Libertarian gatherings hardest hit.
Marijuana will continue to be considered a highly dangerous drug under federal law with no accepted medical uses, after a U.S. appeals court Tuesday refused to order a change in the government’s 40-year-old drug classification schedule.
The decision keeps in place an odd legal split over marijuana, a drug deemed to be as dangerous as heroin and worse than methamphetamine by federal authorities, but one that has been legalized for medical use by voters or legislators in 20 states and the District of Columbia.
There are a lot of drugs that aren’t street legal but are used in medicine, heroin’s slower cousin morphine, for example. Looks like what the marijuana activists (I’m neither here nor there on this one) need is a super team of physicians and scientists to swear it’s great medicine.
Or more Cheetos.
Do I have a diploma tht says I’m a substance abuse expert? No. Have I seen every episode of “Celebrity Rehab”? Yes. Does that make me an expert? Well yeah obviously. In my opinion (and keep in mind I am an expert), it was always a bad idea to tell potheads that their drug of choice is “medicine.” And before people chime in with “glaucoma”, “my friend’s uncle’s chronic pain” blah blah blah- Get real. 95% of people who smoke do it because they like to get high. Shoud they be thrown in jail? No. But should we tell them their vice is actually good for them? Bad idea. There is a segment of the population who will think along these lines- “I would quit pot but I have this pain and it’s part of my treatment.” I saw a guy on a show about med marijuana who claimed he smoked it to treat PTSD. Smoking pot probably was a SYMPTOM of PTSD before some potheads decided it should be called a treatment instead.
“But but alcohol is worse!!” Who cares. Pot still gets you pretty darned wasted.
If you want to smoke pot smoke pot just don’t delude yourself that it is somehow good for you.
If only we had a super-liberal former pot-head President who could end this nonsense with one order to the DEA. One the other hand, winding down the failed “War on Drugs” would end the excuses for having large militarized federal police forces.
If only President Bush or even the Republican governors on the Southern border had just turned their backs on the border and let the Nation be flooded with marajuana in the fall of 2008, a huge percentage of the Obama voted would have simply forgotten the election. Of course, SEIU/ACORN et al. would have made sure that a vote was recorded for a lot of them, but easy marajuana would have spared us the long National nightmare of Comrade Obama and the Wookie.
Let me be clear up front that I’m opposed to people smoking marijuana.
I believe it is addictive and highly detrimental to a person on so many levels, and I do believe it is the “gateway” drug that people start using before they move on to more extreme drugs in order to achieve that same degree of high they initially experienced with pot.
HOWEVER, I also believe it is a state responsibility and not a federal responsibility and am completely supportive of state laws making marijuana illegal – but not so much for most of the federal laws.
Think about it this way – the federal government had to pass the 18th Amendment stating:
“the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.”
If you substitute the word “growing” for “manufacture” and substitute “marijuana” for the words “intoxicating liquors”, you have basically the current federal law on the matter.
How is it that an amendment was required to give the federal government the authority to prohibit alcohol – but was not required to prohibit marijuana?
This is simply another example of the federal government assigning unto itself powers that it was not delegated – BUT because most rational people realize that using marijuana is a bad idea the usurpation of state authority is overlooked in the belief that the end justifies the means.
I say hogwash.
The only authority the federal government should be exercising should be making the import or export of pot illegal, and perhaps making it illegal to cross state lines while transporting pot to destinations where it is illegal under state laws.
THEN – leave it to the states to enforce their respective prohibitions on pot as that is a power that the states retained under the 10th Amendment.
If we are going to argue constitutionality, we must likewise force ourselves to remain consistent.
A more recently passed law – which thankfully passed into history in 2004 – was the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, a ban the democrats are even now trying to re-establish.
The text of that ban read, in part:
“(s) It shall be unlawful for a person to manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon.’.”
Again, if they had to pass an amendment to ban the manufacture, possession, or transport of alcohol – how could they simply by federal dictate ban a gun?
As I said, if we want to portray ourselves as being supportive of the Constitution, we must remain consistent in what we claim it means.
I don’t smoke it (or anything else) but Prohibition doesn’t work. It is a gigantic waste of money and lives to try to prohibit adults from using marijuana. We have huge police agencies dedicated to enforcing these stupid laws and prisons full of people who never hurt anyone (other than arguably themselves).
I agree with Old Soldier.
Sure it messes up your mind. So does Alcohol, and so does reading anything by Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky.
But prohibition is a failure. A massive, expensive failure. And a total joke, as pot users everywhere know exactly how to get what they want, right under the noses of the huge, heavily armed bureaucracy that supposedly exists to stop them.
If people want to get drunk or stoned, they will, and stopping them, however well intentioned.. well, conservatives are supposed to know a thing or two about government programs with Good Intentions.
Here’s the thing.
Whether it is a “gigantic waste of money” as Old Soldier put it, or it “messes up your mind” as you put it, the fact remains that based upon historical precedence there is zero authority delegated to the federal government to involve itself in banning marijuana.
As such, anyone claiming a desire to uphold the Constitution, if they are being honest, has to oppose in principle such federal laws. Doesn’t mean we can’t simultaneously support such laws at the state level – and doing so does not translate into hypocrisy.
Part of our problem is that our particular road to hell was paved with good intentions….
Beyond the venue of a court in the US to say. It is the duty of the legislatures to rule on these policy issues. The court in this is rogue.
The key word in the appellate court’s ruling is “acceptable.” The federal government used to grow and study marijuana. It’s studies showed that marijuana had no discernable benefit over existing prescritpion drugs, and in certain cases (such as Jared Loughner), it made existing psychiatric problems more severe. The court in this case is not a rogue. All it had to do was find that the government’s existing drug classification schedule is reasonable. It is.