Posted on 05/10/2006 7:31:03 AM PDT by cryptical
Federal law in the United States originates with the Constitution,
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Pull up, whatever you feel like pulling up.
The constitution never saved smokers or drinkers( legal products) from excessive taxation.
Want to smoke a joint legally.
No problem. 100.00 a shot.
Don't like the price.... Quit.
The real Constitutional "bottom line" is that while it is fine to have a regulatory agency for 'pure food & drugs', -- nothing in the document gives the 'power to prohibit' drugs to any level of government in the USA.
If the foregoing is thrown out, we might as well go back to the days of The Jungle and snake-oil.
Hype. We have pure booze for sale everywhere in the USA, -- there is no reason we can't have pure recreational drugs for sale on the same 'reasonable regulations' basis.
The overarching consensus by the governing representative bodies at large is that addiction is conidered to be generally bad for society as a whole.
Tough. -- "overarching consensus by the governing representative bodies" [majority rule] does not govern in the USA. -- Our Constitution rules.
Providing for the general safety of the public (through regulation of commerce of potentially societally harmful substances is entirely Constitutional).
Nothing in the Constitution supports this theory. -- The opposite is supported, -- an individual person is not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
-- Fiat prohibitions on supposedly 'unsafe' items of commerce infringe on those rights both in the enactment of such 'laws', -- and in their enforcement.
Would be great if all the recreational drug dealers and illegal drug peddlers would drop dead to leave the normal people on earth to better futures.
Think of how many lives have been ruined by recreational drugs?
Recreational drug use is a culture of the gutter and should die out for the good of us all IMO.
Better start building ovens. There's going to be a lot of bodies to get rid of.
What would happen is that the black market would step in to meet the demand at a more reasonable price; as is happening in states with excessive cigarette taxes. Agree or disagree?
Sounds like a good start so they don't screw up the good people's lives anymore.
Silence implies consent.
Do you believe that enough to kill them yourself?
Then he's apparently on board with the gun control and nationalized health care.
LOL! Most people just can't seem to grasp that there isn't one big fat lump of *law*... but several delicate layers of law.
That's what makes the Constitution such a brilliant document.
No matter how much information you try to give them, it never seems to help!
Is he using the term "stare decisis" to mean that lower courts must follow SCOTUS precedent? If so, is "stare decisis" the correct term for that constitutional requirement? (I've not never heard it used in that context before.)
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If he was speaking of where the judicary's legal force is delegated, then he's not correct. Judicial interpretations carry legal force under Art. III, Sec. 2:
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States,...
SCOTUS may or may not follow stare decisis, but stare decisis is not what gives legal force to their rulings.
another druggie troller
You're a day late and a brain cell short, apparently.
What do you call someone who thinks the War on Drugs is constitutional, but the War on Poverty is not? -- An unprincipled LBJ constitutionalist.
yikes.
What would happen is that the black market would step in to meet the demand at a more reasonable price; as is happening in states with excessive cigarette taxes. Agree or disagree?
First sensible thing you've said on this thread.
Its true office is to expound the nature and extent and application of the powers actually conferred by the Constitution, and not substantively to create them. For example, the preamble declares one object to be, 'to provide for the common defense.' No one can doubt that this does not enlarge the powers of Congress to pass any measures which they deem useful for the common defence. But suppose the terms of a given power admit of two constructions, the one more restrictive, the other more liberal, and each of them is consistent with the words, but is, and ought to be, governed by the intent of the power; if one could promote and the other defeat the common defence, ought not the former, upon the soundest principles of interpretation, to be adopted? - Joseph Story in COMMENTARIESWith the foregoing, the Preamble to the Constitution sets the stage for the purpose of the implicitely enumerated powers that follow; they being delegated to Congress by the People for the People. It would be inconceivable in my mind to interprete any sort of Constitutional mandate for the regulation of the purity of anything if Congress has no authority to regulate the consumption of useless, deleterious or otherwise noxious substances, especially those that cause addiction, the burden it causes upon the individuals, their associates and society as an aggregate.
As I've indicated previously, if the General Welfare to society as a whole intent of the Constitution is invisible we can just go back to pre-1906 (Upton Sinclair) days, and forget about meat inspection, food inspection, and prohibition of sale of patent medicines. Guarenteed sanitary and sterile items and objects? Reckless endangerment? Clean water? Electrical (building/equipment) codes, fire codes? Building codes? Restaurant hygiene/cleanliness codes? Motor vehicle standards and regulations? Motor carrier safetyAnti-pollution laws? Clean-air standards? OSHA? Boating safety regulations? Office of pipeline safety? Why, the heck with it, we might as well scrap each and every one of these regulations as un-Constitutional (well, at least at a Federal level they are). In fact a whole butt-load of the U.S. Code in general could be just plain scrapped.
I think all of you guys that are arguing for the legalization of drugs haven't seen or experienced first hand the tradgedy caused by them. Haven't experienced first hand abusive alcoholic parents, haven't been personally affected by somebody close to you O.D'g or absolutely wrecking their life (and everybody around them). You haven't seen first hand the what crank/crack does to people. You personally haven't had to care for crack/crank/smack/fill-in-the-blank babies. Or havn't seen the permanent physical impairments that can be caused by drug abuse (Parkinsons, dementia, paralysis, memory loss, suicide, etc.). You people are so myopically focused on your seemingly innocuous drug (Mary Jane - hey its in all the books), that you're blinded to reality around you. You people are akin to those that are resistant to immunizations for their children (prefering instead to rely on the protection of herd immunity). I once challenged somebody about that, and was given a reply that there's risk of adverse affect. Adverse affect? Adverse affect? You haven't actually seen one of your own children (OR ANYBODY YOU MAY CARE ABOUT) actually die from whooping cough HAVE you? Because if you DID, you'd be singing a different tune.
Frankly, I'm remiss in understanding this obsession with this obsession for intoxication anyways. Why this compulsion for alter states of perception? What in the world is wrong with reality, and feeling the way one does. Is feeling sad on occasion bad? Is feeling happy not good enough, that one has to artificially coerce the emotion? Gee, I guess it is a Brave New World isn't it? Everybody pop their Soma now, y'hear?
Were you making a case in support of stare decisis on the part of SCOTUS with regard to drug laws? If so, do you support stare decisis with regard to Roe v Wade as well?
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