Its been argued many times here on FreeRepublic, a Constitutional Amendment isn't required. Congress is well within its rights to create and enforce, anti-drug legislation. The facts are clear.
The Controlled Substances Act
The Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, is the legal foundation of the government's fight against the abuse of drugs and other substances. This law is a consolidation of numerous laws regulating the manufacture and distribution of narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids, and chemicals used in the illicit production of controlled substances.
The CSA places all substances that are regulated under existing federal law into one of five schedules. This placement is based upon the substance's medicinal value, harmfulness, and potential for abuse or addiction. Schedule I is reserved for the most dangerous drugs that have no recognized medical use, while ScheduleV is the classification used for the least dangerous drugs. The act also provides a mechanism for substances to be controlled, added to a schedule, decontrolled, removed from control, rescheduled, or transferred from one schedule to another.
Proceedings to add, delete, or change the schedule of a drug or other substance may be initiated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), or by petition from any interested party, including the manufacturer of a drug, a medical society or association, a pharmacy association, a public interest group concerned with drug abuse, a state or local government agency, or an individual citizen. When a petition is received by the DEA, the agency begins its own investigation of the drug.
The DEA also may begin an investigation of a drug at any time based upon information received from law enforcement laboratories, state and local law enforcement and regulatory agencies, or other sources of information.
Once the DEA has collected the necessary data, the DEA Administrator, by authority of the Attorney General, requests from the HHS a scientific and medical evaluation and recommendation as to whether the drug or other substance should be controlled or removed from control. This request is sent to the Assistant Secretary of Health of the HHS. Then, the HHS solicits information from the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and evaluations and recommendations from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and on occasion, from the scientific and medical community at large. The Assistant Secretary, by authority of the Secretary, compiles the information and transmits back to the DEA a medical and scientific evaluation regarding the drug or other substance, a recommendation as to whether the drug should be controlled, and in what schedule it should be placed.
The medical and scientific evaluations are binding to the DEA with respect to scientific and medical matters. The recommendation on scheduling is binding only to the extent that if HHS recommends that the substance not be controlled, the DEA may not control the substance.
Once the DEA has received the scientific and medical evaluation from HHS, the Administrator will evaluate all available data and make a final decision whether to propose that a drug or other substance be controlled and into which schedule it should be placed.
The CSA also creates a closed system of distribution for those authorized to handle controlled substances. The cornerstone of this system is the registration of all those authorized by the DEA to handle controlled substances. All individuals and firms that are registered are required to maintain complete and accurate inventories and records of all transactions involving controlled substances, as well as security for the storage of controlled substances.
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TOUBY v. UNITED STATES, 500 U.S. 160 (1991)
The Controlled Substances Act authorizes the Attorney General, upon compliance with specified procedures, to add new drugs to five "schedules" of controlled substances, the manufacture, possession, and distribution of which the Act regulates or prohibits. Because compliance with the Act's procedures resulted in lengthy delays, drug traffickers were able to develop and market "designer drugs" - which have pharmacological effects similar to, but chemical compositions slightly different from, scheduled substances - long before the Government was able to schedule them and initiate prosecutions. To combat this problem, Congress added 201(h) to the Act, creating an expedited procedure by which the Attorney General can schedule a substance on a temporary basis when doing so is "necessary to avoid an imminent hazard to the public safety," and providing that a temporary scheduling order is not subject to judicial review. The Attorney General promulgated regulations delegating, inter alia, his temporary scheduling power to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which subsequently temporarily designated the designer drug "Euphoria" as a schedule I controlled substance. While that temporary order was in effect, petitioners were indicted for manufacturing and conspiring to manufacture Euphoria. The District Court denied their motion to dismiss, rejecting their contentions that 201(h) unconstitutionally delegates legislative power to the Attorney General, and that the Attorney General improperly delegated his temporary scheduling authority to the DEA. The Court of Appeals affirmed petitioners' subsequent convictions.
Not to nag, or anything, but what constitutional foundation exists to support Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970?
Drug prohibition is a particularly clear-cut example of unconstitutional law-making which today's courts have let stand. Back in 1919 when the 18th Amendment was adopted, it was manifestly clear to everyone that the federal government lacked the authority to prohibit intoxicating liquors absent such a Constitutional Amendment. The parallel between drug prohibition and alchohol prohibition is exact: Nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government any more authority to prohibit drugs than it had to prohibit alchohol, absent a Constitutional Amendment. The only thing that has changed [due to our socialistic public education system, but that's another rant...] is that public opinion and judicial opinion has shifted so far in support of unfettered federal power that the government can merrily ignore its Constitutional limitations.
And social conservatives are quite willing to join this massive public opinion / judicial shift by which the Constitution is bypassed, simply because it happens to coincide with their social engineering agenda (in this case the Drug War). Of course when it conflicts with their agenda (e.g., the abortion issue), they get all upset, and complain endlessly about how the Supreme Court was wrong to rule as it did. Consistency is not exactly a strong point among social conservatives...
Libertarians, and some honest conservatives who truly care about preserving our Republic, think the Constitution means what it says. Period.
It's been argued many times that Clowntoon is the innocent victim of a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Both arguments are nonsense.