Posted on 06/22/2011 1:23:14 PM PDT by Second Amendment First
A bipartisan team of Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas, will introduce federal legislation that would permit states to legalize, regulate, tax and control marijuana without federal interference.
The legislation will be unveiled Thursday by Frank, an outspoken liberal Democrat, and the libertarian Paul, who is running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
The bill would limit the U.S. government role in marijuana enforcement to interdiction of cross-border or inter-state smuggling. Citizens would be able to legally grow, use or sell cannabis in states which have legalized the forbidden weed.
The legislation is the first bill to be introduced in Congress that would end federal marijuana prohibition.
In a preview of the legislation, the Marijuana Policy Project noted that last week marked the 40th Anniversary of when President Nixon declared that the federal government was at war with marijuana and other drugs.
Nixon had rejected recommendations by a presidential panel that the country move toward decriminalization and an education and treatment-based drug policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.seattlepi.com ...
#2 and #5 are contradictory. You cannot simultaneously support holding Congress to the original intent of the Commerce Clause, and approve of legislation that assumes control of intrastate commerce, or assumes control of the manufacture, growing or posession of something because it could hypothetically be part of interstate commerce some day. This is not what the objective or nature of the Commerce power was intented or understood to be by the people who made that transfer of power.
I went to school with someone who graduated early with an IE degree and went on to Grad School while smoking daily, so for me that would be 1.
As for the Bible, do cannabis plants occur naturally? Did God give us all of the plants to use?
Well lets see...my IQ has been tested and is over 140 but I’ve never really been interested in those fields so couldn’t tell you if I could do them or not? So far? Did you miss the prior discussion of how long some of us have doens this...two of us are at the 34 and 40 years amrk so I’d think if it really did what you claim it does wouldn’t it have happened by now? If it was a 3rd world invader that invasion came in prehistoric times because it has grown wild in the USA long before us whites found her shores.In fact it has long been rumored that the peace pipes that were smoked during the first Thanksgiving were not tabacco, they did eat for 3 days.... Some of the studies prehistorc Indians who lived here in Ohio shows clearly that they cultivated it. I wish people who would open their mouths and spew nonsense would bother to know their history first.
How can that be true? You support federal drug laws based on the New Deal Commerce Clause.
I have no problem with current Federal marijuana laws because marijuana is trafficked across national borders and state borders all the time
I asked about national marijuana prohibition, which includes intrastate. That depends on the New Deal Commerce Clause, which you claim not to support. You can't have it both ways.
How about meth and coacaine0? You want that legalized via the Tenth Amendment?
Well, in that sense murder, rape and assault are legalized via the Tenth Amendment since they are not federal crimes when committed intrastate. Do you want these crimes kept legal via the Tenth, or do you want fedgov involved there too? I want those issues to be left to the states.
Are there any efforts to make Farmer John's California grown marijuana that is only sold in California, 100% legal in California? Let me know. That might sneak in under The Tenth --
There was an effort that got defeated called Prop 19. I ask you this: If that had passed, would you have supported fedgov efforts to shut it down?
Say some New York researchers discover a very good drug but they can't afford the millions it takes to get FDA approval--- would you approve of it being manufactured and distributed in New York only?
Yes.
What if someone from New Jersey buys that drug and takes it to New Jersey? How do you prosecute him?
That's up to NY and NJ, yes? 18 year olds from states with a drinking age of 21 cross state lines all the time to legally buy liquor and bring it home. How are they prosecuted?
One more thing....alcohol is known to kill so why would I want to partake of something that kills when I could do what I’ve done for the past 34 years with no chance of death? If you want to talk bans shouldn’t the government take away a substance that kills people rather than banning one that has never killed anyone. Oh but when we speak of YOUR drug of choice that would be different right?
"Decriminalizing marijuana will only lead to millions more Americans becoming addicted to drugs and greater profits for drug cartels who fund violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Allowing states to determine their own marijuana policy flies in the face of Supreme Court precedent."
http://volokh.com/2011/06/23/rep-lamar-smith-on-bill-to-repeal-federal-pot-laws/
We’ve got 150 years of “precedent” before the New Deal, and 35 years of a different “precedent” after. Guess which one he’s chosen to disregard.
“If somebody’s gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society.”
-Sarah Palin.
I assume by leaving this part out, then you suffer from PDS.
"If we're talking about pot, I'm not for the legalization of pot, because I think that would just encourage our young people to think that it was OK to go ahead and use it and I'm not an advocate for that."
Like I already posted -— Marijuana commerce runs cross national boundaries as well as the American states. It is reasonable for the Feds to regulate and ban it as well as methedrine, crack, etc
At lest 50% of Marijuana comes from Mexico as well as the hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. The Federal Govt definitely has a role here to keep out those poisons.
Pot kills too mostly traffic accidents.... Pot also kills brain cells. Also much harsher on lungs than tobacco
Actually I am in favor of banning drug dealers. Kill them all. They sell poison and need to die for that. Pot dealers I would be more lenient with but those who push hard drugs need to be tried and executed same as they do in China and Persia
You would be wrong about each of your statements but don’t let that stop you from clinging to propaganda!
SO then tell me why as governeor she didn’t try to change the laws in Alaska? it is legal to grow your won there for personal use....you did know that right?
Get real. They don’t even allow us tot even kill child rapists and you think someone selling things to adults who want it should be killed? For the record I am not for hard drug legalization at all. IMHO if they would legalize and tax pot they would have a lot more money to go after the ones who create the real problems and cause death.There has never been a single death attributed to pot. It is impossible to OD on it.
And I'll say again, you are supporting federal laws based on the New Deal Commerce Clause. Why pretend that you aren't?
If marijuana needs to be prohibited, then do the honorable thing and amend the Constitution, rather than spit on the original Commerce Clause and Tenth Amendment.
At lest 50% of Marijuana comes from Mexico as well as the hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. The Federal Govt definitely has a role here to keep out those poisons.
Correct. That's because of the enumerated power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. See the difference?
Let’s back up a bit. Before adoption of the Constitution, states, under the Articles of Confederation, had erected protectionist barriers that interfered with the free flow of trade in the new country. One of the main reasons for the Constitutional Convention was to remedy that problem. The framers’ solution was the commerce clause, which was intended to make a free-trade zone out of the United States. (The clause also delegated to Congress the power to “regulate” trade with foreign nations and the Indian tribes. We will hold until later the question of whether this was a good way to solve the problem.)
At first, the clause was closely interpreted as referring to interference by the states with the flow of commerce. In 1824, Chief Justice John Marshall’s Court, in the first big case involving the commerce clause, Gibbons v. Ogden, struck down a New York law creating a steamship monopoly for traffic between New York and New Jersey. Marshall laid down the principle that for the national government to have jurisdiction, the issue must involve interstate commerce; i.e., it must involve the trafficking of goods (not manufacture) between two or more states. He also recognized that the enumeration of the interstate commerce power implied powers unenumerated (concerning intrastate commerce) and thus undelegated.
Gibbons may have gotten things off to a good start, but it did not last. Marshall sprinkled just enough bad seeds that, taken out of context, would allow later justices, legal scholars, and political opportunists to cultivate the commerce clause into a general power to do anything that could conceivably affect interstate commerce.
You should come out and state that the “Commerce Clause” has been misused by the Feds since 1824.
You've swallowed the liberal line of thinking on Gibbons. Gibbons clearly laid out boundaries between state and federal power over commerce. This relationship basically held until the Wickard decision. Justice Thomas explained it well in US v Lopez:
In my view, the dissent is wrong about the holding and reasoning of Gibbons. Because this error leads the dissent to characterize the first 150 years of this Court's case law as a "wrong turn," I feel compelled to put the last 50 years in proper perspective.
-snip-
Moreover, while suggesting that the Constitution might not permit States to regulate interstate or foreign commerce, the Court observed that "[i]nspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State" were but a small part "of that immense mass of legislation . . . not surrendered to a general government." Id., at 203.
From an early moment, the Court rejected the notion that Congress can regulate everything that affects interstate commerce. That the internal commerce of the States and the numerous state inspection, quarantine, and health laws had substantial effects on interstate commerce cannot be doubted. Nevertheless, they were not "surrendered to the general government."
-snip-
I am aware of no cases prior to the New Deal that characterized the power flowing from the Commerce Clause as sweepingly as does our substantial effects test. My review of the case law indicates that the substantial effects test is but an innovation of the 20th century.
Full decision at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1260.ZC1.html
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Now, how do you reconcile your support for federal laws based on the New Deal Commerce Clause with your claim to support the Clause's original meaning?
Matter of fact I know a 66 year old guy who smoked pot for 30 years but not for the last 10. He has memory problems. No proof pot caused it but .......
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