Ah, a lot of things were legal during Prohibition, including drugs. Heroin was available over the counter until 1924.
We live in a different world today. Not a lot of "personal responsibility" goin' on.
Posted on 12/17/2004 9:12:14 AM PST by inquest
Ashcroft v. Raich, the Supreme Court's medical marijuana case, isn't really about medical marijuana. It's about power -- the power of Congress to exert control, and the power of the Constitution to rein Congress in.
The named plaintiff in this case is Angel McClary Raich, a California mother of two afflicted with an awful array of diseases, including tumors in her brain and uterus, asthma, severe weight loss, and endometriosis. To ease her symptoms, doctors put her on dozens of standard medications. When none of them helped, they prescribed marijuana. That did help -- so much so that Raich, who had been confined to a wheelchair, was again able to walk.
Raich's marijuana was supplied to her for free from two donors who grew it in California, using only California soil, water, and supplies. Under the state's Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which exempts the use of marijuana under a doctor's supervision from criminal sanction, all of this was perfectly legal.
But under the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970, the possession of marijuana for any reason is illegal. The question for the court is which law should prevail in this case: state or federal?
Normally that wouldn't be an issue. Under the Constitution, a valid exercise of federal power trumps any conflicting state law. But is the application of the federal drug law to Raich a valid exercise of federal power? Does Congress have the right to criminalize the possession of minuscule amounts of marijuana, not bought on the illicit drug market, and used as medicine?
Americans often forget that the federal government was never intended to have limitless authority. Unlike the states, which have a broad "police power" to regulate public health, safety, and welfare, the national government has only the powers granted to it by the Constitution. Where does the Constitution empower Congress to bar pain-wracked patients from using the marijuana their doctors say they need?
According to the Bush administration, it says it in the Commerce Clause, which authorizes Congress to "regulate commerce . . . among the several states." And it is true that those words have long been treated as a broad grant of power allowing Congress to control almost anything it chooses.
The Supreme Court's most expansive reading of the Commerce Clause came in Wickard v. Filburn, a unanimous 1942 decision about a farmer who grew more wheat on his farm than was allowed under federal law. Roscoe Filburn argued that his excess wheat was none of Washington's business, since it all remained on his farm -- some of it he ground into flour, for his family, some he fed to his livestock, and some he planted the following year. None of it entered interstate commerce, so what right did Congress have to penalize it?
But a unanimous Supreme Court ruled against Filburn. It held that his 239 excess bushels of wheat affected the national wheat market whether he sold it or not, since wheat he produced for his own use was wheat he didn't have to buy elsewhere. If other farmers did the same thing, demand for wheat -- and its price -- would fall. That ruling threw the door open to virtually unbridled congressional activism. After all, if wheat that never left the farm it grew on was tied to "interstate commerce" and therefore subject to federal control, what wasn't? Not surprisingly, the years since Wickard have seen a vast expansion of federal authority.
Still, the Supreme Court has never actually held that congressional power under the Commerce Clause is unlimited. Twice in the past 10 years, in fact, it has struck down laws that could not be justified as commerce-related even under Wickard's hyperloose standard. But if the government gets its way in this case, the court really will have remade the Commerce Clause into a license to regulate anything. For unlike Filburn -- who was, after all, engaged in the business of running a farm and selling grain -- Raich is engaged in no commercial or economic activity of any kind. She is not buying or selling a thing. The marijuana she uses is not displacing any other marijuana.
But that point seemed lost on the court during last week's oral argument. "It looks like Wickard to me," Justice Antonin Scalia said. "I always used to laugh at Wickard, but that's what Wickard says."
Well, if Wickard says that Congress can ban or penalize Angel Raich's marijuana -- noncommercial, medically necessary, locally grown, and legal under state law -- then it says Congress can reach absolutely any activity at all. When I was a law student in the 1980s, I didn't laugh at Wickard, I was appalled by it. If Ashcroft v. Raich is decided for the government, future law students will have an even more appalling case to study.
"A lot of us believe that the Supreme Court has made some important errors in interpreting the Constitution that have _taken a_ severely eroded the sovereignty of the individual states, and that's not a good thing."
Should say:
"A lot of us believe that the Supreme Court has made some important errors in interpreting the Constitution that have severely eroded the sovereignty of the individual states, and that's not a good thing."
"and we didn't want that situation to develop here with our own far central government."
Should say:
"and we didn't want that situation to develop here with our own far away central government."
That's the problem. They're always looking for an excuse to muddy up a simple issue. Gives them far more wiggle room that way.
Scintilla? Perhaps more than that.
How about United States v. The William, 28 Fed. Cas. 614, no. 16,700 D.Mass. 1808, just 19 years after ratifcation?
"Further, the power to regulate commerce is not to be confined to the adoption of measures, exclusively beneficial to commerce itself, or tending to its advancement; but, in our national system, as in all modern sovereignties, it is also to be considered as an instrument for other purposes of general policy and interest."
Now, surely there were a few Founding Fathers alive in 1808 to say, "Hey, that's not what we meant!". Did anyone say that?
Are you saying that since Congress didn't exercise their power for 100 years that they never had that power? I hope that's not your logic or your argument.
Both sides love States Rights until a State does something they disagree with.
Didn't I once ask you to show me where the 18th amendment was necessary? You said it was, IIRC.
So, find any proof? Link? Quote? Web site? Snopes?
You have anything, other than an opinion (and insults)? Thought not.
Secondly, this is what I said: "There isn't a scintilla of evidence from the writings of either federalists or anti-federalists at the time that the purpose of the clause was to give the federal government any restrictive power over actual commercial transactions within the country." Your cite didn't contradict that. All it referred to were the end goals that particular measures were to shoot for, not the nature of those measures themselves.
Didn't I ask you to prove a negative?
Thought not.
No one buys the snake oil son, give it up.
"Can this drug kill you" is not one of the criteria.
Marinol is approved. Sativex is seeking approval. I support these drugs, no problem.
Smoked marijuana is not medicine.
And no one seems to care about states rights as long as the federal government is doing something they agree with.
I don't think most people get it. Most probably have no idea what federalism is or what people mean when they talk about states rights. Of course huge numbers of people in this country couldn't even name the vice president or the attorney general.
That's why it is so important for our Supreme Court to do the right thing and defend the Constitution. The masses don't get it and they don't know what they are losing when the federal government is allowed to usurp the authority of the states. By the time they do get it, it's going to be too late, if it's not already.
The original Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed in 1933, well before our involvement in the war. Even the revised Act was passed in 1938.
And often leaves it's takers unable to do simple tasks because it's so powerful.
Smoked marijuana is not medicine
If it relieves pain and helps people with chronic illnesses, why do you care?
It's obvious why physicians and drug companies care -- there's no money in something that can be grown in a ditch outside.
Can you think a single thing that doesn't need approval?
Some where, somebody is doing something which is "unapproved".
Ah, a lot of things were legal during Prohibition, including drugs. Heroin was available over the counter until 1924.
We live in a different world today. Not a lot of "personal responsibility" goin' on.
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