FEDERAL JUDGE UPHOLDS MARIJUANA LAW.

Byline: Tim Golden The New York Times

A federal district judge on Friday barred the Clinton administration from taking action to punish doctors in California who recommended marijuana to their patients under a new state law.

The restraining order, issued by Judge Fern Smith, will at least temporarily stop the federal government's effort to undermine the California law by threatening to prosecute or strip the prescription licenses of doctors who endorse the medical use of the drug.

But Judge Smith also ordered lawyers for the administration and those representing a group of doctors who filed suit against the government three months ago to begin meeting with another federal judge to try to work out a settlement of the dispute.

While the future of the law remains far from clear, its proponents hailed the ruling Friday as an important victory in their campaign to make marijuana available to people suffering from diseases like cancer, glaucoma and AIDS.

``The federal government, as part of its war on drugs, had declared war on California doctors,'' said Graham Boyd, who argued the case for the doctors. ``Now they no longer need to fear draconian federal punishments for recommending marijuana.''

Clinton administration officials have denounced the California law and a similar successful ballot initiative in Arizona as significant threats to the government's efforts to limit the traffic in illegal drugs and to persuade younger Americans, in particular, not to use them.

California's law, which went to the voters in November as Proposition 215, legalizes the possession or cultivation of marijuana when its use is ``recommended'' by a doctor. Under a more complicated procedure in Arizona, doctors can actually prescribe other Schedule 1 designated drugs, including heroin and methamphetamine.

The authors of Proposition 215 sought to make it possible for doctors to suggest the use of marijuana to their patients without putting the legislation in conflict with federal laws that bar the use and distribution of controlled substances. And it was an early sign of their success when, little more than a month after its passage, Justice Department lawyers decided not to try to fight the measure in the courts.

Instead, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy led the government in a public relations offensive.

A handful of agencies, like the Department of Transportation, have reiterated federal laws against operating cars, aircraft and equipment while under the influence of marijuana.

Under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health, government scientists have also undertaken to determine once and for all whether marijuana has any legitimate value for such problems as the nausea often caused by chemotherapy, the eye pressure often associated with glaucoma and the ``wasting'' syndrome that afflicts people with AIDS.

Most important, though, law enforcement officials have tried to frighten doctors away from the new law by warning that they could lose the prescription licenses they receive from the Drug Enforcement Administration or could even face criminal prosecution.

Both sides expected that they would eventually meet in court when the federal government moved against a doctor or patient who tried to make use of the law.

But in the suit filed on Jan. 14 on behalf of a group of California doctors, Boyd and other lawyers supporting the law pre-empted such a test case, arguing that the threat constituted a violation of the physicians' right to free speech. The doctors were being enjoined, they asserted, from simply discussing with their patients a treatment they had legitimate reason to think might be helpful.

The legal counsel for the drug policy office, Patricia Seitz, said the government respected the right of doctors to discuss the benefits and hazards of treatments with their patients. But it opposes any effort by physicians to help them obtain illegal drugs.