 90 percent of sex crimes prosecuted by the military involve alcohol abuse.