Where in the constitution specifically does it say the federal government can ban murder?
So long as you will accept that banning murder is a legitimate federal interest, I will go with that as an assumption.
Presumably, the right to legislate punishment for crimes against others comes from the principle that people’s persons are legitimate objects of protection, and that the government can protect a person’s life.
Some would argue that this power of government would naturally extend to harm against one’s own life, the most obvious example being a law against suicide. Many otherwise good limited-government conservatives support a law against suicide, but I won’t argue from that basis.
So the question is, can the government legislate against a behavior that can clearly be linked to harm against OTHERS, even if there is not a certainty of that harm?
To explain: I’ll assume you are OK with government passing a law saying you cannot drive the wrong way on a one-way street. What gives government that right? because driving the wrong way puts other people in danger. Now, you could well drive the wrong way and be good enough at it that you do not hurt anybody. But we know that allowing people to drive the wrong way increases the changes of hurting people.
Well, we also know that recreational drug users do increase the risk of harm to others. Many do not, but some do. Just as many speeders don’t cause accidents, but some do, and some drunk drivers don’t cause accidents, but some do, and some people building large explosive devices in their homes don’t ever blow things up, but some do.
The courts have generally taken a position in these cases that government can act if the rights they are limiting are less severe than the gain from the limitations.
Now, if you believe government has no right to regulate drunk driving, shooting guns in your back yard, driving the wrong way down the street, or dropping pennies from the empire state building, you could well argue government has no right to limit recreational drug use either.
Instead, you could argue that we should only punish people for ACTUAL harm. So the drunk driver gets punished if they hit another car or destroy someone else’s property, the penny-dropper only gets prosecuted if they hit someone, you can shoot guns anywhere and only go to jail if you actually harm someone else, you can let your pit-bull run free so long as it doesn’t attack another person.
But it is not required by the libertarian philosophy that actual harm be done before something can be controlled by government, just that the government be limited in the application of it’s power to protect people from one another.
If there was a way to legalize drugs and ensure that those taking drugs would do no harm to anybody else, I would entertain the argument that the government would have no constitutional authority to do otherwise. I would note though that laws such as this were on the books at the time our country was founded, so it is clear the founders themselves did not see “limited government” in the same light.
Now, if we restrict our argument to the federal government, I think a strong argument can be made that, so long as the drugs to not cross the borders, or any state border, that the feds have no authority to regulate their use. But the STATES could still make drugs illegal.
I have no doubt people of reason can rationally take a different position than this, but that is my quick take on a justification for making certain recreational drugs illegal.
The Constitution does NOT GRANT FedGov authority over murder. Murder comes under STATE jurisdiction. The Constitution grants FedGov authority over THREE crimes: Treason, Piracy and counterfeiting. That’s it and all. ONLY exception being murder in the military, which would fall under Congress’ authority to write rules governing military and naval forces. Sorry, you’re way out in LEFT field here, Chuck.
And rules of the road are at the STATE AND LOCAL levels ONLY. Congress has an obligation to provide Post Roads, true, but it has given the money to the States AND the authority to govern traffic on them.
That is left up to the states and municipalities.
The states and municipalities should be able to decide whether or not drugs are illegal.
The only thing the feds add is armament, prosecutarial succession beyond the lifetime of the perpetrator and military gear and tactics.