No.... it's a constitutionally limited democratic republic. That's supposed to prevent "the majority of the voting public" from mandating stupid laws and forcing the minority to live under them.
As such, place the blame where it belongs: the majority of Democratic and Republican party politicians, who have employed the drug war as a means to preserve or increase their political power, and to distract and propagandize the aforementioned voting public away from any issues of real importance that cannot be solved effectively without doing something unpopular among certain blocs of the electorate.
> No.... it's a constitutionally limited democratic republic. That's supposed to prevent "the majority of the voting public" from mandating stupid laws and forcing the minority to live under them.
No, its supposed to stop the majority of the voting public from mandating laws that violate essential liberty and forcing the minority to live under them.
Its not supposed to stop the majority of the voting public from mandating stupid laws, though of course one hopes that stupid laws would, if they fail to be recognized as such before passage, be corrected in short order most of the time.
Though experience would, perhaps, show that to be overly optimistic.
It would seem that the issue in dispute is whether a law can be stupid without also violating essential liberty in some way.
I think we can agree that all laws that violate essential liberty are intrinsically stupid.
Let's not examine it too closely, though, lest we uncover that republics may, in fact, be designed to protect the privileges of the land-owning elites from the sheer numbers of the unwashed rabble, and the defense of their essential liberties may only be a beneficial side effect.
You're correct, but unfortunately there is nothing about personal sovereignty over one's own biochemical processes in the constitution. The constitutional also permits the Federal government to enforce laws on interstate commerce, which effectively allows this kind of prohibition even if the states disagree internally.
The interstate commerce clause has been used as a dumping ground for federal overreach for a long time. It is likely that it was only intended to provide authority sufficient for the federal government to prevent a state like Missouri from treating Colorado cannabis any differently from California cannabis, if either happen to be imported into its jurisdiction. This interpretation is considered obsolete by many federal judges.
Interpreting it such that a cannabis plant grown, harvested, prepared, and consumed entirely within the state of Colorado, exclusively by Colorado persons, may still be subject to federal law is a bit of a stretch, in my opinion. But the prestigious paid professionals still do it.
It took the 18th Amendment to prohibit "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors...for beverage purposes" at a federal level in 1920. The Volstead Act was able to use that amendment as the basis for its authority. The 21st explicitly repealed it, thus obviating Volstead, which had already been unpopular for years. Note also that consumption was never outlawed. Even so, it was a disaster.
There was no such amendment to authorize prohibition or control of other, non-alcoholic intoxicants for recreational purposes. What happened to the Constitution between 1920 and 1970 that would have allowed Congress to pass another prohibition law like the Volstead Act? Nothing. Nothing at all. Or rather, New Deal politics happened. Federal power expanded without explicit authorization, just because of a temporary confluence between economics and political opportunity.
The various drug war laws are probably not authorized by the commerce clause, just as justices O'Connor and Thomas dissented (Rehnquist concurring with O'Connor) in Gonzales v. Raich [0]. It would seem that, looking also at Wickard v. Filburn [1] and US v. Lopez [2], the SCotUS is not likely to be of any help here. The underlying argument is that "drugs can be sold, therefore there exists an interstate market for them, therefore federal regulations on them are authorized by the commerce clause." Wickard v. Filburn seemed like politically-motivated bullshit to me, but who am I to argue with the precedent?
The laws will, like Volstead, mainly be overturned by the court of popular opinion long before any official federal action occurs.
> The interstate commerce clause has been used as a dumping ground for federal overreach for a long time. It is likely that it was only intended to provide authority sufficient for the federal government to prevent a state like Missouri from treating Colorado cannabis any differently from California cannabis
That's pretty clearly not the case; the so-called "interstate commerce clause" in Article I, Section 8 is perhaps more accurately the "interstate and foreign commerce clause", and expressly gives Congress the same authority to regulate trade among the states as it does for foreign trade and trade with Indian tribes; it clearly was not intended to be limited to preventing states from erecting protectionist trade barriers (which, in any case, is the focus of the Article I, Section 10, limits on states.)
> It took the 18th Amendment to prohibit "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors...for beverage purposes" at a federal level in 1920. The Volstead Act was able to use that amendment as the basis for its authority.
The Volstead Act went into effect in 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified in 1920, and went into effect in 1921. Its clear that Congress -- which proposed the 18th Amendment before passing the Volstead Act, which it did over a Presidential veto -- did not believe that the Amendment was necessary to support the act, though they clearly thought it was desirable (perhaps because it didn't just authorize regulation, it explicitly mandated prohibition.)
My objectivity regarding the interstate commerce clause is compromised to the point where I can't really have a rational discussion with anyone who disagrees with my opinion on it. It suffices to say that I am strongly anti-federalist, and excessive coprolalia quickly ensues whenever a strong federalist shows up.
In the most ferrous of ironies, the uniform commercial code--which was separately adopted by all 50 states in almost identical form--is probably the ideal form of legislation to be covered by the probable original intent of the interstate commerce clause, and yet there is no law that federalizes the UCC. Instead, it is used for all manner of laws that have no authorization anywhere else in the constitution.
Thus, anything further I might have to say on the topic is probably not appropriate for HN.
As such, place the blame where it belongs: the majority of Democratic and Republican party politicians, who have employed the drug war as a means to preserve or increase their political power, and to distract and propagandize the aforementioned voting public away from any issues of real importance that cannot be solved effectively without doing something unpopular among certain blocs of the electorate.