NICE work--providing guidance to the British National Health Service.

Justice Department’s request for a rehearing. As of mid-September, it was not known whether Ashcroft will appeal to the Supreme Court. In 1997, before the second Oregon vote, the Court upheld laws in New York and Washington that prohibited physician-assisted suicide and unanimously ruled that there is no constitutional right to assisted suicide. The Court, however, left the states free to legalize the practice. Although the specific issues are different, the assisted-suicide and medical marijuana cases raise the question of whether the Justice Department is defending the Controlled Substances Act or using the act to advance a political agenda. Even people who personally oppose physician-assisted suicide have objected to the repeated federal efforts to interfere with Oregon’s law. As has been discussed for years, the federal government could defuse the controversy over the medical use of marijuana by reclassifying it to schedule II or a lower classification. 1 As a schedule II substance, marijuana would be tightly regulated but accessible for medical purposes.