Posted on 07/30/2012 10:38:42 AM PDT by Shout Bits
This November, as many as eight States will have marijuana ballot issues before their voters. Most are medicinal issues, but States like Oregon and Colorado will decide on full legalization. Just as judging the average alcohol drinker by observing gutter drunks is unfounded, most marijuana users are not actually wild smelly Occupy Wall Street hippies (as annoying as they can be). Pollsters estimate that 25 million Americans regularly consume marijuana, and there simply are not enough Rasta cab drivers and jazz fans to fill those ranks. Politically, the tide is turning in favor of recreational marijuana use, but for the 90% of Americans who are not regular partakers, the marijuana issue has more impact than getting high. In fact, the marijuana issue is a test bed for the entirety of the wrongs Washington imposes on the States and the People.
Marijuana has, of course, been proven to be medically benign. Contrary to government propaganda, marijuana does not engender violent or dangerous behavior – unlike tequila. Further, the drug's use does not seem to rise or fall based on its legality. In The Netherlands, where marijuana is more or less legal, its use is less prevalent than in the US, where marijuana is mostly illegal. Dreamers who think states can balance their budgets by taxing marijuana like tobacco or booze will be disappointed as marijuana usage cannot generate a large tax base as do cigarettes and liquor. Those who foresee a fall in crime as the illegal profit is eliminated are also overly optimistic. Until all vices are legal and regulated, cartels will still trade in violence. In short, should marijuana become legal in the US, expect essentially no impact.
Why, then is the marijuana issue relevant? The marijuana issue brings the 10th Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and the Supremacy Clause to a poignant head and is a colorful wedge for those who generally support individual liberty and responsibility. Washington's corruption withers in the light of the marijuana issue.
In Wickard v. Filburn, the Supreme Court held that FDR's multi-year attempt to help farmers by forcing them to farm less acreage than they wanted was constitutional. They held that even if farm produce were grown in a single state with seed, fertilizer, and water from only that state, for consumption intrastate, the Commerce clause allowed Washington to dictate any aspect of that farm's operation because the activities of the farm might affect markets out of state. Nothing had to cross state lines to be regulated as interstate commerce. Fast forward 80 years, and this same logic (under a different name) allows Washington to force individuals to buy a minimum level of healthcare products. For those who think Washington knows best, these rulings are wonderful news, but for the libertarian they invite tyranny.
Regardless of Supreme Court decisions, the plain language and original intent of the Commerce Clause is to ensure that states do not enact trade barriers between themselves. It does not say that commerce may be regulated within a state; it does not say that the commerce of individuals may be regulated. The Commerce Clause puts regulating interstate commerce at the same level as trade with foreign nations and Indian tribes, clearly implying that Washington's role is to facilitate free trade, not to dictate how many acres a farmer may plant. Quite often the plain language reading of a law is truer than the convolutions of talented specialist minds.
FDR outlawed marijuana about the same time as he regulated farmers and under the same Commerce Clause authority (in the form of a tax, if that sounds familiar). Indeed, most of Washington's departures from the Constitution's enumerated powers stem from the abuse of the Commerce Clause. Should a State fully legalize marijuana this November, the very heart of Washington's bloat will be tested. Interestingly, Justice Roberts's horrid logic that Obamacare was illegal under the Commerce Clause but legal as a tax gains traction in such a showdown. Should a State's perfect document, its Constitution, be amended to legalize marijuana, that State would be obligated to take the issue to the Supreme Court unless Washington backs down. The marijuana issue may give libertarians another swipe at the Commerce Clause, a gift given by States broadly in favor of Obamacare.
Can Washington imprison someone for growing a plant in Colorado using Colorado materials, all for Colorado or even personal consumption? Is there any boundary to Washington's power over the States and the People? Is Washington's law supreme over a State's, even when Washington's law is not authorized under the Constitution? Does the 10th Amendment mean anything? Should marijuana be legalized somewhere this November, these questions might be revisited and the tide of Washington's tyranny over its purported masters could be reversed. Even for those who find the herbal libation distasteful, these are good reasons to vote to legalize marijuana.
Shout Bits can be found on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/ShoutBits
>> “We The People... Have a Right and a Duty to ban dangerous and destructive substances.” <<
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Marijuana is neither.
Like many other things, it is a mostly beneficial substance that can be abused in certain ways.
You must be a democrat, with your bent on control.
(a) those who attack law-abiding merchants or travelers on the high seas, killing or kidnapping them and stealing their property, and
(b) those who wish to sell a product to citizens who would (other than their private use of said product) be considered law-abiding and respectful of their neighbors.
I guess it's just me.
No, you are just cherry picking your terms to spin an activity by dangerous criminals into something benign and acceptable. Pirates are Criminals independent of a Nation-State's control. In that regard, they are exactly like Drug Dealers. The "product" is not benign, it is concentrated poison designed to enslave those who take it, and tends to have a side-effect of death.
You are just not being honest about the obvious correlation between Drug Dealers and Pirates. (Who also engaged in smuggling, be it slaves or rum or whatever.)
You’re tampering with moral/spiritual issues, and trying to insert government where it doesn’t belong.
Opium is another herbal substance that has powerful healing properties, as well as being the safest pain killer available.
The “war on Drugs” has attacked the wrong drugs, and weakened us as a nation from a moral standpoint as well as medical.
Federal powers are supposted to be explicitly granted by the States, not invented by lobbyists and career bureaucrats in back rooms, hidden away from the People and absent their advice and consent.
We should not allow our governments to regulate possession or use of any herb (except driving or operating machinery under the influence thereof).
Most of the force behind marijuana laws comes from those who would lose their cash cows if it were legalized, such as big pharma and the AMA.
And now you are advocating self-Dosage of medicines? I suppose people should take as much Vicodin as they see fit?
You may have an argument that Marijuana has medicinal properties, but you do not have an argument that Dangerous medicines should be administered without a physicians directions.
And under what Constitutional power do we have a right to ban fissile material? You tell me.
You: I am of divided mind on the issue. I would agree that an appeal to the tenth amendment is the best argument I have heard regarding the legalization of Marijuana.
So is your answer to the question 'yes' or 'no?'
It is just as dangerous as Lotus leaves... and for the same reason.
Like many other things, it is a mostly beneficial substance that can be abused in certain ways.
It's abuse is inherent in it's use. It affects the brain's ability to make decisions, including about it's own consumption.
You must be a democrat, with your bent on control.
I am a conservative, not wanting to have Total Government, and not wanting to have NONE either.
Eh? Do you know of a functioning Marijuana use state?
Opium is another herbal substance that has powerful healing properties, as well as being the safest pain killer available.
That's on the plus side. On the down side it addicted 90 million people in China who lived short miserable lives, working as slaves for the British.
The “war on Drugs” has attacked the wrong drugs, and weakened us as a nation from a moral standpoint as well as medical.
And yet a nation that permitted legalized drugs had a horrible result from it.
The coin has landed on it's edge. Be perceptive enough to realize it. I would hear more arguments, both pro and con.
That’s it for me people. I’m done for the day.
China's population was 400M in 1900.* That's an addiction rate of 22.5%. Drugs were also legal in the US in 1900. The DEA sez the addiction rate to either opium or cocaine was 0.5%:
By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict.
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm
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Fast forward to 2000:
...the Office of National Drug Control Policy pegs the current number of cocaine addicts at around 3.6 million people.
http://www.thecyn.com/cocaine-rehab/cocaine-addiction-united-states.html
"For example, numbers like heroin addiction. You can find numbers that go from 255,000 up to the one I'm currently using, 980,000, if I remember the last time we updated it, and those are all valid scientific studies." --Drug Czar Mcaffrey
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/symposium/panelmccaffrey.html
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Adding the ONDCP numbers for cocaine and heroin addiction together yields an addiction rate of about 1.5%. So after a century of increasingly aggressive prohibition, our own government is telling us that addiction has gone from 0.5% in 1900 to 1.5% in 2000. Which historical example is more relevant to the US in 2012, Chinese history from 1900 or American history from 1900?
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* http://www.populstat.info/
“The conclusion is, if some significant portion of the population cannot use something responsibly, we either have to ban it for everyone, or somehow license it to people who will not misuse it.”
That’s where I can’t agree with you, because I don’t see how your logic supports that conclusion. There are thousands of things out there that people can choose to use responsibly or irresponsibly, and we are not forced to make the conclusion you suggest. Instead, we just let the irresponsible people suffer the consequences for their actions when it affects only themselves, and punish them legally or civilly if their irresponsibility effects others.
So the Tenth Amendment isn't enough to persuade you?
We can ban fissible material from being imported from foreign countries under the Commerce Clause. I told you that already.
Currently there is no enumerated power to ban or regulate fissible material in interstate commerce. Unelected career bureaucrats regulate it anyway, and the end result is that our nuclear industries are crippled, being unable to produce isotopes needed for medical and industrial purposes and leaving us dependent on foreign countries for our supplies.
You cry "We the People have a right and responsibility to ban dangerous substances!", and don't seem to care who does it or how. That's exactly how we ended up with CO2 being declared a "pollutant".
there is no roadside test for DUI. Also potheads are actually busted for the posession and any other charges that can be found.
I will raise you “like 1000” and see you a the equivalent autopsies.
Roadside EXERCISES (not tests) are easily surpressed and anyone with 1/2 a brain knows the proper action is to refuse EVERYTHING and take the administrative hit.
If it is being sold as “medicinal” then as “medicinal” like other drugs/diagnoses the doctor is obligated to report it to authorities so the license can be suspended until the drugs/diagnoses is no longer an ongoing impairment.
Surgeons on pot should not operate either.
Study shows medical marijuana laws reduce traffic deaths; Leads to lower consumption of alcohol
I read. They lumped the high density population with the low density. The states with legal pot have lower density or have greater use of mass transit.
IOW pot heads have no money for cars or gas.
just google marajuna driver accident and you have more than enough news stories.
God’s word denounces “physicians.”
Healing is to be administered through our spiritual leaders, not Mystery Babylon.
All herbs are for our use; Genesis says so. Nowhere does it say that we’re to go to governments of men for permission. Government has defiled us deeply, because we have failed to shackle it sufficiently.
The “war on drugs” has been the biggest criminal enterprise in the history of this country.
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