Posted on 06/25/2011 1:50:46 AM PDT by danielmryan
The federal war on drugs is coming under attack from multiple angles, most recently with the introduction of a bill in Congress by conservative Rep. Ron Paul and liberal Rep. Barney Frank that would end the national prohibition on marijuana and allow states to set their own policies.
The “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011,” or HR 2306, would not “legalize” marijuana. If passed, the legislation would simply remove the plant from the federal list of “controlled substances.” States would then be free to regulate, tax, or prohibit it without U.S. government interference.
One of the important issues the bill would remedy is an ongoing conflict between federal authorities and numerous states that have nullified U.S. statutes by decriminalizing the possession of marijuana or legalizing it for medicinal purposes.
The legal medical-marijuana industry has flourished in over a dozen states in recent years in spite of the federal prohibition. But despite promising not to squander taxpayer money pursuing the issue, the Obama administration has actually increased federal bullying of state officials and the industry as a whole.
The new legislation, said to be the first of its kind introduced in Congress, also touches on several important questions beyond whether or not marijuana should be criminalized. And it puts conservatives in Congress who support federal drug prohibition while claiming to support the Constitution in an awkward position.
As opponents of the federal drug war point out, the U.S. government does not have any authority under the Constitution to ban substances, harmful or otherwise. That’s why alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment. So, under the Tenth Amendment, regulation of drugs necessarily falls under the purview of the states or the people.
But beyond the obvious constitutional problems with the federal war, supporters of the new legislation also argue that the policies have been an expensive failure with atrocious consequences.
“The war against marijuana causes so much hardship and accomplishes nothing,” Rep. Paul said during an interview about the proposal, noting that marijuana is helpful to many cancer patients. “We knew prohibition of alcohol was very bad, so this is just getting back to a sensible position on how we handle difficult problems.”
The 2012 GOP presidential candidate also said a trillion dollars had already been spent to fight the war on drugs. “And it’s a catastrophe, just as prohibition of alcohol was a catastrophe,” he explained. “Kids today have an easier time finding marijuana than they can alcohol.”
Liberal Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who introduced the bill with Paul, also blasted federal policies on the substance. "Criminally prosecuting adults for making the choice to smoke marijuana is a waste of law enforcement resources and an intrusion on personal freedom," he told reporters.
"I do not advocate urging people to smoke marijuana. Neither do I urge them to drink alcoholic beverages or smoke tobacco,” Frank added. “But in none of these cases do I think prohibition enforced by criminal sanctions is good public policy.”
Introduced on June 23, the bill has already attracted several cosponsors including Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.). “The human cost of the failed drug war has been enormous — egregious racial disparities, shattered families, poverty, public health crises, prohibition-related violence, and the erosion of civil liberties,” said cosponsor Rep. Lee of California, a state that has already used nullification to legalize medical marijuana. And outside of Congress, a broad coalition of supporters is also rallying around the bill.
“I don't have to tell you how historic and important this bill has the potential to be,” said executive director Neill Franklin of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization of current and former law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges that advocates ending drug prohibition. In a message urging people to contact their congressional representatives in support of the bill, Franklin noted that, among other benefits, the legislation would free up law enforcers to “focus on solving violent crime rather than wasting their time on nonviolent marijuana offenses.”
The Marijuana Policy Project also encouraged Americans to support the bill and urge their Representatives to do so as well. “Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted on marijuana prohibition over the past forty years. And for what? Usage rates don't change. The price of marijuana doesn't change,” the organization said. “All prohibition has done is ensure that profits have remained underground while marijuana itself has been unregulated and less safe.”
But several opponents of the bill — particularly among government officials and others dependent on the federal drug war for employment — are lining up to attack it. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, for example, issued a statement blasting the proposal. “Legalization remains a nonstarter in the Obama administration,” it said, despite the fact that the President himself publicly admitted to smoking and inhaling marijuana “frequently.”
Similarly, Chairman Lamar Smith of the House Judiciary Committee said he would not even consider the proposal. Rep. Smith’s refusal to address the legislation could prevent it from coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives.
But despite opposition, pressure is building nationwide to address the problems caused by the federal war on drugs. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, for example, recently adopted a resolution unanimously blasting the war as a “failure.”
Especially troublesome, the resolution noted, is the fact that the United States imprisons more people per capita than any other nation in the world — with just five percent of the global population, American prisons house a full 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. The majority of them are in jail for non-violent drug offenses.
Earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, consisting of prominent world leaders, outlined the failure of the global drug war and called for an end to prohibition. The worldwide anti-drug regime, including the 40-year-old “War on Drugs” in America, was originally sparked by the UN “Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs” treaty forcing governments to ban drugs.
Of course, many countries around the world have defied the UN drug treaty and approached the problem of substance abuse from other angles. Portugal and the Czech Republic, for instance, have both legalized all drugs. And studies show that the efforts have actually decreased problems such as addiction and use of drugs among minors — not to mention crime.
As The New American reported earlier this year, a coalition of top officials and lawmakers in the U.K. is also seeking to decriminalize drugs and treat the problem as a public health concern instead of a criminal matter. Around the world, the trend is similar.
The Associated Press predicted that the Paul-Frank bill to end the federal war on marijuana has “no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House.” But supporters of the legislation expect that it will — at the very least — spark a much-needed public debate about the issue.
Yeah, probably so. Got to control those pot smokers who get high, kick down doors, shoot dogs, and terrorize families.
Yet the “good” thing is illegal and the “bad” thing is legal...bizarro world indeed!
Oh, right, like America’s moral fabric was completely rotten in 1875 when marijuana, cocaine, every opiate technically feasible to produce in those days (including the very popular tincture of laudanum), absinthe, mescaline, as well as tobacco and alcohol were all legal to sell and possess.
The only bright line I can find between legal psychoactive substances and illegal ones is that the legal ones (tobacco, caffeine in coffee and tea, and alcohol) were popular in Europe at the time of the American Founding, while the illegal ones weren’t.
I can see some arguments for keeping refined cocaine (though not coca leaves) and some hallucinogens (ones that produce ‘flash-back’ tripes) illegal, and fairly strong arguments for keeping methamphetamine, PCP, and ecstacy illegal. Other than that, we should be treating addiction and excessive uses of psychoactive substances as a public health matter, not a criminal matter.
The erosion of civil liberties and diversion of money to ever more ruthless criminal enterprises cause by the “war on drugs” (problems that get worse the more seriously the “war” is prosecuted) more than outweigh the downside in terms of added excessive users and addicts that would would be occasioned by a legalization regime.
So if people don’t obey the law we should just abolish the law??
rape and murder should be legal too, since people won’t ever stop doing them
So if people don’t obey the law we should just abolish the law??
rape and murder should be legal too, since people won’t ever stop doing them
Yeah, because thats exactly what I posted. I said if people are so cavalier about breaking the law and the law has such little respect, it is probably time to re-evaluate it.
Tenth Amendment ping!
Then amend the Constitution to allow for a Federal prohibition of drugs.
Otherwise, all you're doing is violating the Tenth Amendment and loosing the chains on the Federal government...and mind you, a central government with unlimited power and authority will most definitely result in lives destroyed and misery unleashed on the American people.
MJ is the number one cash crop in the US - and in Canada.
Difference being, Cannada sells it to the US as a hemp product - it is used in almost every car manufactured, etc.
How silly is this.
“Plant Hemp For Victory!”
US WWII Slogan. A felony, now.
The US government is insane.
clueless
Now I KNOW you really haven’t thought this through, have you? Because if you HAD, you’d realize that the rending of our moral fabric has been done BY THE LAW, not so much by the use of recreational substances. In doing your homework, you’d have found that, far from banning drugs because they were “harmful” to folks (the AMA was AGAINST banning drugs, INCLUDING marijuana), the government agents at the time (about 1914) started demonizing various drugs AS USED BY SELECTED ETHNIC GROUPS. First up were the Chinese and smokable opium. Not other forms of opium, just smokable, the way the Chinese liked it after a day of working their butts off. It was claimed quite openly that Chinese men would entice white women into their opium dens, get them intoxicated and have sex with them. Later, after Prohibition I was repealed, heroin and marijuana were targeted, using the same tactics. This was also done to keep the FedGoons of the time employed, the prohibition agents. Targeted were Blacks (jazz musicians who wanted sex with white women) and Mexicans (who ALSO wanted sex with white women).
It was then and yet is today all about power and control over the lives of others. That’s it and that’s all and folks like you are all too willing to trade, not just YOUR freedom, but MINE as well, to have FedGoons kick in doors they have no constitutional authority whatsoever kicking in.
No, if you are someone who believes that the Constitution is what it claims to be, the Supreme Law of the Land, then you MUST BELIEVE that the war on some drugs is both unconstitutional and unconscionable.
Furthermore, and I speak as a sinner saved by Grace, ungodliness and sin are NOT areas for government to be involved with. They are GOD’S DOMAIN and I don’t recall anywhere in the Bible that Jesus told His followers to get laws passed to outlaw sin. Can YOU point that out to me?
No, of the three people involved in this post (You, me and Dr. Paul, whom you mention), there is a “NUT,” as you say, but it’s not Dr. Paul and it’s not me. You are welcome to attempt to refute me, but you can’t do so using anything but FACTS, just as I have done in destroying your rant.
The ultimate fact is that there is more harm done to folks (and to the Constitution) by the WAR on some drugs than ever COULD be done by drug usage itself.
Indeed so, and as one of the chronic pain sufferers, I find it really difficult to get REAL help for my pain because no doctor wants to be caught “over prescribing” strong pain meds. Sickening.
He was being sarcastic, but he’s right: the prohibition industry that’s sprung up, not to mention the cartels and dealers, will fight re-legalization tooth and nail to protect their turf. Just as the dealers and cartels do now, with each other. The drive-bys, the turf wars, all that’s happening in inner cities and along our southern border NOW. That’s what we’d see if we tried to take away their drug money by re-legalizing drugs. And THAT would would be our GOVERNMENT drug warriors. I’d hate to think what the cartels would do, but wouldn’t it be worth the price just to put THEM out of business.
Then think how good it would be that our SWAT teams would have to go back to working for a living; no more innocent doors to kick in or pets to kill or MARINES to murder.
I disagree, I think that there is still more than enough other drugs that they would not be fighting pot so much. That is not where the majority of the money is made. Though HIGHLY lucrative - there is far more money in other illicit drugs that are far more dangerous that resources could be moved to.
>Then think how good it would be that our SWAT teams would have to go back to working for a living; no more innocent doors to kick in or pets to kill or MARINES to murder.<
Now that’s a joke. You make it sound like that is all that they do. BTW - did you know that that Marine was the subject of a homicide case? Could that be why he came out armed? Your a bit hasty to judge on quite a bit there.
I myself found very little use for SWAT teams. I think that they are over used. But I assure you that most don’t want to suit up for a pot bust either. Most would rather be doing other more important work.
Doesn’t say much for the NARCS to work on pot busts either unless we are talking many pounds. And it says even less of them if they need a SWAT team to make their busts unless the places are fortified.
Drug Cazer Walters said pot was indeed their big money maker:
$14 Billion In Annual U.S. Drug Purchases Via Mexico: Drug Czar
-snip-
Walters called pot the "bread and butter," "the center of gravity" for Mexican drug cartels that every year smuggle tons of it through the porous U.S.-Mexico border. Of the $13.8 billion that Americans contributed to Mexican drug traffickers in 2004-05, about 62 percent, or $8.6 billion, comes from marijuana consumption.
http://www.thecrimereport.org/share-post/14-billion-in-annual-us-drug-purchases-via-mexico-drug-czar
Though HIGHLY lucrative - there is far more money in other illicit drugs that are far more dangerous that resources could be moved to.
There is no drug shortage anywhere that I've heard of. Anyone who wants the more dangerous drugs can get them at a reasonable price. If demand is already being met, then moving resources to increase the supply doesn't help your profits.
er... “Czar”
I am NOT making a joke about one of MY Marines being murdered by a SWAT team. He was. And the homicide you mentioned was a relative of his wife, who was murdered in a HOME INVASION, the same sort of thing he thought might be happening to HIS family.
Further, I challenge you to point out to me where our Constitution permits ANY level of government to outright BAN any substance. It doesn’t matter how you FEEL about them. Where is such a ban PERMITTED? For that matter, where are any types of no-knock raids and searches permitted?
>> I am NOT making a joke about one of MY Marines being murdered by a SWAT team.
You’ll notice surprisingly little sympathy for the Marine who’s life was snuffed out by approximately one third of the 5 dozen, banana-fingered rounds that entered the man’s body — his children and wife just feet away.
Repeal, repeal, repeal! And layoff all but the elite members of law enforcement. Triple their pay and remind them they WILL be held accountable for violating anyone’s Constitutional rights.
We need only the essentials laws, and only the professional LEOs with solid IQs and values. Enough of the life-ending mediocrity.
"Decriminalizing marijuana will only lead to millions more Americans becoming addicted to drugs and greater profits for drug cartels who fund violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Allowing states to determine their own marijuana policy flies in the face of Supreme Court precedent."
http://volokh.com/2011/06/23/rep-lamar-smith-on-bill-to-repeal-federal-pot-laws/
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