Marcos Bretón: Marijuana controversy disorienting

After listening to California's highest court debate the issue of medicinal marijuana Tuesday, it was easy to feel a bit stoned.

One wanted to retreat to a quiet corner and listen to some vintage Santana – just to take the edge off.

To begin with, state and federal marijuana laws are as confusing as bell bottoms passing as fashion. California and 10 other states protect marijuana users with doctors' prescriptions. But federal law prohibits any kind of marijuana use.

Then you have real life on the street in Sacramento, where medical documentation will prevent marijuana users from being arrested. But the police can still confiscate what they find, prescription or not.

Large-scale cultivation, distribution, money laundering, violence and other crimes linked to marijuana? That's a different story.

But medicinal marijuana? "Investigating it and enforcing it is not a high priority for us," said Sgt. Matt Young, spokesman for the Sacramento Police Department.

Yet there we were Tuesday, in downtown Sacramento, listening to the California Supreme Court consider the case of a Sacramento man fighting for all medicinal marijuana users.

It was a civil case, not a criminal case. It centered on Gary Ross, a telecommunications technician fired from a Sacramento firm for testing positive for marijuana in 2001.

Ross, 45, says he badly injured his back in the Air Force in 1983. He's had back spasms ever since, tried prescriptions drugs such as Vicodin for the pain, but found nothing that helped like marijuana.

Interestingly, he says he had never tried marijuana recreationally before starting to use it medicinally in 1999. And one of his lawyers, Stewart Katz of Sacramento, says he can't stand the smell of marijuana. Yet there they are, unlikely protagonists in a test case where California justices seek to bridge the gap between contradictory state and federal laws.

Can home use of marijuana with a prescription be protected – even from nervous employers?

We'll see. But since 1996, when California voters passed the Compassionate Use Act, employers increasingly have used drug tests to screen employees.

RagingWire Telecommunications fired Ross on his fourth day of work after getting his drug test results. Ross says no company should have the right to stop him from doing something in private that is legally prescribed by a doctor – and approved by California voters.

And if he were making this argument minus the word "marijuana," he might have a clear path to victory.

But the hippie lettuce is one powerful weed. It affects our court systems, our politics – makes us disoriented and incapable of distinguishing shapes and contours.

For example, Ross says he isn't fighting to use marijuana at work – which he agrees is dangerous.

No matter. Employer groups are watching this case – fearful that employers could be subject to lawsuits if medicinal marijuana users were injured or caused injuries on the job.

Is Ross – with his back spasms – the kind of person California voters had in mind when they voted to allow sick people to use medical marijuana? Are there people who abuse the law to use marijuana recreationally?

Yes. But Ross doesn't fit the stereotype of a "stoner." And if he loses his case, some very sick people will lose as well – blunting the will of California voters who wanted to help them.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Marcos Bretón at (916) 321-1096. Listen to him at 8:40 a.m. Tuesdays on NewsTalk 1530 KFBK. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/ breton.