SAN FRANCISCO — The two women who sued the Bush administration in hopes of keeping their medical marijuana supplies said they'll defy the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling and continue to smoke pot.

"I'm going to have to be prepared to be arrested," said Diane Monson, an accountant who smokes marijuana several times a day to relieve her pain from degenerative spine disease.

The Supreme Court ruled that federal authorities may prosecute people using doctor-recommended pot, concluding that medical marijuana laws in California and nine other states don't make such users immune from federal laws against marijuana possession.

Monson, 48, was recommended marijuana by her doctor in 1997 after standard prescription drugs didn't work or made her sleepy. She grows it in the yard of her home near Oroville, Calif., about 70 miles north of Sacramento. "I'm way disappointed. There are so many people that need cannabis," she said.

Fifty-six percent of California voters approved the nation's first so-called medical marijuana law in 1996, allowing patients to smoke and grow marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. Other states followed, including Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state.

In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled against medical marijuana clubs that argued for a legal exception when patients can demonstrate a "medical necessity" for the drug. That forced the Oakland supplier of the other plaintiff, Angel Raich, to close.

Raich and Monson sued Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' predecessor, John Ashcroft, because they feared their supplies of medical marijuana might dry up. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, ordered the Bush administration to refrain from prosecuting the pair, including Raich's suppliers. Today's Supreme Court decision reverses that order.

All of which leaves them with few options other than to take their chances and continue smoking and ingesting marijuana, the women said.

"If I stop using cannabis, unfortunately, I would die," said Raich, who inhaled marijuana after today's ruling in her house in Oakland, using a machine that fills a plastic bag with pot vapors. She estimates her marijuana intake to be about 9 pounds a year.

Raich, 39, suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other problems. She said she uses marijuana every few waking hours, on the advice of her doctor, who said dozens of other medications were of little help.

"This is the only way that I have to combat my suffering and to deal with my illness," said the mother of two, ages 16 and 19. And if federal authorities do try to arrest her, she said she may seek refuge outside the United States. "If I need to leave the country, I will if that time comes," Raich said.