Ron Paul, Barney Frank to Jointly Introduce Bill to End Federal War on Marijuana

LA Times ^ | June 22, 2011 | Andrew Malcolm

[lbryce]

Congressmen Ron Paul, Barney Frank and others will introduce legislature Thursday that aims to end a major part of the war on drugs -- namely the battle against marijuana.

Reps. Paul (R-Texas) and Frank (D-Mass.), though technically on opposite sides of the aisle, have often spoken out against the war on drugs and will propose a bill "tomorrow ending the federal war on marijuana and letting states legalize, regulate, tax, and control marijuana without federal interference," according to a statement from the Marijuana Policy Project via Reason.

The bill would allow the individual states to decide how they want to deal with pot. Currently the federal government bogarts U.S. law, oftentimes arresting owners and employees of medical marijuana facilities, for example, who thought they were operating legally under city, county and/or state laws.

"The legislation would limit the federal government’s role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling, allowing people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal," according to the MPP statement.

The legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), is the first of its kind to be proposed in Congress that would end the 73-year-old federal marijuana prohibition that began with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.

Although Frank insists that this "is not a legalization bill," it will be an excellent test for those in Congress who claim to be for a limited, smaller, federal government -- one that gives more power to the states whenever possible as Paul and the "tea party" have rallied for over the last few years.

[Berlin_Freeper]

Is it any surprise that the freaks who want to push drugs on Americans are such serial cop haters, to the extent that they tell bold faced lies in public?

SWAT officers who killed former Marine during raid cleared

The one with the blood on the hands is the liar who is pushing drugs on America.

[rhombus]

I call BS.

[rhombus]

I love the smell of fear.

[LearsFool]

Yes, but it shouldn't. If society is going to collapse, let it.

Your wish has been granted.

Government cannot make the citizenry virtuous; it cannot prevent societal collapse. At best it can only slow the decline of the nation. And ultimately it can prevent the absolute disintegration and overthrow of a nation only by transforming the free republic into a tyranny.

It's what we asked for when we allowed liberty to be perverted into license. And it's what we're getting.

I don't like it any more than you do. I despise this ludicrous "War on Drugs". But it's the tyranny we chose for America.

[arderkrag]

Really? I didn’t choose it. It’s what I’ve been unwillingly saddled with.

[LearsFool]

I didn’t choose it. It’s what I’ve been unwillingly saddled with.

You have your fellow-citizens to blame.

Perhaps you're one of those who're busy bailing out water so that this ship of ours doesn't sink. Good. Next time you see somebody punching holes in the bottom, tell'em to knock it off. They're the enablers who have brought the tyrants down on our heads. And until we reign one another in, until we demonstrate the capacity for self-government, the tyranny will continue - and worsen.

[demshateGod]

Okay, so you do have a problem with prioritizing? We could strip all the unconstitutional junk all at once, I’m for that, but it won’t happen. Barney Fwank would fight to the death to keep that from happening. Philosophical arguments aside, do you think our country would be better or worse if we just legalized drugs without bringing down the whole nanny state? It’s a rhetorical question because I know what you really think, though you might not admit it.

You’re point is not stupid put when taken in broader philosophical context. But it is stupid when placed in the reality of where we are as a people. That’s my point. Why do drugs, porn, prostitution, gambling and other sins have to be the first things deregulated? Because those are the ones the liberals will give us? I wonder why that is...

[templarbeat]

You are aware that there is not a town in the country that marijuana isn’t present in, right? The drug war isn’t preventing usage at all, the only thing it’s doing is clogging up the prison system and creating a black market (like Prohibition did).

[templarbeat]

An increase in the demand for health services from marijuana is not a reason to push for keeping it illegal. Alcohol and tobacco actually kill you and kill you quicker, so make them illegal, if that’s your logic.

[Brett11]

Anybody who supports the federal war on drugs doesn’t support the 10th amendment and states’ rights.

[Notary Sojac]

do you think our country would be better or worse if we just legalized drugs without bringing down the whole nanny state?

I would of course like to do both. But I don't think it makes much difference what the priorities are.

I could live with returning to the status quo of a few decades ago, where drugs remained illegal but the whole SWAT team, IR vehicles looking for grow lights, asset confiscation regime goes away.

You see, it's not the fact that "drugs are illegal" that bothers me nearly so much as the whole (utterly failing) NKVD style enforcement regime that has metastasized in recent years.

[conservativebuckeye]

How would you know if he does or doesn’t?

[halfright]

Now we are going to have 7000 people who never smoked a joint in their lives comment on this. Liquor good, weed bad.

IT’s ABOUT STATES RIGHTS and NOT ALLOWING the FEDS to interfere. It’s none of their damn business what we consume.

We are big boys and girls. We don’t need a nanny.

[demshateGod]

I can see how you, being from Ohio, would have a hard time knowing stuff like that. People from Oklahoma are more difficult to fool. We’re the reddest state in the country because it ain’t easy fooling us. I’m half joking.

Come on, I’ve heard people say this a lot but I’ve never met a pots smoker who wasn’t also a loser. Have you?

[Christian Engineer Mass]

“What you can’t do is curb free will”

But you can curb the creation of new drug habits in kids. Yes, you really really can. And it’s working well.

[Oceander]

An increase in the demand for health services from marijuana is not a reason to push for keeping it illegal. Alcohol and tobacco actually kill you and kill you quicker, so make them illegal, if that’s your logic.

Who said it was? Certainly not I. Next time, read before you type.

But, on the subject of logic, the fault lies in yours, not in that of the putative strawman you're attacking. How? Simple: alcohol and tobacco have been in constant, steady use for a long time now, so their effects on the public health system have already been fully accounted for - that is, the marginal costs associated with alcohol and tobacco use are already fully taken into account, so they cannot increase the costs of that system. Since the point at issue was whether legalizing marijuana would add an additional burden to the public health care system, the toxicity and/or lethality of alcohol and tobacco are irrelevant since the public health care system can quite clearly bear the burden those substances place on that system.

Finally, the remarks I did make on this thread were addressed to the motivations of said Congress-vermin, not to the actual impact on the public health care system, nor the more general topic of whether or not marijuana or other mind-altering substances ought to be illegal.

But, since you made that an issue, I will simply say that I am in full accord with the view that it is not a proper subject for federal legislation and ought to be left to the individual states to deal with as each state thinks proper.

Then again, there are an awful lot of things that I do not believe are fit or proper subjects of federal legislation.

[RaceBannon]

then you really woudn’t like how my response to that issue of NR was the largest printed reader response back then, either

[exDemMom]

Here are some selections from a PubMed search, keywords: marijuana schizophrenia. The quotes are taken from the abstracts.

Marijuana exposure during the critical period of adolescent brain maturation may disrupt neuro-modulatory influences of endocannabinoids and increase schizophrenia susceptibility.

BACKGROUND: Cannabis has been associated with transient psychotic states; however, the causal relationship between cannabis and schizophrenia continues to remain a matter of debate. Epidemiological and some biological studies hint at cannabis being an independent risk factor for schizophrenia; this has not been definitively proved.

Cannabis is one of the most commonly used illicit drugs, and despite the widely held belief that it is a safe drug, its long-term use has potentially harmful consequences. To date, the research on the impact of its use has largely been epidemiological in nature and has consistently found that cannabis use is associated with schizophrenia outcomes later in life, even after controlling for several confounding factors.

Some specific brain pathways are implicated in marijuana use in relation to the development of schizophrenia. Note that marijuana is not going to cause schizophrenia in individuals who don't carry any of the schizophrenia genes. I think that the only definitive answer is to set up a study in which the marijuana usage habits are compared between sets of individuals who carry the gene mutations normally associated with schizophrenia, and to determine if more of the marijuana users become schizophrenic than those who don't.

In my whole life, I have only known two schizophrenics; it is not a common disorder.

[conservativebuckeye]

Hey, can’t you pick on Massachusetts or New Jersey or even Pennsylvania or Michigan. They’re all to the left of my beloved Ohio. Even Oklahoma makes an occasional mistake. I mean, Brad Henry over Steve Largent, c’mon. Granted, Henry easily beats Dick Celeste and Ted Strickland. As for your question, yes I have. However, most of them don’t do it on a regular basis. The ones that do, don’t really broadcast it. Most of the stoner losers we know would be losers without pot, albeit probably less so.

[conservativebuckeye]

How do you know they weren’t losers before using the drug? I absolutely agree with your first preconditon, but the second is a bit extreme.