Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
Posted on 02/25/2005 10:22:10 AM PST by nyg4168
"States' rights" has always been anathema to liberals--a code word for the Southern racism that embraced slavery, and later segregation. Nowadays, however, in an era when Red America controls the federal government and pushes things like a national ban on gay marriage, progressives are embracing states' rights: the founding fathers' idea of Federalism, in which states cede a few key powers to D.C. while maintaining robust sovereignty themselves.
So, what's the latest group to make the case that states' rights should determine policy? Try the flaming liberals at the King County Bar Association (KCBA), who on March 3 will release a radical proposal urging Olympia to reform local drug laws. And by "reform," the KCBA means make certain drugs legal so they can be yanked off the street (a hotbed of violent crime and addiction) and placed in a tightly regulated state market. Regulation could allow for things like safe injection sites, be used to wean addicts off drugs, and sap a black market that gives kids access to drugs.
The mammoth proposal (www.kcba.org/druglaw/proposal.html)--which includes extensive academic research on the history of drug laws, conspiratorial details about the successful efforts of corporations like DuPont and Hearst to squelch hemp production in the 1930s, and dispiriting facts about the failed drug war--is anchored by a 16-page treatise titled "States' Rights: Toward a Federalist Drug Policy."
This states' rights manifesto is the KCBA's rejoinder to the inevitable question: How can Washington State get away with regulating (i.e., legalizing) drugs, like heroin and pot, that the federal government has outlawed under the Controlled Substances Act? It's also a direct challenge to the feds.
"[If our proposals are adopted] we would expect that the U.S. government would seek an injunction in federal court," Roger Goodman, director of the Drug Policy Project of the KCBA, says enthusiastically. Goodman's idea is to force a legal standoff that, he hopes, will eventually set the precedent for states to buck the feds' misguided "war on drugs" by giving states control over the production and distribution of drugs like pot.
The Constitution grants the federal government the right to regulate commerce, which is the cornerstone of the Controlled Substances Act. The KCBA report, which Goodman put together, outlines a couple of states' rights arguments that could be used to trump that authority. The report points out accurately that states have exclusive rights to protect the health, welfare, and safety of their citizens, which includes regulating the practice of medicine. "Recent case law has limited federal authority to meddle in the states' regulation of medical practice," the report says, "particularly limiting the use of the federal Controlled Substances Act to override a state's decisions." This is a reference to a 2002 decision in Oregon v. Ashcroft when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stopped the feds from using drug law to upend Oregon's Death with Dignity Act where drugs are used in assisted suicide.
The KCBA also argues that when a state becomes a "market participant" by running drug-distribution outlets, the activity would be beyond the scope of federal commerce power. "[C]annabis availability for adults through exclusive state-owned outlets, for instance, would render Washington immune to federal intervention…" the KCBA's states' rights manifesto argues.
Obviously, these legal arguments are just that: arguments. The KCBA readily admits as much. "Whether Washington could now promulgate its own regulatory system… of substances that are currently prohibited under federal law is a critical open question," the report allows. However, raising that question is an important first step in itself. According to Goodman: "That's always part of the reform process."
So why not subtract an existing way: alcohol? Because we learned that the "cure" of criminalization is worse than the disease.
Where did I say that?
Wonder how much money Soros is pouring into WA State for this. Legalizing drugs is, after all, one of his big passions. I live in the Seattle area and I am opposed to legalizing drugs here. I'd support minimal terms (even a slap on the hand w drug rehab) for those caught w a small, personal amt of pot or coke.
W Fraudoire and a Dim congress and Seattle and King County Councils, they'll probably get it through.
The voters here voted against legalizing pot for medicinal purposes a few years ago, though as I recall, it was primarily because of some extra garbage the Dims added to the bill.
You chose and so good for you. But what does that have to do with anything I posted. Answer the questions. What about for those that don't have the strength to choose or the option as a family member? What do you do?
And by the way, its not murder. No way you can twist it into that.
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
This liberal in his own bigotry views everything that Southern do as rasism.
If you have a loved one who is a drug addict/alcoholic the best thing you can do for them is to allow them to face responsibility for their own actions...be it prision, life on the streets or whatever circumstances in which they put themselves. It's called detachment or tough love.
To say we should murder...err, execute (?), someone because they are an addict is foolish. We have a justice system which doesn't allow for that.
If killing people that use/abuse drugs without due process isn't murder, then what exactly is it???? Google AlAnon for more info if you really want answers.
And moderate consumption of alcohol provides protection from heart attacks, strokes and cancer, among other things.
My only point, a completely correct one, is that there were laws against each.
their choices in life suddenly wont be to go get a job, pay taxes, and stop committing crimes.
Some of them will; and the ones who don't will have a harder time getting money to finance weapons and alliances.
You do not decrease the level of violence the police face. You increase it exponentially. You wish to vastly increase the availability and distribution of mood and mental altering chemicals to the general public and then do not expect the level of aggression to increase?
The most popular illegal drug, marijuana, does not increase violent behavior, and depressant drugs decrease it.
OK, you got me on health costs. The government shouldn't be in the business of paying for socialized medicine. But realistically do you see them getting out?
Using one violation of individual rights (socialized medicine) to justify another (drug criminalization) is not a conservative argument.
Prohibition worked fine. What were the crime rates?
The murder rate was substantially higher during Prohibition than before or after it.
Excellent argument against drug criminalization.
"The murder rate was substantially higher during Prohibition than before or after it."
Hillsdale economist Kirby Cundiff, in a study for the Independent Institute, compared homicide rates and changes in substance control policy in the United States and concluded, "The best theory of the primary cause of violent crime in the United States is a violent black market caused by the War on Drugs today, and Prohibition in the 1920s."
In 1900, between 2 percent and 5 percent of the entire adult population of the United States were addicted to drugs. The average drug user was a rural middle-aged white woman who used morphine-based patent medicines. The murder rate in 1900 was 1.2 per 100,000 people. But that all changed as America went through one of its periodic bouts of Puritanism.
In 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Narcotic Act that essentially banned the non-medical sale of opiates and cocaine derivatives. The murder rate the year after was 5.9 per 100,000. Then came the 18th Amendment in 1920, outlawing the sale of all alcoholic beverages. In 1921, the murder rate in America jumped to 8.1 per 100,000. Of course, the 1920s were the era of gangsters and bootleggers.
In 1933, America came back to its senses, or at least decided that the millions of unemployed during the Depression might need a good stiff drink now and then, and passed the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition. The murder rate that year reached 9.7 per 100,000. After Prohibition, the murder rate began to drift downward, dropping to 4.5 per 100,000 in 1958.
- http://www.reason.com/rb/rb012903.shtml
History of Marijuana Use (and it isn't "a druggie site"!)
A major crop in colonial North America, marijuana (hemp) was grown as a source of fiber. It was extensively cultivated during World War II, when Asian sources of hemp were cut off.
Snip...Marijuana was listed in the United States Pharmacopeia from 1850 until 1942 (that's 98 years) and was prescribed for various conditions including labor pains, nausea, and rheumatism. Its use as an intoxicant was also commonplace from the 1850s to the 1930s.
And for a lot more information...The Emperor Wears No Clothes Chapter 1
In 1619, America's first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia, "ordering" all farmers to "make tryal of" (grow) Indian hempseed. More mandatory (must-grow) hemp cultivation laws were enacted in Massachusetts in 1631, in Connecticut in 1632 and in the Chesapeake Colonies into the mid-1700s.
Why do you keep repeating something that is so easy to prove wrong? You really need to look into this instead of repeating a shibboleth.
Those drugs were always part of the subculture, and their use was stigmatized.
Which was the point of the post, your little history lesson about hemp notwithstanding.
In the 5-year period, 1993 to 1998, "the number of murders in the United States dropped 31 percent, from 24,530 to 16,914, pushing the murder victimization rate down from 9.5 per 100,000 to 6.3."
-- bos.frb.org
Last I looked, drugs remained illegal in that 5-year period. Methinks you're a little guilty of your own, "correlation equals causation".
Here's one possible answer for the reduction in homicides in the 30's:
"But data from this era are sparse and sometimes inaccurate, and experts are unsure what caused the fall. The end of Prohibition in 1933 probably had some effect on stemming the violence that had been associated with the illegal distribution of liquor. But just as significant might have been advances in medical care made during that era, which would have saved many an aggravated assault from becoming a homicide."
-- bos.frb.org
Oh my. An alternative explanation. This ever occur to you, MrLeRoy?
LOL -- the idiot population is just under 50%, as revealed in the last several elections.
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