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Posted on 01/23/2012 4:52:49 AM PST by Kaslin
I believe that states have the constitutional right to legalize drugs. For, the Constitution is silent on the federal government’s ability to regulate or ban substances that adults choose to digest at their own peril—or medical relief.
The Constitution is so silent on this matter of individual liberty (choosing to digest or use drugs) that in order to ban the sale of alcohol during the Prohibition era, we passed the 18th Amendment. When we wised up and realized that banning alcohol doesn’t work, we repealed the 18th Amendment via the 21st Amendment. I contend that federal drug laws are unconstitutional because they do not stem from a constitutional amendment.
Since the Constitution defines our freedoms negatively, states and individuals retain all rights that are not explicitly delegated to the federal government. The 10th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In other words, because the Constitution is silent on drugs, states alone have the constitutional power to regulate drugs.
Voters in states like California have exercised their constitutional right to legalize drugs, specifically medicinal marijuana to help cancer patients and those suffering from chronic pain due to autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis.
Californians aren’t flower power hippies. These voters realize that if it’s constitutional for individual Americans to binge on four-to-five alcoholic drinks in one sitting—drinks that incidentally do nothing to relieve chronic pain—it makes sense to legalize a far less lethal substance like marijuana with verified pain-relief benefits.
A prestigious medical study published by The Lancet in November 2010 reveals that alcohol is more lethal than heroin and crack cocaine and drastically more harmful than marijuana, ecstasy and LSD. On Jan. 6, 2012, The Lancet reaffirmed these findings with a global study revealing that: “marijuana was the world’s most widely consumed illicit drug … [and] the least likely of all illicit drugs to cause death,” as The New York Times relays.
We have not amended the Constitution to outlaw drugs. Nor did the war on drugs germinate in Congress. Instead, successive court rulings and executive orders have unconstitutionally banned drug use at the federal level—even to the point of overriding the sovereignty of states that explicitly legalize drugs.
‘And when the court decides to apply the Bill of Rights to state law, it winds up trampling … on the most important safeguard of our liberties: the division of power between the federal and state governments. … By the middle of the twentieth century the “due process” clause within the Fourteenth Amendment had come to be seen as the catchall phrase for federal intervention,’ writes author Jason Lewis in “Power Divided is Power Checked.”
Today, the Federal government, via the Department of Justice, has violated the separation of powers that the Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution. Federal agents allege that medical marijuana dispensaries and growers violate “federal law”—ripping out medicinal cannabis plants and destroying legitimate livelihoods overnight.
The New York Times reports: “Federal law classifies the possession and sale of marijuana as a serious crime and does not grant exceptions for medical use, so the programs adopted here, in 15 other states and in the District of Columbia exist in an odd legal limbo. … federal prosecutors have raided or threatened to seize the property of scores of growers and dispensaries in California that, in some cases, are regarded by local officials as law-abiding models. At the same time, the Internal Revenue Service has levied large, disputed tax charges against the state’s largest dispensary, threatening its ability to continue.”
The war on drugs began when President Richard Nixon bypassed Congress and declared a war on drugs on July 17, 1971. He said that drug abuse was a “national emergency” and America’s “public enemy number one.” He signed the “war” into law on January 28, 1972. By unconstitutional executive order, Nixon created the first drug czar and also created an extra-congressional agency to regulate drugs called the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Successive Presidents have sustained this war.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress (not the president) the “Power … To declare war.” Federalist and framer Alexander Hamilton further explains the Constitution’s checks on executive reach in The Federalist No. 78. He says the president publicly declares and enforces the laws Congress makes and the decisions or appointments Congress approves: “The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community.”
Some might object that America’s forty-year-long and over $2.5-trillion fight against drug abuse isn’t technically a “war.” But that’s a hard position to defend when scores of innocent Americans and Mexicans have died throughout our combat with brutal Mexican drug cartels. Since 2006 alone, when President Felipe Calderón declared his own war against drugs, between 40,000 and 50,000 people (depending on your source) have died in this conflict.
Moreover, the right to own your entire person is a fundamental human right and it is foundational to the Constitution. Unless you use wrongful force against another person or their property, you retain full ownership over your body. As John Locke points out, reason tells you that you fully own your body. No one else owns your body—not your neighbors, your family or the government.
Rep. Ron Paul explains: “All of our freedoms – the freedom of religion and assembly, the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the right to be free from unnecessary government searches and seizures – stem from the precept that you own yourself and are responsible for your own choices. Prohibition laws negate self-ownership and are an absolute affront to the principles of freedom. I disagree vehemently with the recreational use of drugs, but at the same time, if people are only free to make good decisions, they are not truly free. In any case, states should decide for themselves how to handle these issues and the federal government should respect their choices.”
Freedom is the power to choose between good and bad options for our own private property and body; freedom is the power to opt for healthy behaviors like prayer, aerobic exercise and strength training over unhealthy behaviors like self-mutilation, chain smoking, binge drinking and inhaling pain thinner. I think the federal government needs to respect individual freedom by deferring to the states in matters like drug use where the Constitution is silent.
Ther is no need to LEGALIZE them, simply repeal the laws making them ILLEGAL. No, I do not favor doing so, unless we are protected from the unintended consequences.
Yes. Anyone who cannot be trusted to be armed should not be out among us. They should be dead or incarcerated.
Case in point: Newt. Only God knows if his conversion is sincere; I'll take his word (God's word that is, about casting the first stone).
Meanwhile, take a look at the billion$ made by the tobacco industry. Hemp is easier to grow, produces animal feed, paper, cloth, biodiesel, and people would line up to pay $10 for a pack of hemp cigarettes.
Cops would have to fight real crimes while hundreds of thousands would find employment in a multi billion dollar industry that's no more complicated than letting a weed grow. And people who want to get together and laugh a little bit, to do so without destroying their lives.
Stupid, lazy and cowardly American illegal drug users are too stupid, lazy and chicken to change their reality, so they use illegal drugs to try and ignore their reality for a few minutes. How many Mexicans have died so that stupid, lazy and chicken American illegal drug users could ignore reality for a few minutes? Tens of thousands? I don’t care about alcohol. Illegal drugs as medicine? For what? Hangnails? I don’t care about legalizing drugs so that the stupid, lazy and cowardly American illegal drug users can get their drugs cheaper. I do care about Americans and America. The only way to fix this problems is for the American illegal drug users to grow up and face their reality. There are too many people becoming millionaires off the misery of American illegal drug users. Legalizing drugs doesn’t eliminate that misery. We’d just be giving different people the money. We compete with other nations and they have an interest in seeing our people using illegal drugs to escape reality. It makes our country weak. And legalizing these drugs doesn’t eliminate this weakness. It just transfers the money to other people. Would legalizing drugs mean that suddenly, the drug users had become smart, hard-working and brave? Or is this argument just about redistributing the money from illegal drugs?
Nobody wants to see ANY drug use. But illegal drugs are out there, just as readily available as ever. (Ask your teenager how long it would take to score a bag of weed, then brace yourself for the answer!)
The “War on Drugs” has been an expensive, abysmal failure. For every big drug bust in the news, there were ten more shipments that got through. And the police can’t do anything to stop it except to get paid handsomely for trying. Ridiculous.
So what can we actually DO about illegal drugs? Simple.
Educate your kids. You trust your kid not to bring a gun to school and to stay sober behind the wheel, all because you taught them right from wrong. Do the same for illegal drugs and trust them to make the right decisions. (And don’t set a bad example by using them yourself, dummy!)
Beyond that, let the states decide. Every state has drug laws on the books, so there is no need for federal intervention, and no Constitutional basis for it, either.
As I noted, that was an ideal solution, but you could simply legalize it all and we’d be vastly better off than we are. I assume the reason that doesn’t happen is that there is too much money and too many yuppy careers tied up in drugs, the war on drugs, and the prison/industrial complex at this point.
Your post sounds like a left-wing caricature of what a conservative opinion on this subject would be.
How much you makin’, or takin’?
Everything you’ve said is true. Thanks for your discernment.
And government gets the authority to make criminals out of these folks from where??? Remember the ORIGINAL Founding Document, the Declaration of Independence? Recall the part that speaks of “...consent of the governed...”? What does that actually mean to you? Do you REALLY think it means that YOU can consent to limitations on, for example, MY God-given RIGHTS??? Why EVER would you think a stupid thing like that? No, in order to give consent to a third party (in this case, government) to do something in your name and on your behalf, YOU MUST FIRST HAVE THE (LEGAL/MORAL) AUTHORITY TO DO FOR YOURSELF. You cannot give away (or even lend) that which is NOT YOURS. No one outside yourself may properly control your life/body/property without your consent, nor may you control others or give consent to a third party to do so FOR you. Our governments, at all levels, derive the small bits of legitimate authority they have from We, the People. We, the People, can only lend the authority WHICH WE LEGITIMATELY POSSESS. And it should go without saying that no government can be greater than its master. Which is exactly how the Founders designed our system to be.
If you call yourself a conservative, ask yourself just what it is you want to conserve, the God-inspired system the Founders set up or the Progressive utopia people from Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson down through Billy Jeff Clinton and Barky Obummer have been trying so mightily to jam down our throats or shove up our butts.
My choice is easy: I support the Founders and the Constitution I swore an ETERNAL oath to protect and defend. I am also at least wise enough to know that different folks do different things, not all of which are either wise or popular. But that’s the reason for having a government in the first place: to protect the right of folks to do things that are not popular or even wise, but which don’t involve forcing others to participate. Even now the Left attacks and tries to limit our freedom to worship our Creator. By giving a patina of legitimacy to the limiting of SOME freedoms, the dumb and unpopular ones, you play right into their hands.
By not trying to impose your will on others with respect to what substances they might ingest or what caliber pistol they pack, AND LETTING THEM FACE THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS, good, bad or indifferent, you are standing tall on the shoulders of the mighty and Godly men who were privileged to found this nation.
Just kidding, man. Pass it over here. ;^)
Regulate Commerce, means making sure that commerce is free from tariffs between the states, not controlling it.
No fair making Constitutionally based arguments with logic and wisdom. It will confuse the Progressives that rule the GOP and the Dim parties.
“Regulate Commerce, means making sure that commerce is free from tariffs between the states, not controlling it.”
Do you know of text from the constitutional debate that supports this? I know tariffs were a major concern. But if the founders had been concerned about ONLY tariffs, they could have said that much more clearly. “Congress shall have the power . . . to regulate commerce between the states.” seems much broader language.
Personally, I would like to limit the Fed’s power as much as possible. But I think you need a constitutional amendment to get to your result.
I've always assumed that's what "legalize" means.
No, I do not favor doing so, unless we are protected from the unintended consequences.
What will protect us from the unintended consequences of the current drug laws: innocents killed in drug turf battles, enrichment of criminals, and the consequent increase in criminal firepower and ability to corrupt the justice system?
Weed is one thing.
Crack and meth are another.
The problem is the USSC was not granted the authority to enumate new powers for the federal government. Only the States are supposed to be able to do that by the process of Amendment. We need to overturn Wickard v Filburn, and make Congress limit itself to only exercising the powers that were granted to it, within the scope of the original intent of that grant of power.
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