editorial comment Hey, Weinman, does that mean that if people were to eat it, it would qualifies as medecine? Hum, let's see if Scalia and Thomas go for states' rights this time around.......

Robert Melamede's guidelines for better living go something like this: Eat right, exercise and smoke a little marijuana.

The biology department chairman at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs is among the state's 625 registered legal users of marijuana for medical reasons. He says it eases the pain of his spinal arthritis.

Melamede can't imagine living without it. However, his fate and that of legal users in 10 other states could be affected by a U.S. Supreme Court case in California that will determine whether a federal ban on the drug trumps state laws allowing medical marijuana.

The decision - expected in the next month - may redefine the limits of congressional power under the commerce clause of the Constitution.

Either way, the decision is expected to revive the debate about the medicinal legitimacy of marijuana use and the social implications of legalizing what law enforcement officials call a "gateway" drug, which may lead to harder drugs.

In Colorado, federal law enforcement authorities said the decision would determine whether they could prosecute medical marijuana producers.

Bill Weinman, a federal Drug Enforcement Administration supervisor based in Denver, called medical marijuana a ploy by those who want to legalize the drug. He said his agency does not target sick and dying people but carefully evaluates whether growers are trafficking in the drug.

"This whole medical marijuana thing is a scam," Weinman said. "You don't smoke your medicine."

The question before the court is whether the Controlled Substances Act, a comprehensive 1970 federal law regulating a broad range of drugs including marijuana, exceeds Congress' power to regulate commerce.

Government lawyers argue that homegrown medical marijuana would affect a $10.5 billion illicit market.

Erik Neusch, a lawyer who wrote a law journal article on the constitutional issues raised by medical marijuana laws, said that during the past decade, the Supreme Court has rendered several decisions that have deferred to states' rights.

"What will be interesting is to see whether the Supreme Court continues on this path of broadening states' rights," he said.

"If they were internally consistent, they would strike down the federal government's attempts to prosecute medical marijuana use in the states," Neusch said. "But I don't think that's going to happen."

If the decision favors states' rights, more states probably will pass measures allowing medical marijuana use, said K.K. DuVivier, an associate law professor at the University of Denver.

"There has been [a movement] since the 1980s," she said. "People are trying to get around" federal law.

However, she predicted that if the decision were to favor federal enforcement of a marijuana ban, enforcement would vary locally.

"If local agencies say they're not going to put any funding into it and they make it a lower priority, the federal government will come in occasionally to make raids, but they won't have the presence to really enforce it," DuVivier said.

In 2000, Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved Amendment 20, legalizing the medicinal use of marijuana for those who get a doctor's approval and register with the state. In addition to Colorado, states with some form of legalized marijuana use include Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

Melamede suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, a painful, progressive, rheumatic disease that mainly affects the spine but can also affect other joints, tendons and ligaments.

Melamede is hopeful that a favorable decision by the Supreme Court would encourage doctors to be more liberal about prescribing marijuana.

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