Four prominent state medical groups have entered a lawsuit aimed at preventing federal officials from taking punitive action against physicians who recommend the medical use of marijuana to their patients in compliance with California law.
“We believe that physicians have a right and a duty to discuss anything regarding a patient’s medical health,” Dr. Toni Brayer of the California Pacific Medical Center told the San Francisco Examiner. Brayer is the immediate past president of the San Francisco Medical Society, one of the organizations that recently joined the lawsuit, and has been an outspoken proponent of the California Medical Marijuana Initiative since August.
Also supporting the plaintiffs with an amicus curiae (friends of the court) brief filed late Friday are the 6,000-member California Academy of Physicians, the 1,800-member Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, and the 400-member Marin Medical Society.
Plaintiffs contend that threatening to punish physicians who recommend the use of marijuana as a therapeutic agent to their patients is a violation of the First Amendment. In their friend-of-the-court brief, the four medical groups contend that: “The unprecedented application of the nation’s drug laws to physician-patient dialogue has severely chilled vital communications between physicians and their patients. Forced to choose between the risk of prosecution and providing patients with potentially useful information, often the physician’s only choice is to remain silent.”
Oral arguments in this matter will be heard before U.S. District Judge Fern M. Smith on March 21.
“With the addition of these four respected medical organizations, there are now approximately 10,000 state-licensed doctors waging a legal battle against the federal government over access to medical marijuana,” said NORML’s Deputy Director, Allen St. Pierre. “It is clear that many doctors do not share the government’s hard-line approach to this issue.”
The suit was filed on January 14 by Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, a group of about 150 doctors who treat AIDS; Being Alive, an organization of people with AIDS or the AIDS virus; nine individual physicians, and five patients — including former San Francisco police commissioner Jo Daly. San Francisco prosecutor Keith Vines, who uses marijuana medicinally to combat effects of the AIDS wasting syndrome, has also signed on to the suit, known as Conant v. McCaffrey.
For more information, please contact Dave Fratello of Americans for Medical Rights (AMR) at (310) 394-2952 or Allen St. Pierre of NORML at (202) 483-5500.