Replies

The 18th Amendment enacted Prohibition in 1920. So there was popular sentiment in the country to end the production and distribution of alcohol. Just 13 years later in 1933 Prohibition was repealed with the 21st Amendment. What is striking is that the people of the United States had the good sense to understand that Prohibition was a horrific mistake. Then they were able to do a quick 180 and rectify their foolish and dare a say stupid mistake.

Vin Suprynowiz noted in “Send in the Waco Killers” that everyone understood in 1910 that Congress could not simply pass a law outlawing the sale and distribution of alcohol because the Constitution did not allow it to do so; and thus a Constitutional amendment would be required to pass such laws.

But by 1935, after the FDR government interventions, Congress passed the drug laws without a peep about its lack of authority to do so. No one challenged the consitutionality of the drug laws.

You’re very right; but the very existence of the 18th Amendment is all the proof we should need for a judiciary that worships precedent to show that the drug laws are invalid... unless, ‘precedent’ is merely the judiciary’s way of saying “I can ignore what I don’t like and make you follow what I do!”