Posted on 11/11/2015 11:22:02 AM PST by ConservingFreedom
Another day, another controversy. Medical marijuana activists are rightly upset over comments DEA head, Chuck Rosenberg, made to reporters last week.
During a Q&A, he talked about his stance on medical marijuana.
"What really bothers me is the notion that marijuana is also medicinal because it's not. We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don't call it medicine -- that is a joke."
Right, so you want to have an intellectual debate prefaced with medical marijuana is a joke. Want to clarify that bit a more?
"There are pieces of marijuana -- extracts or constituents or component parts -- that have great promise," he said. "But if you talk about smoking the leaf of marijuana -- which is what people are talking about when they talk about medicinal marijuana -- it has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine."
I'm with the activists who point to study after study showing it helps with chronic pain, muscle spasms and other ailments. In fact, here's an analysis of 79 studies from JAMA pointing to "moderate-quality evidence to support the use of cannabinoids for the treatment of chronic pain and spasticity."
Damn, here he is making a blanket statement and along comes science...
No. I get the frustrations of medical marijuana activists. They have turned to change.org demanding his resignation. As of today, the petition has gathered nearly 16,000 signatures.
Nothing wrong with voicing frustration at the DEA head, but it's empty. The DEA works like every other agency in the executive branch. It enforces the law. Well, sometimes...
23 states and DC have passed some form of marijuana legalization. Specific medicinal uses all the way to recreational. One problem, none of the state laws trump federal law.
And yes, the DEA is a federal agency. Chuck Rosenberg isn't a fan of marijuana. Even if he was on the side of legalizing it for everyone, he can't do anything. His job is to enforce the law as directed by the President.
Notice the raids have quieted down on dispensaries across the 23 states? Rosenberg may think it's a joke, but the latitude given to the states is telling. Politicians make bombastic statements, but state after state is flipping green.
The FDA is moving to give researchers more room to study the drug. The JAMA study above? 79 studies. That's it. In 2013, 16,000 people overdosed from opioid painkillers. How many died from overdosing on marijuana? Oh right... Zero.
Other studies have shown a decrease in painkiller overdose deaths when medical marijuana was accessible.
It isn't just pain where marijuana plays a significant role. Seizure disorders have been treated with various strains. Who knows what researchers could unlock in the future?
Is it time to open the doors and make it legal? For medicinal use? Definitely. Recreational? Soon, but it needs tight regulation to prevent a wild west of potent strains and no oversight. In Colorado and Washington, the results are still early, but you cannot call it a failure.
Is it a joke? Maybe to Chuck Rosenberg and others. Should he resign or be fired? Of course not.
To the people medical marijuana helps? They aren't laughing. And it's a shame they get targeted. But, the tide is turning. The American people are with them. State governments are increasingly with them. The Federal government? One day you'll wake up to a simple voice vote that finally ends the debate.
Which contradicts your previous claim that "you can plainly see that it was never really tried. They abused the Constitution from the start!"
Now perhaps you see the necessity for research.
BTW...If you don’t see it in your reading, the bill was passed and returned to the Senate, which indicates to me that it originated there.
Crockets mythological speech was probably the one he gave here on the second day of debate if I recall, he opposed it and gave a speech.
In the myth the author changed the facts and probably made up the new story, but this one is real.
So I guess one could say that the crocket speech to congress was fake but accurate.....har, har, har.. kudos to Dan Rather for the quotation..
I stand by that....A government is hardly even broken in after 30 or so years. If it begins to breakdown that quickly, then it’s safe to say that it never passed the test of one lifetime.
So no, as a Constitutional Republic, the Constitution began to degrade very quickly.
But you know that. You are just being a prick.
I just posted some anecdotal proof that they did abuse it from the start. Now the start does not mean the first day or the first congress. I could use other quips like "before the ink was dry". I think 1828 is pretty early, don't you, and this sort of thing probably was happening before this, as you can see from the vote. I would , if I was researching it, continue to go back until I found one that failed to get the vote needed. I would use the next one that succeeded as the first. Then list and count them and add some footnotes about the subject matter.. But I am not doing that research.
the start does not mean the first day or the first congress.
What does "never" mean to you?
I don't even know what that means.
While being reluctantly willing to settle for a federal government whose violations of the Constitution were the exception rather than, as today, the rule.
When you are dealing with something 250years old, what phrase would you use in a nonspecific way to mean beginning or start. Is it day one? Maybe the first week or do you go broader because we are talking about3,000 months, 13,000 weeks, 91,000 days. So then how many weeks or months would be the official meaning of at the beginning or early on or in it’s infancy, or any number of different phrases that are nonspecific. In other words it is unknown or unimportant to the discussion.
Whether it’s 3 months, 30 months, or 300 months, to me is the first 10% of the timeline and thus it’s early on, the beginning, the start or infancy. The exact date, month,or week is not important or relevant to the assertion being made. That assertion being that the original federalism did not remain intact long enough to be proud of it. It faded almost immediately in terms of a 250 year timeline because men are imperfect and perfect words do not make perfect men.
You decide, and I will use that term that you deem perfect, especially for you.
Hmmmm.....I had to go though this already today and explain exactly why I have no reason to think that is possible.
If I were younger and more idealistic I would agree with you and did in fact agree at one time..
I am now much older and have experienced much more and as a result of that and American history to guide me as well, I no longer see that option as viable.
I have certainly become what some might call a Constitutional conservative, but that does not mean that I should believe in a premise that I cannot find a way to implement nor see any sequence of events that could result in it's implementation, even over a long period of time.
I suppose it would take Constitutional historian of like mind to better explain this, but I said earlier that you need to destroy the body of law that contains all the precedents and historical cases to prevent a lawyer or group of lawyers from arguing cases using legal precedent or in this case any recorded constitutional precedents.
When a operating system or program in a computer is corrupted over time, what is the recommended fix...???
I suppose it depends on whether you can save the data or not. If data is not a issue, then the best and really only long-term fix that always works is to reformat it, and reinstall the OS.
Most every possible workaround that saves the old OS, will fail again.
So if you appreciate analogies...that's the one.
About legal precedents..
Again, I am not a lawyer. But any layman with a bit of knowledge and interest can plainly see that SCOTUS and it’s inferior courts all use case law to decide and to argue current cases..This gives the decisions continuity,
As the body of law grows these precedent decisions become like the index to legal decision making. If they become corrupted along the way as these are imperfect men, and they make a bad decision and they never reject or correct it, then every case that follows is bad as well. This happens frequently and it’s so common that we don’t even remember all of them.
Since Trump has misused the tern pathological, I will now use it correctly. Congress and it’s judicial branch brother, have become pathologically defective functionaries who continue to diverge their thinking and precedent law away from the original intent of the Constitution. It’s pathological because they don’t know they are doing it, and will argue that point vociferously.
It’s now even worse as they begin to pull new legal precedent (if they can’t find it in Europe) out of their asses.
It’s broken...It’s corrupted...it’s un-repairable in my view.
At some point in the future there will be a opportunity to reboot the system after the government fails.. I hope that whoever is left, loves the constitution and saves it, but destroys, (reformats) the rest so that the corruption is no longer a threat.
Even with that, measures must be taken to prevent it from recurring, because these imperfections in men are like a mathematical constant. It is always there.
Sure, I can address that... What you see in me is not pragmatism.
It's harsh realism. I and not settling for anything, just analyzing what's in front of me. I'm neither reluctant nor willing...I don't know how to be reluctantly willing...
You may well see it that way because you think me wrong about my entire assertion and it's related parts. I can see how you might think that.
It might help if you also realize that I don't think that the United States as founded will survive. I see no future for it as it is today. I see the entire planet's financial systems failing entirely in a cascade failure and what come after is a bit difficult to forecast but the financial failure alone will kill millions.
If you look at history, we are right at that point in our timeline (generally speaking as there is not a hard and fast rule) where everything fails and humanity picks up the pieces and tries again. Pete and Repete. We know them well...
I have maybe another ten years at best so I won't see it, at least I don't think so....but it is pretty dicey right now,,It could blow up tomorrow..
Having said that, maybe you can understand my lack of idealistic expectations..
It's because I don't have any.
As the body of law grows these precedent decisions become like the index to legal decision making. If they become corrupted along the way as these are imperfect men, and they make a bad decision and they never reject or correct it, then every case that follows is bad as well. This happens frequently and it’s so common that we don’t even remember all of them.
Agree 100% - SCOTUS will not be the driving force in any return to genuine Constitutionality and will in some areas be a hindrance.
Sure, I can address that...
Maybe you did and I'm not seeing it. My point is that IF we could get to a point where the gravest violation of Constitutional limits was an ad hoc appropriation for certain select destitute war widows, as in 1828, then from the perspective of 2015 we'd be in terrific shape. That level of nearly-Constitutional governance has a much longer pedigree (you mentioned "pre-Depression") and is thus much more reasonable to hope for than the pristine form of the First Congress. (Still far from easy, though.)
That’s true...but everything has a first time. Particularly when your society constantly refers to “They did (it)! Why can’t I” as a rule of conduct, it then follows that [”it”] evolves fairly quickly when looking at a 200 year span.
That same (it) today has no relationship to the 1800 (it).
That (it) and the money it represented then, has grown up to billions of dollars for nearly anything you can imagine and it’s expanded to corporations via crony capitalism.
But like every animal it was born as a little feller....
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