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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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 Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 5:32 am Post subject: |
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Far be it from me to personally attest to the truth and accuracy of the claim, but it has been claimed by those who anecdotally know that Korea makes a great deal more sense while high.  Ask Sweaty Marvin. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 6:08 am Post subject: |
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I'll toke to that.
We have been trying now for 40 years to get this stuff legal. It was legalized in Alaska for awhile, but then re-illegalized.
I hope it passes and stays legal. But progress is so damn slow, and even then, there are setbacks.
Good luck. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 6:15 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| I'll toke to that. |
This explains a whole lot.
Ahem. Ahem. Someone should have told you 40 years ago that those pretty trails you think you see do not really 'connect the dots'. It's all in your head. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:46 am Post subject: |
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| Chill out op, as potheads so often do. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
| Chill out op, as potheads so often do. |
The long-term impact of this could be pretty massive. Excuse me for getting excited about something.
And if the Tea Party people really want to cut gov't waste, they should fully embrace this ballot measure. |
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jhuntingtonus
Joined: 09 Dec 2008
Location: Jeonju
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| Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
The long-term impact of this could be pretty massive. Excuse me for getting excited about something.
And if the Tea Party people really want to cut gov't waste, they should fully embrace this ballot measure. |
This could be a good test for the Tea Party. If they are truly bipartisanly against intrusive government, they'll get strongly behind legalization. But if they're really only conservative, as I suspect, they won't. |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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It'll get struck down in the Supreme Court. Federal Law is the supreme law of the land.
If it doesn't, then the Federal Government will enforce it, jsut like they did with raising the drinking age to 21. You don't get any Highway/Transportation money until you fall in line. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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| jhuntingtonus wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
The long-term impact of this could be pretty massive. Excuse me for getting excited about something.
And if the Tea Party people really want to cut gov't waste, they should fully embrace this ballot measure. |
This could be a good test for the Tea Party. If they are truly bipartisanly against intrusive government, they'll get strongly behind legalization. But if they're really only conservative, as I suspect, they won't. |
Of course the Tea Party won't get behind this. They're idiots stirred up by the Republican Party to cause problems for Democrats. They have no actual coherent ideals or principles. They see no contradiction in demanding smaller government while simultaneously rallying against the government for not doing more to help them get work. They see no issue in defending Medicare while attacking government healthcare. They want the government out of their lives, but take no issue with it harassing drug users, homosexuals, and so forth. There is no stable intellectual ground for the Tea Parties to stand upon.
They're pretty much the worst America has to offer: the hypocritical dredges of society who only take issue with the system when they feel it isn't benefitting them, and even then only because their political masters rile them up. They're part of the problem, not part of the solution. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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| pkang0202 wrote: |
It'll get struck down in the Supreme Court. Federal Law is the supreme law of the land.
If it doesn't, then the Federal Government will enforce it, jsut like they did with raising the drinking age to 21. You don't get any Highway/Transportation money until you fall in line. |
This is accurate, but at the same time, I still think California going through with it is a good thing. The more we talk about reasonable reform on this topic, the better. |
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Street Magic
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:16 pm Post subject: |
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| pkang0202 wrote: |
It'll get struck down in the Supreme Court. Federal Law is the supreme law of the land.
If it doesn't, then the Federal Government will enforce it, jsut like they did with raising the drinking age to 21. You don't get any Highway/Transportation money until you fall in line. |
The whole "federal law is supreme" bit everyone's throwing around is a gross oversimplification. Constitutional federal law is supreme, and in theory, its powers are supposed to be "few and defined," while the states' powers are supposed to be "numerous and indefinite." Here's a quote from Justice Thomas's dissenting opinion to that 2005 medical marijuana case someone mentioned already in this thread (Gonzales v. Raich):
| Justice Thomas wrote: |
| Congress has exercised its power over interstate commerce to criminalize trafficking in marijuana across state lines. The Government contends that banning Monson and Raich�s intrastate drug activity is �necessary and proper for carrying into Execution� its regulation of interstate drug trafficking. Art. I, �8, cl. 18. See 21 U.S.C. � 801(6). However, in order to be �necessary,� the intrastate ban must be more than �a reasonable means [of] effectuat[ing] the regulation of interstate commerce.� Brief for Petitioners 14; see ante, at 19 (majority opinion) (employing rational-basis review). It must be �plainly adapted� to regulating interstate marijuana trafficking�in other words, there must be an �obvious, simple, and direct relation� between the intrastate ban and the regulation of interstate commerce. Sabri v. United States, 541 U.S. 600, 613 (2004) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment); see also United States v. Dewitt, 9 Wall. 41, 44 (1870) (finding ban on intrastate sale of lighting oils not �appropriate and plainly adapted means for carrying into execution� Congress� taxing power). |
Basically, there are two big justifications for the use of federal power here--
A) Interstate Commerce
B) Necessary and Proper Clause
The latest major cannabis case I quoted from above was resolved in favor of the federal government. However, this decision didn't establish that the California medical cannabis program was itself interstate commerce subject to federal regulation, but rather that it was "necessary and proper" for federal enforcement to intervene in California's medical cannabis program in order to preserve the Controlled Substance Act's regulation of the interstate commerce of controlled substances. In fact, the end of the Thomas quote above cites a case where intrastate sale of a federally regulated product was determined to be immune from federal authority.
Anyway, the "necessary and proper" clause is a pretty weak legal rationale. That they had to resort to invoking the "elastic clause" instead of declaring the California medical cannabis program a simple matter of potential interstate commerce subject to federal control suggests that one could very plausibly pursue the argument for the legality of intrastate cannabis sale and possession as distinct from genuine instances of interstate cannabis commerce.
Regarding the highway funding trick, everyone already recognizes it as incredibly sketchy and quite possibly unconstitutional; it's just that not many people actually care after they turn 21. Cannabis legislation on the other hand is a hugely popular issue right now. It'd be harder to pass that kind of roundabout prohibition measure without some serious backlash. Also, a sort of momentum builds where the more indirect the grounds for prohibiting cannabis become, the easier it will be to dispute such prohibition measures' validity. |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 12:52 am Post subject: |
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| Moldy Rutabaga wrote: |
| High time (whoops) that it was legalized and regulated and that law authorities freed up resources to combat serious drugs and other crimes.. |
By your rationale then we should also legalise murder "to free up police time and resources".
Laws are based on holding society together, not saving money.
Why must we legalise something that clearly impairs people's judgement and ability to think/function properly, and causes its victims physical harm? |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 4:51 am Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
| Moldy Rutabaga wrote: |
| High time (whoops) that it was legalized and regulated and that law authorities freed up resources to combat serious drugs and other crimes.. |
By your rationale then we should also legalise murder "to free up police time and resources".
Laws are based on holding society together, not saving money.
Why must we legalise something that clearly impairs people's judgement and ability to think/function properly, and causes its victims physical harm? |
Nautilus, murder infringes on another's rights (by basically taking them away permanently). It affects others. Smoking pot? Just the user, and if s/he is that big of a pothead, maybe his or her loved ones, but they certainly have the option of distancing themselves from that user.
In short, you're talking apples and oranges here. |
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Street Magic
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:56 am Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
| Moldy Rutabaga wrote: |
| High time (whoops) that it was legalized and regulated and that law authorities freed up resources to combat serious drugs and other crimes.. |
By your rationale then we should also legalise murder "to free up police time and resources".
Laws are based on holding society together, not saving money.
Why must we legalise something that clearly impairs people's judgement and ability to think/function properly, and causes its victims physical harm? |
The real question is "why must we prohibit?" not "why must we legalize?" The connection you're trying to make between cannabis and murder is precisely why we have the distinguishing legal terms mala prohibita and mala in se. The former refers to crimes made criminal by the law (such as public nudity) while the latter refers to crimes which would be seen as crimes with or without the law (such as theft).
Cannabis isn't some inherently immoral substance that needs the blessing of the state for absolution. You're talking about a naturally occurring plant with a history of safe human use dating back to the third century BC. We literally don't have a single drug (prescription or over the counter) today that comes close to cannabis in terms of immaculate safety record. Heck, cannabis even beats out common foods like peanuts in terms of safety on account of there being no such thing as "cannabis allergy" (a number of hospitalizations and even deaths occur each year from peanut allergy, as David Nutt, former chairman of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, pointed out before losing his job for telling the truth).
And far from it causing its "victims" physical harm, the major exception to cannabis prohibition in many prohibiting regions today is medicinal use. Cannabis is known to be an excellent treatment for restoring appetite (not a trivial thing in the case of wasting associated with various chronic illnesses), greatly reduces eye pressure in Glaucoma patients, and serves as a safe and effective analgesic to boot. Compare the complete lack of cannabis deaths or organ injury with Acetaminophen's (Tylenol's) current status as the leading cause of liver failure. Not just the leading cause of liver failure among pharmaceuticals, but the leading cause of liver failure period.
As for "impaired judgment," cannabis neither produces hallucinations nor delusions in its user in the manner LSD or Psilocybin would. And despite valiant efforts by the drug war propagandists to smear cannabis as a risk factor for "psychosis," no causative relationship has been established. Needless to say, there's a reason it's been both informally and formally labeled as a "soft drug" all around the world despite pressure from the UN's INCB to continue prohibition of the plant as though it were an addictive poison of the highest caliber. If we were to live in some alternate universe where drug policy was determined on the basis of public safety, cannabis would be one of the very last substances even considered for restrictive measures (somewhere after peanuts). |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 6:22 am Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
Why must we legalise something that clearly impairs people's judgement and ability to think/function properly, and causes its victims physical harm? |
Because:
1) The laws cause more harm than the drugs and
2) We own our bodies |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 6:43 am Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
| Why must we legalise something that clearly impairs people's judgement and ability to think/function properly, and causes its victims physical harm? |
Are you talking about alcohol, tobacco, or cannabis here?
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