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Dawg, if you want to make sure that drug laws target teens, fine, push for them in your town, your county, your state. WHAT does the Federal government have to do with it? What you call "useless minutiae" is a fundamental principle and yes, Cruz is "exploring it" in this discussion. It applies to drugs the same way it applies to health insurance the way it applies to marriage the way it applies to "gay" marriage the way it applies to education, and on and on.

Cruz is RIGHT.

That's how I see it. And I have to confess, coming of age during the hippie era of the 60's and 70's, I was all for enforcement against mind-altering drugs, no matter what level of government was doing the enforcing. I saw first hand how destructive drug abuse could be. And for me this included alcohol and tobacco. At that time in my life, I'd have been fine with universal prohibition. My grandparents on my mother's side were nearly killed in a head on collision with a drunk driver. So I understand the impetus to suppress these things. They are evil, and they work evil in any culture that tolerates them.

Having said that, the federal government is a creation of the Constitution. It should only serve those purposes for which it was designed, and not a whit more. The founders were concerned about the consolidation of too much power in some remote location detached from the people forced to live under that power. They wanted a system that maximized both freedom of the people and accountability of those who had the rule over them. They came up with this separation of powers between the states and the federal government, such that the fed would really only have a role as referee between the states, and to organize the states for the occasional special project, like fighting an international war, etc. The fed was never intended to replace the states as the behavioral monitor of individual citizens.

By original design then, if a state chooses a poor course of action in an area not covered by the Constitution, it should be up to the good people of that state to either repel that dissolution within the boundaries and laws of their own state, or vote with their feet and go elsewhere. Such things do not belong under federal jurisdiction, except as it affects the relationships between states. The right of states to self-govern entails the duty to govern well or pay the consequences for idiocy. One of the reasons we have liberal states surviving as unnaturally long as they have is the giant "safety net" of federal largess protecting them from the natural consequences of their bad behavior.

So as painful as it is, to restore order under local control, we need to populate the federal government with leaders who understand and are willing to be restrained by the constitutionally limited role of the federal power. Right now, Ted Cruz answers that description well.

Peace,

SR

I am not a fan of federal government mandates. However, the Constitution does mandate the federal government promote the general welfare. Tobacco has been grandfathered in as far as its legality; had it been innovated in the last fifty years, it would have been outlawed. Alcohol can certainly be dangerous if abused, but no one will ever again call for its prohibition, and probably shouldn’t. But however you slice it, mood altering drugs are inherently dangerous, and quickly so. We all know what heroin does on the streets; weed is just slower. You would not want your daughter dating a pothead. There is a reason for that. I’ve had some friends who smoked weed. I thought some of them were nice people. They told me they were addicted to it - had to have it. What happened in Colorado presages the further breakdown of society.