As the next part of my series exploring a winning political platform for the next two elections, here is my Pro-Cannibis Freedom plank:
Return control over cannabis possession, growing, sales, and use to the states. Keep importation illegal, and continue to use the DEA to stop cannabis from coming in, but let each state decide how to handle this drug. In addition, immediately convert federal prison sentences for cannabis-related crimes other than importation to parole.
There are several goals here: Move back toward the original interpretation of the Commerce Clause, reduce prison expenses, refocus anti-drug activities to more serious drugs, and try not to enrich drug lords.
26 comments:
I guess I am missing the point of banning importation. If states want to allow cannabis, then why block the import from out of the country?
I'll never support drug legalization, even under the most libertarian principles--especially then: the collateral damage reaches too far and is too severe.
A personal anecdote: my older brother--a psychopharm PhD who should have known better--died far too early and left fatherless four (adult, as it happens) children from a life of dissipation centered on MJ use. A couple of those children are themselves dysfunctional from the example he set, which was all they knew throughout their formative years.
Poke around Hercules and the umpire. for evidence from a Federal judge's perspective.
There's nothing victimless about drug use, and the victims have the same rights as those libertarians who insist on their "right" to use drugs: the right not to have the outcomes of that use inflicted on them.
Eric Hines
I have to agree with Eric about drugs. I would never agree to such a platform. And in this day and age, pretending there's no spillover effect across state lines requires a willful suspension of disbelief.
That spillover effect has been one of the right's better arguments wrt gay marriage - that what happens in Las Vegas does not, in fact, affect only Las Vegas.
Cigarettes are entirely legal, yet there's a huge problem with smuggling across state lines. Just ask ATF :p
I'm not particularly bothered by the idea of legalizing cannabis, though there are other drugs of greater concern. It's difficult to see a strategy for legalizing methamphetamines, for example, that improves the liberty of the people -- although it's equally difficult to see one for banning it that isn't deadly to liberty.
What would be nice is if you could develop a technology that would eliminate it as a threat. Both the enforcement of the ban and the legalization of the thing offer terrible problems. Law cannot come to a good answer here.
If we are worried about harmful drugs and spillover in society, then we had better start with tobacco & alcohol. Perhaps sugar too, since studies are showing that it is quite addictive and has detrimental health effects.
Well, and with the epidemic of obesity, perhaps we should nationalize the efforts to control salts, fats, and portion size in New York City.
I am be facetious with my inclusion of sugar etc. but where do you draw the line? The spillover effects of my fatness increase medical costs for my family, and may cause me to die at 57 instead of 82.
Prohibition didn't work for alcohol, prohibition isn't working for drugs now. Personal responsibility is the key point - you should be and are in reality responsible to make your life good or wreck it.
Hines and Cass, where do you draw the line with collateral/spillover damage.
I am be facetious with my inclusion of sugar....
Well, the Israelis banned its importation into the Gaza for a long time because it's an ingredient in garage-made bombs.[/OT]
prohibition isn't working for drugs now
Prohibition isn't working against any crime--maybe we should just do away with all law.
Drawing the line is easy. Tobacco doesn't have the cascade effects of drugs, even if it is more addictive than grass. Tobacco doesn't impair judgment, nor does it impair physical performance in any material way; drugs do.
Alcohol isn't addictive at all except in vanishingly rare cases; users can make conscious decisions about when/where to use.
Certainly it's an arbitrarily drawn line. So are all of the lines we draw between legal and illegal. I'm not going to play quibble games over corner cases and exceptions.
Eric Hines
The reason for banning importation is to prevent foreign drug lords from cashing in.
Note that I'm not de facto legalizing cannabis; I'm leaving it to the states, where (in my opinion) it belongs, and where it is de facto going (cf. Colorado).
Yes, there would be some spillover effects, but it is already so pervasive that I think they would be minimal.
Smuggling isn't the problem I'm trying to solve. I'm trying to damage the cartels, reduce violence, reduce prison costs, and focus our limited resources on more important areas. The illicit drug trade is responsible for a big percentage of homicides in the US as well as prison expenses.
E Hines- I understand your pain -but did the law save your brother? The law did not save my cousin. The drug enforcement side always pulls up the anecdote-but never mentions that by default every tragedy they use to illustrate their case, happened under the set of laws that was supposed to prevent such things. This is an illustration of failure, not success.
People advocate for drug laws based on the idea that the law, and the penalties, will somehow ameliorate the situation- I believe it exacerbates the situation. Indeed, the laws of supply and demand assure that it will.
One simple question- anywhere in America, is it any harder to obtain drugs now, than it was 40 years ago? (outside of sudafed...)
The War on Drugs is riddled with unintended consequences-such as -
it has artificially boosted prices to the point that-
We have created Drug Cartels strong enough to challenge governments.
Created a vast domestic internal army to "fight" the problem.
Pushed pricing to the point only theft or assault will bring enough cash to junkies for their fix.
Provided excuses to attack the Bill of Rights, especially the 2nd,and 4th amendments, including the odious RICO act, now used as a universal confiscation tool at the whim of the police.
The war on drugs benefits the drug cartels, the police and courts and prison systems,all of which it has suffused with cash, and has been to the detriment of the public, who now have to pay higher taxes, deal with escalated crime, and cope with a corrupt hyper-militarized police, and the abrogation of their rights.
For what return- my question again- is there any evidence that the WOD has cut drug use at all? Has it actually stopped anyone from taking drugs?
The cops are fond of displaying piles of dope and cash and weapons, all of which is used as sleight of hand to suggest this reduced the flow of drugs-and they are measuring the wrong thing.
To paraphrase Robert Peel, the success of police work is not measured in increased number of arrests, but in a reduction of the crime rate.
For what return- my question again- is there any evidence that the WOD has cut drug use at all? Has it actually stopped anyone from taking drugs?
Is there any evidence that murder laws have reduced murder rates? What about rape? Theft? Arson?
The purpose of criminal law isn't to prevent crime from ever happening. That's not a reasonable goal. The purpose is twofold:
1. Give society a mechanism for going after people who commit certain acts.
2. Raise the cost of certain acts so the persuadable/deterrable margin decides the risk outweighs the benefit.
The relevant analogy here is prostitution laws. When prostitution is legal, crime and trafficking doesn't go away, and it doesn't end up being reduced either. This is the argument used to legalize drugs - that somehow, illogically, the only harms associated with drug use are caused by anti-drug laws.
Human trafficking has actually increased in nations that legalized prostitution because the demand outstripped (pun fully intended) the number of women who are willing to work in that field of endeavor.
It defies common sense to say that if we made it easier to import/sell drugs and removed the legal penalties for drug use, the amount of drug addicts and drug related crime (which is often committed by addicts stealing because they don't have drug money) will somehow stay constant or decrease.
I've never ceased to be amazed at the number of conservatives who say that when you make an activity cheaper or easier, you get more of it and when you make it costlier or more difficult, you get less. It would appear that we only like the "incentives matter" argument when it's used to further an end we already support :p
I'm trying to damage the cartels....
The cartels will just...outsource...and set up farms in the US.
[D]id the law save your brother? The law did not save my cousin. ... This is an illustration of failure, not success.
The law didn't save the murder victim, either, or the victims of that crime's collateral damage. As far as I can tell, you're writing an excuse for surrender.
the success of police work is not measured in increased number of arrests, but in a reduction of the crime rate.
And one way to reduce the crime rate is to legalize crime.
I also rather doubt you understand my "pain;" the existence of your red herring implies this.
Eric Hines
There is a scene in Ivanhoe where King Richard the Lionheart grants the right to hunt deer to Friar Tuck in thanks for his hospitality and service. Richard remarks:
"I will but assign thee three bucks every season; but if that do not prove an apology for thy slaying thirty, I am no Christian knight nor true king."
That's an ally to Cassandra's point. Making it legal in any degree provides an apology for much more of it. Caught with his thirteenth buck, the Friar need only plead that it is his second -- the warden will know no better. What must be admitted, to favor legalization, is that a great deal more of it won't be harmful compared to the harms caused by enforcing the prohibition.
That may really be true, in the case of cannabis, but it would need to be accepted and argued. Even if so, there are many other kinds of drugs for which it might not be true.
Are we dealing with a natural right here? Is there a natural right to eat food, take medicine, refuse medical treatment?
If we agree that there is, then there is a very high bar to meet to say to a person "you can't eat this food", or "you can't refuse this medical procedure." But what also must be considered is harm to self and others. If someone has a cyanide capsule and says they know what they are doing and they want to die, I would still slap it out of their hand, violating the non-aggression principle. We are made in the image of God and should not destroy that image (except in self defense).
Perhaps the immediacy and degree of the effect must be considered. Classification of MJ as a substance with no legitimate medical use is a fallacy. The effects of meth and krokodil and pretty immediate and devastating - weeks to months. I can see banning them. MJ/cocaine have longer timeframes before there is harm I think. But take my perceptions as someone who has never touched the stuff. Getting truth about some of this is hard to do.
FWIW, I will admit to smoking pot when I was young. What stopped me wasn't any moral issue - it was more the realization that all the kids who smoked pot weren't going anywhere in life.
They had no ambition, no drive, no passion for anything. But they were totally mellow :p
I didn't find that to be true w/drinking, by the way. I do think medical marijuana is a legitimate use of what is a drug, and loved Justice Thomas' dissenting opinion in Gonzalez v. Raich. Favorite parts:
Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything–and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.... If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption (not because it is interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably bound up with interstate commerce), then Congress' Article I powers – as expanded by the Necessary and Proper Clause – have no meaningful limits. Whether Congress aims at the possession of drugs, guns, or any number of other items, it may continue to "appropria[te] state police powers under the guise of regulating commerce."
And this pearl:
If the majority is to be taken seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 States. This makes a mockery of Madison's assurance to the people of New York that the "powers delegated" to the Federal Government are "few and defined", while those of the States are "numerous and indefinite.
Note that his objection was made on Commerce Clause grounds. I heartily recommend the entire dissent:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-1454.ZD1.html
I loved this part too (Thomas again, in O'Connor's dissent):
We would do well to recall how James Madison, the father of the Constitution, described our system of joint sovereignty to the people of New York: “The powers delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite… . The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” The Federalist No. 45, pp. 292—293 (C.Rossiter ed. 1961).
If I were a California citizen, I would not have voted for the medical marijuana ballot initiative; if I were a California legislator I would not have supported the Compassionate Use Act. But whatever the wisdom of California’s experiment with medical marijuana, the federalism principles that have driven our Commerce Clause cases require that room for experiment be protected in this case. For these reasons I dissent.
How I love that man.
If someone has a cyanide capsule and says they know what they are doing and they want to die, I would still slap it out of their hand, violating the non-aggression principle. We are made in the image of God and should not destroy that image
Certainly. That's an individual duty, though. That in no way authorizes government to impose that on everyone. For instance, I disagree with you on the extent of this duty. If I'm satisfied the man is of sound mind, I'll be inclined to let him proceed. It's the same thing as a living will that says "no extraordinary measures, or DNR, or some such." If I think the man is not sound, or if I think the capsule is being forced on him, I'll intervene. No government, though, has a right to impose your solution on me, or mine on you.
But that's also a case that has little or no collateral damage. The collateral damage from drugs is wide and deep.
Our freedoms end where they interfere with another's capacity to give effect to his freedoms. The collateral damage from drugs is too great an infringement on those others' freedoms.
Eric Hines
E Hines, my apology's, - of course, all pain and loss is intensely personal- I meant only to say my cousin who was close and like a brother to me in some ways was lost to drugs.
You are exactly correct when you said to reduce the crime rate,make crime legal- although it begs the definition of crime. We can make anything a crime, with a sheet of paper a pen and a few votes.
Cass said-"
I've never ceased to be amazed at the number of conservatives who say that when you make an activity cheaper or easier, you get more of it and when you make it costlier or more difficult, you get less. It would appear that we only like the "incentives matter" argument when it's used to further an end we already support"
The line I believe, is "if you want more of something, subsidize it, and if you want less, penalize it".
The twist is , making dope illegal is, in fact, a perverse incentive - it artificially raises the profit. It nearly defines "unintended consequence."
So again- are drugs harder to get now than 40 years ago? We have spent untold billions- there should be some metric to show us if there has been a decrease.
- it was said above that the law does not prevent crime. Quite true, it simply provides a mechanism for punishment. So if , in fact, it does not deter- then why are we punishing people? Because they use something we don't like? The Iranians whip people for drinking alcohol because they don't like it.
I don't have any great answers here- all I know is what we are doing seems to not be working, and has unintended consequences that have the potential to destroy the republic- the corrupt police state the WOD has enabled is more of a danger to society than the drug users, IMO.
We could stop drug use almost entirely, were we willing to apply unlimited measures. History gives us plenty of hints. Then what do we have? And what else would the authorities decide they would like to apply those measures to?
All these arguments pro and con were made many times over before and during Prohibition- and the same forces were in play. Would we feel the same were the discussion of booze legality? Is there any fundamental difference? The parallels are certainly plentiful.
People use dope because they are empty inside- what they need is something to fill them with purpose.
Raven--Now sweat. My anecdote was for its illustration of the breadth and depth of the collateral damage done by drug use. Its personal nature was for demonstrating the empirical nature of the anecdote. The red herring, as I saw it, was the reference to pain on my part, which was, and is, utterly irrelevant to that illustration.
The Iranians whip people for drinking alcohol because they don't like it.
This is relevant to our American situation how, exactly?
...what we are doing seems to not be working, and has unintended consequences that have the potential to destroy the republic....
And the collateral damage--we should just accept that, and ignore the danger that creates for the Republic? I haven't seen anything here that goes beyond a failure to execute--nothing at all relevant to the premise the drug use ought or ought not to be illegal. Other than that collateral damage arguing for illegal.
Eric Hines
As for banning imports, it's a logistics issue. It doesn't stop the cartels, in exactly the same way laws against murder haven't stopped murder. Instead, it focuses on cartel logistics and introduces friction to slow them down. It's an extra hoop they have to jump through, added complexity in their equations, added expense and risk.
And, it's also within the proper realm of federal authority.
This is collateral damage caused BY the WOD-
"The War on Drugs is riddled with unintended consequences-such as -
it has artificially boosted prices to the point that-
We have created Drug Cartels strong enough to challenge governments.
Created a vast domestic internal army to "fight" the problem.
Pushed pricing to the point only theft or assault will bring enough cash to junkies for their fix.
Provided excuses to attack the Bill of Rights, especially the 2nd,and 4th amendments, including the odious RICO act, now used as a universal confiscation tool at the whim of the police."
Everything has consequences-sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
Most of the "collateral damage" I see is directly attributable to the WOD, not the drugs themselves.
Most of the damage, as far as I can see, is fallout from the drug users being forced to commit crimes to buy dope because the price has been artificially jacked up by by virtue of it's illegal nature,and gang fights of control of the illegal trade, that sort of thing. It is not the drugs themselves , it is the MONEY from the drug trade. And it goes all the way to the top of society. And the only way to drop the profit that I know of is to legalize it.
If we had elected to GIVE every dope head in the country an unlimited supply of drugs, for the rest of their lives,it would far cheaper, and safer for both the addicts and the rest of us.
Those midnight no knock raids the cops like? The ones where every few weeks some innocent gets their door kicked in? Where do you suppose the justification for that came from?
The bit about the Iranians whipping people for drinking was just an illustration that the obsession with what kind of drug is cultural, not necessarily a indication of the level of "destruction" any particular one has. People have been drugging themselves on various things for all of our history, we have just chosen to select , mostly arbitrarily, which ones are "bad". I suspect most of the decisions regarding this have been made by people with their fingers in the WOD money pie.
There has been a striking lack of rebuttal of my point in all of this- that the WOD itself has generated an extreme threat to liberty.
If we had elected to GIVE every dope head in the country an unlimited supply of drugs, for the rest of their lives,it would far cheaper, and safer for both the addicts and the rest of us.
That's what methadone does--and it had no affect at all on any aspect of the drug problem.
The collateral damage to which I'm referring has absolutely nothing to do with the war on drugs. It has everything to do with the damage of the addictions to the addict, about whom I don't care very much, and to his family, his friends, to the community around him.
It has to do, also, albeit to a lesser degree, with the suicides from the seeming hopelessness of the situation and the costs of those suicides to families and the surrounding community.
Eric Hines
I think this from Raven's comment gets to the true root of it:
"People use dope because they are empty inside- what they need is something to fill them with purpose."
combined with the fact that we as a society deem somethings acceptable (like drinking) and some not acceptable (drug use) for reasons not related to common mores and not the rigorous application of law and reason. We, and our society are and have to be more than that. Capitalism works, but only in an ethical society. Our system of laws and governance work, but only in an ethical society, and this is one of those issues decided by our shared ethics and not libertarianism. Our society has drifted away from the things that in the past grounded us and gave our lives meaning and purpose- God, family, country- and instead has attempted to replace it with self, self and self. This has led us to be a society where some of us think Marijuana should be illegal, and some think 'hey, I like smoking pot, let' legalize it' and use any justification for it, including medical use. It's unbelievable how many people in California have chronic back pain, and glaucoma, and can find no relief from anything other than pot. It's a open joke now- late night comedians joke about it, there are billboards for 'Medical Marijuana Doctors'... When society is more interested in it's amusements than it's own good, this is what happens. I have deep sympathy for libertarianism, but it's things like this (and isolationism) that keep me from endorsing the whole line.
Just tonight we had over our friend who is currently going through a divorce after years with an addicted man who became paranoid, isolated and completely unproductive. She finally decided to move on for the good of the children and herself. After a panic because she's no longer supporting him (or his habit) he assaulted her at home and was arrested (fortunately it wasn't too serious). She can't get a restraining order for some time. Too many people have believed the pot legalization movement and it's claims that pot is harmless and good, and things like this have resulted. Drunk driving was illegal for a long time, but we didn't cut the numbers until we as a society made it uncool and unacceptable. So long as pot remains 'cool' and 'harmless', we'll see much more of this sort of destruction of lives. Whether it's legal or not is almost irrelevant.
So again- are drugs harder to get now than 40 years ago? We have spent untold billions- there should be some metric to show us if there has been a decrease.
Relative to what? The population has increased exponentially. What baseline would you use? And how would you account for changes in the ease of travel and transport over the same time period? You can't just assume things would have stayed the same as they were before planes and cars and trucks became commonplace, and that's what we'd have to do because that's when the pre-drug law data occurs.
40 years ago drugs were still illegal. I remember - I was in high school and we had cops checking people's lockers for them. Here's a brief summary of drug laws in the US. As you can see, drugs have been illegal for pretty much the last century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_drug_prohibition
We can compare drug use before drug laws with drug use after drug laws. What we can't do is know what current drug use would be like *without* drug laws.
Eric,
Excellent point that it would be an individual duty to prevent someone’s suicide rather than the government’s. As to the limits of my conscience regarding others committing suicide, I will have to think about that some more. There is a difference between a DNR, which lets a natural event take its course, and active self harm.
Suicide’s collateral damage is normally wide and deep and permanent. If someone is truly without family and friends and colleagues, then one could argue that suicide is limited to the individual. Many times (most?) the damages from drugs are recoverable and less permanent than suicide.
Our freedoms end where they interfere with another's capacity to give effect to his freedoms. The collateral damage from drugs is too great an infringement on those others' freedoms.
I’ll buy the first sentence. The second sentence is a judgment call. I respect that. I don’t think it is consistent though. I had written a big convoluted paragraph comparing drug use and suicide, but it boiled down to this – the harm caused to everyone, drug user or not, by the police state and “corrections” (snicker!) system and is much greater on an intellectual and actual level than the harm that continues to be done anyways by drug use under the current laws. It is harder to measure the harmful effects and fallout from higher taxes, time/resources used to find illegal drugs, and the incarceration of people who have committed no violence against others.
Raven,
I agree with you we are having the exact same types of discussion about drug prohibition that was had about alcohol prohibition decades ago. If anything, in this Hall, it has been more civilized – I haven’t heard any hysterical references to “demon cocaine” recently.
People use dope because they are empty inside- what they need is something to fill them with purpose.
Exactly! So this points to everyone’s spiritual depravity and need for reconciliation, which is the root of all problems…
...limits of my conscience regarding others committing suicide, I will have to think about that some more.
Exactly. That's your consideration; I have mine. Government should not be dictating our conscience to either of us.
Further on the matter of suicide, I think we're conflating suicide at the end of life with suicide in the context of drug use. At the end of life, when the pain meds no longer are working, but the body and mind still have months or weeks--or even days--left before a natural event takes its course, suicide is, I think, an acceptable alternative, and far less damaging to the surviving family and friends than the continued suffering.
It's the suicide in the drug use context, where the damage--including the suicide itself--is collateral to the drug use, that concerns me here.
...the damages from drugs are recoverable and less permanent than suicide.
Which makes this suicide an unacceptable collateral damage, along with the cascade damage from that suicide.
Also, there's nothing in anything I've seen about keeping drug use illegal, and certainly nothing in anything I've written, that obviates helping the user get off his dependency and then to keep not using. Indeed, simple incarceration--even if it could be done in some sort of clean, no hardened criminals, etc jail--can't hack it. It's insufficient just to break the proximate addiction. The user both needs to be, on release, not returned to the environment in which he became a user (perhaps to the point of barring his return, a sort of limited internal banishment), he needs also to be taught coping mechanisms with which he can handle further, and perhaps different, stresses without resorting, again, to drugs. After all, once addicted, he'll always be addicted; he'll only have his addiction under greater or lesser control. And that, along with the potential cascade damage from resuming use, are serious collateral damages from drug use.
I've been eliding harmful effects and fallout from higher taxes [etc] because I see that sort of thing as a failure to execute on the illegality of drugs, not a failure of the illegality itself.
Eric Hines
Cass, I would start the measuring about drug use in the early 1960's, when drugs were illegal, but the WOD was not yet implemented. There was certainly a huge increase in drug use among the young during late 1960's,and the WOD did not start till the middle seventies in all it's swat armored glory. Yes, we have added another 100 million since then-so percentages instead of raw data- the question is whether or not our militarized policing and all the tools that go with it have done anything to reduce drug use- I maintain it is doubtful-at best.
There are so many examples now of the tactics of the WOD being applied to the citizenry at large, and of course the WOT, that I fear for our countries future as a republic- the police state is growing in front of us. And the scary part is the people who want those jobs self- select for the same traits a bully has.
Eric- yes, suicide echo's through families- it is devastating regardless the cause.
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