United States | Medical marijuana

Please let us

No, says the Supreme Court

|san francisco

THE light is dim, the air pungent, but the cheerful patter of bingo numbers hardly suggests a den of iniquity. At the San Francisco Patients Resource Centre (SFPRC), near Haight-Ashbury, cannabis is still being dispensed, and people who find it relieves the pain of AIDS or cancer, or the unpleasant side-effects of medicine, are still smoking it. Indeed, says Sister Rosemarie, a nun who is one of the centre's three directors, business has been brisker than usual since the Supreme Court's decision, on May 14th, that “medical necessity” provides no exemption from the law's ban on the distribution of marijuana.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Please let us”

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