Miami Monster Eats Man's Face

Daily Online UK ^ | May 28, 2012 | Christine Snow

[JustSayNoToNannies]

Your stance, as you have stated, is that you want no restrictions on anyone regarding the manufacture, sale, distribution, and consumption of drugs.

You want bath salts, LSD, heroin, crack, and meth to be for sale in everyone’s local liquor store.

Only those whose community chooses to license such.

You claim this will reduce the use of these destructive, life-ruining substances.

Here's what I say - feel free to rebut it if you can:

Government restrictions on other drugs are what create a market niche for ‘designer’ drugs and ‘bath salts.’ If legal adult Joe Stoner could buy a joint where others buy their Jack, he'd have zero interest in messing with new, little-understood chemicals.

You claim the crimes associated with the use of these substances will decline.

Crime committed to pay for these substances will decline, since the price will decline sharply. (Simply transporting heroin base from its source to its destination currently results in a more than 30-fold price increase.)

You claim that the government that will be required to oversee the manufacture, sale, and rehab for the use of these substances will be smaller than the enforcement branches that prevent and punish the crime associated with these substances. This is nothing less than foolish.

You are wrong. It is the height of illogical, fallacious reasoning to argue that if something is legal and far more prevalent

"Far more prevalent" is your unsupported boogeyman. Why should we believe that there are millions of people who are deterred by the criminality of drugs but not by their inherent harms?

the use and ‘bad’ behavior associated with such substances will miraculously improve. It is the height of selfishness to want to push the utter destruction these drugs use onto families and neighborhoods

As I said, to allow to become more prevalent is not to "push" - did the government "push" alcohol when Prohibition was repealed?

(but not in YOUR neighborhood, of course, because you want your neighborhood to be able to ban these substances...in your neighborhood, after you have pushed the feds to legalize it nationally. Brilliant.)

My community - and your too, I'm sure - has a plethora of statutes (residential speed limits, zoning, etc. etc.) that in no way depend on the feds. (And, no, Roe v Wade is not a counterargument; as I already explained, with no relevant response from you, Roe v Wade didn't "lift restrictions at the federal level" - it actively abolished restrictions at every level. Repeal of federal drug laws wouldn't do that - it would be just that, a repeal of federal laws.)

[Ken H]

But you sure as hell can’t lift all restrictions at the federal level and then think small communities will be able to make their own decisions contrary to what is legal at the federal law.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Congress can only impose restrictions if it is delegated the power to do so. Otherwise, it is reserved to the States.

Which section of the Constitution do you believe delegates intrastate drug regulation to Congress?