Posted on 01/30/2003 6:38:26 AM PST by MrLeRoy
America's war on drugs is costly, ignorant and doesn't work, a federal judge said Tuesday.
Denver U.S. District Judge John Kane Jr., who has been speaking and writing against the nation's drug policy for about five years, won a standing ovation from a packed City Club luncheon at the Brown Palace Hotel.
"I don't favor drugs at all," Kane said.
"What I really am opposed to is the fact that our present policies encourage children to take drugs."
Ending the present policy of interdiction, police action and imprisonment would eliminate the economic incentives for drug dealers to provide drugs to minors, Kane said.
He said the government has no real data and no scientific basis for its approach to illegal drug use.
Since the policy began in the early 1970s, drugs have become easier to obtain and drug use has only increased, he said.
Last summer, Kane said, a friend in his 60s was being treated for cancer. The man joked to his family that he wished he knew where to get marijuana to help him bear the effects of chemotherapy.
The next day, the man's 11-year-old grandson brought him three marijuana cigarettes, Kane said.
"Don't worry, Grandpa - I don't use it myself, but if you need any more just let me know," the judge quoted the boy as saying.
Although officials vow zero tolerance for drugs, even children know that's not reality, Kane said.
"Our national drug policy is inconsistent with the nature of justice, abusive of the nature of authority, and wholly ignorant of the compelling force of forgiveness," he said. "I suggest that federal drug laws be severely cut back."
The federal government should focus on keeping illegal drugs out of the country and regulating the manufacture of drugs transported across state lines.
Each state should decide how to regulate sales and what should be legal or illegal, he said, and the emphasis for government spending should be on treatment.
That'd show 'em, huh?
Don't forget to throw in something about satanic music.
Sure would. Not that I'm expecting even a modicum of intellectual consistency on the subject.
Huh I guess the defeat of the 3 main pro-drug intitatives(in Arizona, Nevada, and Ohio) pushed by the pro-drug lobby and defeated by wide margins last November doesn't mean a thing. The only place where a pro-pot intiative passed was in that "conservative" bastion called San Francisco.
I guess the real world isn't allowed to intrude into your tiny but vocal pro-drug mutual admiration society on FR.
Dane, KC and the lot just make themselves silly. So, just let them keep posting. I know more prominent conservatives opposed to the WOSD than liberals. If Dane would like to get me the quotes from Paul Wellstone, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Maxine Waters, and Barbara Boxer calling for the end to the WOSD, I am glad to hear it.
And it took you only 14 minutes to find that out. Very good---have a cookie.
Now you have another 14 minutes to find out whether she's a conservative like her appointer, Ronald Reagan.
There have been many, many state initiatives regarding pot, some pass, some don't. Several states have decriminalized pot. So state action gives us a range of laws to see what works and what doesn't. But the state initiatives that pass are setting up a challenge to federal usurpation regarding these laws, as the feds are currently ignoring medical marijuana laws in several states, despite the fact that the pot in question does not cross state lines. That, in the end, is the true positive of the entire pot debate - states are fighting to regain their 10th Amendment right to set their own laws regarding matters that do not cross state lines.
I guess the real world isn't allowed to intrude into your tiny but vocal pro-drug mutual admiration society on FR.
I'm not pro-drug, Dane, I'm pro-Constitutional government. If individual states wish to inact pot restrictions, that is their perogative under the 10th. The federal government has no proper authority to inact three-quarters of the laws they force on the American public, pot laws are just one small aspect of that usurpation. But since you have your own agenda that blinds your to emotion instead of reason (a very liberal tendency, mind you), you applaud usupration instead of fighting it.
Once again, better sane than Dane.
Provide evidence for your claim---recalling that "Jimmy Carter appointed Judge Kane" is no more evidence for "Judge Kane is a Jimmy Carter liberal" than "Ronald Reagan appointed Justice O'Connor" is evidence for "Justice O'Connoris a Ronald Reagan conservative."
I guess we shouldn't ask him about David Souter as well. Might make his little pointy head implode from the strain.
Better sane than Dane...
Yeah ... that search engine must be running slow today ....
A recent survey (posted on FR) showed that kids now find marijuana easier to get than smokes or beer.
Actually, Dane, you just made a great argument for curtailing the federal drug war - it will allow the states to decide their own policies regarding pot, as these states are doing here. Thanks for helping demostrate how federalist, constitutional representative government is supposed to work.
Now if you would just express the same enthusiasm for the rights of other states to regulate pot use without federal interference.
What is the point? Is there a comment on topic?
Adarand Defeats Clinton Administration
The Clinton administration suffered another defeat in its defense of race-based decision making, adding yet another litigation victory for the MSLF case in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña. After nearly two years of delaying tactics by federal lawyers, Judge John Kane, Jr., appointed to the bench by President Carter in 1977, ruled that the manner in which the government awards federal highway contracts based on race is unconstitutional. Judge Kane ruled that the program was not "narrowly tailored" since it was "both underinclusive and overinclusive." "Indeed," declared Judge Kane, "under these standards, the Sultan of Brunei would qualify [as socially and economically disadvantaged]." The Clinton administration has appealed the decision.
Whoops, wait a minute. That looks like something Scalia could have written. What gives?!??
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