Posted on 06/23/2011 3:33:06 PM PDT by Crush
Dr. Ron Paul (R-Texas) clarified details on the marijuana bill he will introduce with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and others. Paul talked to Larry Kudlow on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report on Wednesday. The bill is not a blanket legalization bill as numerous media have suggested.
Paul's position relates to the Tenth Amendment.
Paul said the bill would return marijuana to the status that existed in 1937. The legislation, he said, would remove it “from the jurisdiction of the federal government.” The states that chose to legalize it for personal use or for medical purposes would regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol.
Kudlow noted the approach is a Tenth Amendment issue. The debate over marijuana has led some states where the herb is permitted for medical use to prohibit the use because of conflict with federal law.
The Wall Street Journal pointed out at the Washington Wire blog that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has refused to implement his state’s medical marijuana law “without assurances from federal prosecutors.”
Another example is California where medical use is legal but dispensaries have been raided by federal law enforcement.
Paul, who is a medical doctor, said marijuana is helpful for people who have cancer and who are getting chemotherapy. There is also potential for people who suffer chronic pain but want to avoid a narcotic pain reliever that can lead to physical addiction.
Paul told Kudlow the federal government’s War on Drugs begun by President Richard Nixon (R) is a “catastrophe” that has cost US taxpayers more than $1 trillion.
Paul’s central point, however, is that the states should have jurisdiction over the issue.
CNBC said that 15 US states and the District of Columbia already permit the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Federal laws, however, technically place those states...
(Excerpt) Read more at theusreport.com ...
It could be, but the federal government still needs to be involved in interstate trade, as well as international. Some comes in from Canada, and cocaine is far from the only thing Mexicans are killing each other over when trying to control smuggling in from south of the border. I’m not going to argue that the declared War on Drugs has been successful, just that without the demand for it addressed successfully, it’s never going to be.
I don’t think legalizing it will address that - people already have enough problems with addictions to legal prescription medicine, tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, whatever. Why have so many people chosen to escape reality with narcotics? What is it about them? What is it about reality?
That is a completely different characterization of the bill than previous articles put forth. Those articles gave the impression that the Fed gov had the authority to tell the states what they could or couldn't do. This one makes it sound like the bill will repeal Federal drug laws. Only the latter would be in line with the 10th amendment.
Interesting. Go on, more details about the 90% less illegal aliens?
Right, the seeds have only trace amounts of THC, but other parts were known and used medicinally, including for the euphoric effect (not nearly naturally as strong as in the hybrid, bred strains around now).
I don’t smoke pot and I never have. I’ve never knowingly broken a law in my adult life.
But the War on Drugs directly and profoundly impacts people in chronic pain and I’m against it.
As another poster so succinctly put it, “It appears that the war on drugs has been a 40 year flop.” By all counts, this is true.
When innocent people are treated like criminals - when a patient can’t even get a doctor to run tests for back pain because the complaint of back pain automatically labels them an ‘addict’ - we’re a nation that’s lost it’s collective mind.
And it angers me the most when ‘liberty-loving’ conservatives use the same ‘for the children’ argument that liberty-stealing socialists use to take away MY right to pain management.
The DEA and the federal government are out of control.
Leave it up to the states. At least that way, I’d have a place to go to get help.
Thanks, Federal Government, for protecting me from myself!
the War on Drugs is a failure. Billions of dollars for what?
so that a black market can lead to crime? Filled jails? Loss of privacy? Overbearing government?
Get out of other people’s lives. Listen to Milton Friedman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLsCC0LZxkY
Why stop with marijuana Mr Paul? Let’s go ahead and legalize coke, crack, PCP, meth, and any and all other society damaging drugs.
I hope you can find a legitimate doctor that’s not afraid to have a look at your chronic pain then. I think whatever risk there is in going to one in Texas now would be worth it, if the pain is as bad as I can imagine. And I hope you feel better.
The drug culture is very important to the left, just as much as perversion and the intentional undermining of virtues deemed critically necessary by our founders to keep our freedoms.
Follow the perversions of the left and we will keep losing our real freedoms.
Actually, it's the Drug Warriors that have a good idea why. The principled among them argue that drugs serve as an escape from the onerous duties that the citizenry sometime have to assume. Those include political duties.
The libertarians's riposte is that forcing people to be free only acclimatizes them to being forced. Once people are used to being forced, they can be forced to be unfree much more easily.
You may be interested in this quote from Ayn Rand: "Drug addiction is the confession of an intolerable inner state."
Yes, notice that RuPaul doesn't have much to say about other assaults on our liberties such as government-mandated lightbulbs, Executive Orders instructing lower level officials not to enforce immigration laws, or all of these food regulations, but when it comes to pot or gays, he's all over it.
I'm no advocate of the War on Drugs, but it sure doesn't take a genius to see what RuPaul is really all about.
I live in a tourist town and in the 90s the influx of illegals began and replaced most of the students and legal foreign temp workers in the motel and restaurant industries. By 2000 they had taken a majority of construction jobs here too. About two years ago I noticed that most of them seemed to have left. I made a passing remark to a friend that the lousy economy had sent them packing.
He and his wife are well-versed in the new MM laws and the people around here who are taking advantage of it. He replied; "they didn't leave because of the economy they left because most of them were selling Mexican pot and their market dried up when the pot shops opened." Made sense since the motels, restaurants and a good deal of the construction are still here.
...but other parts were known and used medicinally, including for the euphoric effect...
I know a little about TCM and have friends trained in it and have never heard of Chinese use of anything but the seeds. Not saying they don't but I've never heard it or seen it listed in their pharmacopeias.
That's my basic understanding of it as well: that it's in large part a rejection of responsibility.
I dont endorse it and although I did it (A LOT) in college I would NOT do it now, if it was legal.
But i am 100% in favor of legalization.
It is far less harmful than alcohol and has actual medicinal effects alcohol does not have.
If it was legal people would use it instead of other mor dangerous and more illegal drugs.
Last, it makes your hair stop falling out, enhances creativity, and fights nausea.
but IN MODERATION!!! like everything else.
I don't think you get it. legitimate doctors look at my back, grimace, then kick me out of their offices. My problem is obvious, well-documented and backed up with x-rays, MRI's, and the opinions of specialists. But it doesn't matter.
See, I am a 'pain patient'. Therefore, I am a second-class citizen. I am a threat to everything they've worked for and to their personal liberty. Doctors in Texas can't afford to prescribe pain medications right now and the ones who dare do it are being arrested.
Trust me, I am by far, not the only patient in this situation. There are thousands of people in my situation.
The thing that conservatives don't get is that it doesn't matter how legitimate your problem is in today's anti-drug climate. (I had a friend who was denied pain management while fighting CANCER.) ANY pain-management is suspect. Long-term pain management is not going to happen.
At one time, I was naive. I thought that it was only 'bad' people who were denied pain medications. It couldn't happen to me! I'm legitimate!
How wrong I was.
I’m curious why the pot/drug laws were pretty much unnoticed for almost 30 years, and then, since the takeover of America by the left in the 1960s, now they are a huge issue to liberals.
Sorry but this law just doesn’t make sense. It will create nothing but legal headaches with uneven applications. Either legalize the stuff or don’t but let’s not pretend it has any medical uses.
“Not saying they don’t but I’ve never heard it or seen it listed in their pharmacopeias.”
I’m using the past tense above because I don’t know of anywhere in the Chinese-speaking world where it’s now legal to do so. I’m no expert in traditional Chinese medicine; I’d only seen it listed in a book in English I came across on their pharmacopoeia which listed parts used as seeds and aerial parts - leaves and flowers.
“About two years ago I noticed that most of them seemed to have left.”
That’s surprising if so many of them were involved in the drug trade. Being free of illegal aliens would of course be a good thing, but surely there are other ways to be free of them? Operation Wetback didn’t need to legalize marijuana to work.
I am sure that there are. Good luck in your town, my town doesn't have a problem with illegals anymore.
I said libertarians, not RP
If someone does not believe that national borders should exist they are saying this country should not exist, why would they be running for office in a country that should not exist?
I hope you can find the relief you’re looking for. Maybe looking into other treatments or therapies would help you.
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