I’m a little slow, but something I never realized until someone pointed it out just the other day —
When people want to ban alcohol, they had to actually pass a Constitutional Amendment.
When people decided that alcohol should no longer be banned, they had to pass another Constitutional Amendment.
When people decided marijuana was bad, they took a vote and then said, “That’s stuff’s illegal.”
When some states decided it might not be so bad, those states took a vote and said, “That stuff’s OK.”
Double-standard much?
Have anything to do with the fact alcohol is regulated and taxed and marijuana is not? Serious question.
When people decided marijuana was bad, they took a vote and then said, “That’s stuff’s illegal.”
Actually, that’s an oversimplification. When marijuana was first outlawed, people still realized it would take an amendment to actually give government the authority to ban it, so they did not ban it. Instead, they imposed a tax on it, and then made it a crime to buy or sell marijuana without a tax stamp. Of course it was impossible to obtain a tax stamp, but still, marijuana was not technically outlawed, because the government did not have the authority to do that.
It was not until the time of Nixon that Congress decided it could just pass legislation banning whatever substances it wanted without any appeal to actual Constitutional authority.