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People who promote drug prohibitions and the criminalization of users are, in effect, constitutional 'terrorists'. They should be treated as such.
Prohibitive law against life, liberty, and property is specifically forbidden by the 14th amendment.
Thanks, tpaine, for putting up a substantive comment! And, thanks for putting up one of the very "house of cards" I was anxious to topple.
I'll address both the larger issue you raise, and the ludicrous specific you cite.
First, the silly stuff. The 14th Amendment says, among other things, that "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." [my emphasis] Well, nobody is talking about depriving anybody of anything without due process of law. That would be bad. You forget, it's the libertarians who think laws are evil. I'm in favor of laws. In this case, I'm in favor of laws that make drug use illegal, and laws that severely punish people engaged in drug trafficking. But, by all means, due process should be followed.
But I also want to address the whole Constitutionality issue. There are two points worth making.
The entire thrust of the Constitution -- that is, the _intent_ of the writers -- which guided the creation of later specifics and future interpretations -- is stated simply in the Preamble:
We the People of the United States,
(1) in Order to form a more perfect Union,
(2) establish Justice,
(3) insure domestic Tranquility,
(4) provide for the common defence,
(5) promote the general Welfare, and
(6) secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution...
Now, since it's reasonably clear (as itemized in the header of this thread) that drug trafficking and drug use (1) balkanizes the Union, (2) perverts justice, (3) disrupts domestic tranquility, (4) weakens the common defense, (5) corrupts the general Welfare and (6) erodes the blessings of liberty both to us and our children, it should be reasonably clear that our Founders would have had no trouble at all looking at the dangers drugs pose in the contemporary world and enacting laws to prohibit drug trafficking and drug use (six out of six ain't bad).
But there is still another aspect of the "legal" issues that needs addressing. (And the obnoxious libertarian exercise of casting our Founders as proto-libertarians when they were nothing of the sort.)
Have you ever actually read the Declaration of Independence?
Right after the famous first two paragraphs of introduction, the Declaration gets down to the specific complaints the Colonies have with Britain that caused the revolt. And guess what? The very first complaint against Britain is: "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." [pretends to gasp] What?! Laws that are _wholesome_ and _necessary_ for the public good!
In fact, the first three complaints are specifically addressed at the Crown for making it difficult for the Colonies to pass LAWS that they wanted to pass.
[sighs] There's nothing about drug laws that go against the Constitution. There's nothing about drug laws that go against the intentions of our Founding Fathers.
This belief is an absurd house of cards and it's been my pleasure to demolish it. (Interested lurkers can review both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence here: USConstitution.net - Site Index )
Mark W.