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."
Nonsense. Ever hear of the "forbidden fruit effect"?
We keep getting DU trolls who post this sort of crap here to "prove" the stereotype that conservatives are fascist Neanderthals.
Machine-gun shootouts between rival alcohol distributors were committed:
1. by the Easter Bunny
2. while alcohol was prohibited
3. while alcohol was legal
4. by Muslim males between the ages of 18 and 45
Legally, the issue already belongs to the states, unless and until an amendment to the US Constitution, similar in wording to the 18th, creates the necessary federal power.
English isn't your first language, is it?
Wild-ass guesses doesn't trump objective facts. Sorry.
I do believe it is like a death sentance to the one who is being treated like they are dead. There is a difference between 'tough love' and total abandonment.
If my apology isn't sufficent, well... I can't help that. I'm finished here.
If X rises AND falls with Y (as murders rose and fell with the rise and fall of alcohol criminalization), the case is stronger for a causal connection than if X and Y only rise (or only fall).
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
Thanks for supporting my point. One need not argue that the ONLY cause of dropping death rates was the end of Prohibition, in order to conclude that ending substance prohibitions can be expected to lead to fewer dealer-caused deaths.
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
Interesting speculation. What were those advances and when did they occur?
What's your point?
The last time I checked, constitutionally, the "issue" may be regulated by either the states or the federal government.
Bunk. The Necessary and Proper Clause cannot stretch the Commerce Clause, which is carefully worded to exclude intrastate commerce, into including intrastate commerce. The "substantial effects" test was a fabrication of the FDR court (as Justice Clarence Thomas has recognized).
You continually bring this up as though this is the goal of legalizing drugs -- fewer scumbag deaths.
Why are you focusing on murders, especially scumbag murders? Aren't the overall deaths associated with the legalization decision a factor?
You're all concerned about a murder rate of 9 per 100,000 -- today, alcohol "murders" 40 per 100,000. THIS is an improvement?
Personally, I'd rather the 9 scumbags offed each other, than 40 civilians die.
Because IrishCatholic asked, "What were the crime rates?"
especially scumbag murders?
Innocents don't get killed by rum/drug-runners?
Aren't the overall deaths associated with the legalization decision a factor?
If adults want to risk their own lives, that's their business.
today, alcohol "murders" 40 per 100,000.
Where's that stat from? And why the quotation marks?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Carefully worded! It says "among the several states".
It does not say "between the several states". It does not say, "Congress may only regulate interstate commerce". It does not say the regulation stops at the state line.
It says "among the several states".
"The Necessary and Proper Clause cannot stretch the Commerce Clause ... The "substantial effects" test was a fabrication of the FDR court ..."
I disagree. Justice Hughes used the phrase, "having such a close and substantial relation to interstate traffic" in the 1914 Shreveport Rate Cases to rule that Congress could regulate intrastate traffic:
"It is for Congress to supply the needed correction where the relation between intrastate and interstate rates presents the evil to be corrected, and this it may do completely, by reason of its control over the interstate carrier in all matters having such a close and substantial relation to interstate commerce that it is necessary or appropriate to exercise the control for the effective government of that commerce.
That was 20 years before FDR.
That's careful ... just not stated in today's parlance.
Why? Don't you believe that alcohol kills over 100,000 people per year?
"And why the quotation marks?"
Because alcohol cannot murder. But, nevertheless, 100,000 people die each year from alcohol and dead is dead, whether it's due to alcohol or a bullet from a Tommy gun.
Fine. Then we agree that the Founding Fathers carefully said, "among".
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