Posted on 04/05/2009 4:36:51 PM PDT by ChrisInAR
What do you talk about at lunch with Tom Tancredo? I thought I knew, but to my surprise (and relief), we spent much of the hour discussing the wisdom of legalizing drugs rather than rehashing our disagreements over illegal immigrants.
"The status quo isn't working," Tancredo says, meaning the war on drugs has failed — spectacularly. And while that's hardly a novel insight, most people who reach it don't take the next step of questioning the drug war itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
Exactly WHERE in the Constitution do you find the authority granted to ANY level of government to “limit us”??? Please be specific. And whilst you’re at it, ponder this: It seems pretty clear to me, in reading the original documents that got this country started, the Founders did not intend to allow government any more power than what each individual was legitimately able to exercise. Recall that they talked often about government with the “CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.” What this means is that you cannot consent to have someone do in your name and on your behalf ANYTHING that you, yourself, cannot legitimately and properly do. For example, you yourself cannot compel me, at the point of your gun, to contribute to a fund for your mother’s surgery. Thus, you equally cannot hire rabscuttle385 to do it on your behalf. (And if you tried, he’d rightly punch your lights out.) Nor can you have the GOVERNMENT do for you what you may not do yourself. THAT is what the Founders talked about when they discussed “Consent Of The Governed.” What you want is what the Founders were running away from: 50% plus one and anything goes. Too bad, so sad, that is NOT what the Constitution provides for.
Gentlemen, in your reading and understanding of the Constitution, do you think authority is delegated to fedgov to regulate vice under the Commerce Clause? Or do you think the states retained this authority under the Tenth Amendment?
You leave out of this argument something that in recent years has vexed conservatives, and that is judicial activism, such as with Roe v. Wade.
You see, the sad part about this is that it doesn’t matter how rational the law or what the Constitution actually says. It matters how case law is interpreted in the end. With that, the stupid Commerce Clause trumps all. Even growing the tiniest part of an illegal substance has been ruled by the Supreme Court to be affecting interstate commerce, even if it was never bought or sold. It is bogus, I agree, but it is the reality of our lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
I would ask you by what authority the welfare state was started, and I can tell you that on that count, again it was the Supreme Court, after FDR announced his Supreme Court packing plan, that made the Court flip over and accept all such grotesque programs on behalf of the country.
On paper, the States should decide, but in real life, the Federal Government has been given the right to govern on drug policies. Conservative justices were against this, but prior case law, coupled with a majority of liberals on the Court, screwed it up since even before the New Deal days.
As a result, this fight occurs at the federal level and the States are largely impotent until the Supreme Court undoes its evil deeds.
“Gentlemen, in your reading and understanding of the Constitution, do you think authority is delegated to fedgov to regulate vice under the Commerce Clause? Or do you think the states retained this authority under the Tenth Amendment?”
Unless by “limit us” you mean that government proposes to punish those who commit crimes which have actual victims, such as robbery, rape, fraud, creating kiddie porn or beating up their wives and things like that. THAT is what government is essentially limited to, in a free, Constitutional Republic. Obviously we cannot PREVENT crimes against others, but we can make the penalty high enough to give pause to SOME and then exact penalties on those who do not pause ENOUGH. That is the best we can do without giving government TOTAL power and authority and that is anathema to me (and SHOULD BE to real CONSERVATIVES!). For those who use recreational substances, it’s normally going to be a self-correcting problem, as a real ABUSER will take himself out of the gene pool reasonably quickly once we delete the “safety net” that forces US to support him in his vices. If someone were, for example, to attempt a robbery in this mythical Free Constitutional Republic, his “victim” would punch his ticket with a .45 caliber hole punch. End of story.
If THAT’S what you mean, then I’m with you. If you yet mean that government should have the ability to punish private, NON-COERCIVE behaviors, then you’ve got a SERIOUS fight on your hands, because YOU are aligning yourself with the ENEMIES of the Republic. You are as bad, in YOUR direction, as ANY of the Obamites.
What bothers me about former Rep. Tancredo is this: now that you have said that the Drug War is a failure, where were you when you were a member of Congress? You decided to wait until you were out of Congress before you had your “Road to Damascus Moment”? Puh-leeeeeeeze!
Excellent argument if you leave it in context..CONSENTING ADULTS (and note I did NOT call you A hole under my breath!).
The rest of your jibberish had nothing to do with the discussion I was having with someone else.
IMO, you exhibit the moral dry rot that Thomas Sowell was talking about: "The politics of condoned law-breaking is part of the moral dry rot of our times."
That’s basically the same thing that happened to Bob Barr. Only he went from being the most vocal opponent of marijuana as a medicine in all of Congress, to being the Libertarian Presidential Candidate.
But I am not, nor ever will be a Barr fan.
He’s a political whore who changes his views to suit his career desires. I live in his former district.
Excellent way of saying it. Too bad the LP was stupid enough to nominate this former / recovering Drug Warrior as its nominee for President.
“For those of us who are responsible non-drug-using citizens”
what about responsible drug using citizens? they must exist, these people who break the law every once and a while and smoke a joint in the attic listening to iron butterfly. They’ve got jobs, a house, kids, 401k, they serve on juries and attend PTA meetings. these people do exist, hell, they’re probably your next door neighbors.
“what about responsible drug using citizens? “
Um, no such thing. Catch-22: They are breaking the law and ergo are being irresponsible. Especially if they have kids. its a bad risk you take doing something that could make your own kid the son of a jailbird, just to get high. Still ... I get the point.
“they must exist” Surely. It cant just be Soros funding these drug legalization efforts. And someone must have all those Ron Paul bumper stickers. ;-)
You keep saying that, but it is de facto legal in the Netherlands and has been since the late 1970s. Commercial production is not legal but everything else is de facto legal. I say “de facto legal” because they still have laws on the books against these activities, but they have an official policy of tolerance that is enforced against the government in their courts. This is almost like us having a law on our books that has been declared unconstitutional. They have “coffeeshops” with permits to sell marijuana, and these shops do so openly. Some have neon marijuana leaves on their storefronts. Most have web pages. Some display the product behind glass cases for all to see. They all have menus with various marijuana products listed and described. People are allowed to openly smoke marijuana in these establishments. They can have up to 500 grams on premises at a time and they can sell customers up to five grams each. As long as the coffeeshops follow the rules, the police cannot mess with them.
The same goes for the people. They are allowed to have up to five grams of marijuana on their person. The police cannot arrest them or even take their pot. The courts will not allow it because the government has a policy of tolerance and they aren't allowed to go after one person for something they let everyone else get away with. Their courts are basically saying it is legal for people to possess marijuana and it is legal for the coffeeshops to sell it. People are allowed to possess now up to five grams and they are allowed to grow up to five plants each. Now, with the plants the police do have discretion to seize them, but they cannot arrest people, fine them, give them a ticket, whatever. And they never really mess with people for having a few plants. People grow them out in the open for all to see.
What isn't legal though is commercial production, which is stupid. Organized crime supplies much of the product sold in these shops and of course they supply large amounts for export and sell other drugs and the pot money funds all sorts of other criminal activity.
The reasons the Netherlands or any other country cannot totally legalize marijuana is because it would be against international law. The Netherlands is a part of the EU and they are also parties to international treaties and conventions on drugs which would not allow for legalization. That's why they have this policy of tolerance, so they can have the laws on the books, but still have legal marijuana. If the highest courts in the land say it's legal, it's legal. If the police can't bother you for having a little marijuana, it's legal. It doesn't matter what the statute says. We have all sorts of laws on the books in most every state that have long been declared unconstitutional and are nothing but historical curiosities, not laws anyone has any legal obligation to follow. In the Netherlands you are welcome to buy a small amount of pot and smoke it, and everybody there knows that.
The Netherlands has experienced some problems with their marijuana policies. Organized crime is a problem because their system encourages it. Somebody has to supply the pot. Drug tourism has been a problem. They're a small country tucked in with a lot of other countries where pot is not legal. A lot of young people go there to party for the novelty of being able to go into a pot shop and select from a wide variety of product. They go out drinking, smoking pot, and they used to be able to buy hallucinogenic mushrooms too. Young people getting wasted as can be on all sorts of different intoxicants are going to cause some problems. They've also gotten a lot of guff from neighboring countries who complain that their people go to the Netherlands and bring pot back, not just from the coffeeshops but larger quantities from the people who supply the coffeeshops, you know, the organized crime guys that wouldn't be nearly the problem they are if the Dutch had legal commercial production of marijuana.
They've had some problems, but one problem they haven't had is super high marijuana use rates. Use rates fluctuate, but there are several countries in Europe where a greater percentage of the population smoke marijuana. A greater percentage of Americans smoke it too. It is for all intents and purposes legal there, and has been since the Seventies, yet what we don't see are huge numbers of the Dutch smoking pot. Most people there don't smoke it because there are all sorts of good reasons not to smoke it, because it isn't so great to begin with.
I'm not for legalizing all drugs. I think we should legalize pot though and regulate it similar to alcohol. Use would go up some, but I think most people who want to smoke pot are already smoking it. Precious few are deterred by the remote possibility of getting caught and getting what in most cases would be not much more than a slap on the wrist. It's easily available everywhere and it's cheap on a per use basis when you compare it to something like beer. The law might stop a few people, but it's all the other good reasons not to smoke pot that stop most people, and those reasons would still exist even if it was legal.
Oh, and we don't need a constitutional amendment to legalize pot. We only needed that for alcohol because we had amended the Constitution to make it illegal in the first place. We needed a new amendment to nullify the old amendmendment.
That's regulation.
People need to come to grips with this irrational fear of marijuana. Legalizing it will not turn us into a nation of twinkie-eating slackers. I hate twinkies. Cigarettes are freely available and many, many people do not smoke. Alcohol is freely available and many, many people do not drink. Legal or not, drugs are freely available and most people do not partake. Legalization would not change that.
It's not regulation in the sense that an industry is created for the purpose of taxation, which is a specious justification for legalizing marijuana. Give people the right to grow it but not sell it. They can do it in the privacy of their own home, problem solved.
Taxation is not the justification for legalizing marijuana. It would be better for the government to make money from the industry than to blow a fortune trying in vain to keep up the ban, but there are plenty of good reasons to legalize marijuana. One of the biggest is to cut organized crime out of the picture.
Legalizing it and allowing people to grow some plants but no sales would be preferable to what we have now, but it would not be the ideal situation. Most pot smokers will not go to the trouble of growing their own. They won't have the time or the space or the skills required. Maybe they're lazy or just don't feel like messing with it. Most don't smoke enough to justify the hassle of it.
The Dutch are allowed to grow up to five plants each and in medical marijuana states people can grow their own, yet the coffeeshops in the Netherlands and the medical marijuana dispensaries in California do gangbusters business selling expensive pot to people who could just grow their own. If people were allowed to grow their own, there would still be a substantial black market. Homegrowers would in many cases sell part of their crop, and organized crime would still be selling a lot. Home growers would probably cut into organized crimes business some, it's just hard to say how much though. Dealers would probably deal with them for the most part because they would always have a reliable supply whereas homegrowers would be hit or miss and they'd have to deal with a lot of them to keep a steady supply for their clientele.
Then we'd still have powerful organized crime groups making lots of money from pot and pushing their far more dangerous drugs through the people selling their pot. Mexican Drug trafficking organizations today make most of their money from pot and they supply 90% of the cocaine and 80% or better of meth and heroin consumed in this country. They piggy back the hard stuff in on top of the marijuana and much of it ends up being sold by the people who sell their pot.
Legalization and regulation similar to alcohol regulation makes the most sense. Competitive commercial production and distribution of marijuana in a legal environment would drive prices way down. Sure the government is going to tax it, but they could put high taxes on it and still have the price be below what people are paying today. They could kill the black market for marijuana, which is most of the black market for illegal drugs, and make more than enough money to pay for the cost of regulating the industry and the continued efforts to do something about the problem of the hard stuff. Just letting people possess it and grow a few plants would leave us pretty much in the same boat we are in. It wouldn't be “problem solved.”
regulate
–verb (used with object)
1. to control or direct by a rule, principle, method, etc.: to regulate household expenses.
2. to adjust to some standard or requirement, as amount, degree, etc.: to regulate the temperature.
3. to adjust so as to ensure accuracy of operation: to regulate a watch.
4. to put in good order: to regulate the digestion.
There is a great deal of irrational fear associated with marijuana.
With all due respect, you sound like a liberal playing word games and arguing semantics. Give people the right to grow it and use it in the privacy of their own homes, and keep or toughen existing laws against selling, distribution and transportation. Problem would be solved: demand for foreign marijuana would drop dramatically to negligible levels. Creating a regulated industry in the interest of tax revenue it is not a valid solution or reason for legalization...it's pothead talk grasping for validation.
I don't believe I mentioned anything about taxation. I simply said to legalize it and pointed out that your statement about no regulation was not actually no regulation. I do not smoke (anything), but I do not believe we need legislation keeping you from doing it, nor do we need to tax it. I'm appalled by the new cigarette tax, although it does not apply directly to me. We'll have to agree to disagree about the semantics.
Amsterdam cafes rely heavily on tourist dollars and Mexican pot is not considered high quality; Hydro is superior. Creating a regulated industry will also cause damage to our culture ala Holland. The Dutch had second thoughts and tightened their drug laws: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2149385/posts FYI, there is a huge black market now, giving people the right to grow their own would reduce it, lazy defense aside, and reduce the demand for foreign sources. It's amazing that people profess to want personal rights, but would rather have the government get more involved in regulation of those rights instead of just taking personal responsibility for them and keeping the government effectively out of them.
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