Home  Medical Use Other Diseases & Conditions Federal Court Rules Against Dying Medical Cannabis Patient
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Federal Court Rules Against Dying Medical Cannabis Patient |
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A medical cannabis patient whose doctor says cannabis is the only medicine keeping her alive does not have a constitutional right to stay alive, a federal appeals court ruled today. Angel Raich, a California mother of two, uses cannabis to treat life-threatening wasting syndrome, seizures, an inoperable brain tumor, and severe chronic pain. "The court has just sentenced me to death," she said after the ruling. "My doctors agree that medical cannabis is essential to my very survival, and the government did not even contest the medical evidence ... If we don't have a right to live, what do we have left?"
Raich's lawyers argued that because her doctors believe medical cannabis is essential to her survival, prosecuting her would violate the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment guarantee that no person may be "deprived of life ... without due process of law."
In its decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there is not yet a constitutional right "to make a life-shaping decision on a physician's advice to use medical cannabis to preserve bodily integrity, avoid intolerable pain, and preserve life, when all other prescribed medications and remedies have failed."
But - significantly - the court suggested that a right to medical cannabis could eventually be recognized as fundamental. The ruling says: "For now, federal law is blind to the wisdom of a future day when the right to use medical cannabis to alleviate excruciating pain may be deemed fundamental. Although that day has not yet dawned, considering that during the last ten years eleven states have legalized the use of medical cannabis, that day may be upon us sooner than expected." March 14, 2007:
http://www.mpp.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=glKZLeMQIsG&b=1847069&ct=3662075 |
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