Supreme Court rules against patients and states
Officially, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit on states’ rights. Randy Barnett’s insightful analysis is that this was a case of the Ninth Circuit reversing the Supreme Court, not the other way around.
The Ninth Circuit finally got its revenge on the Supreme Court justices who seemed to delight in reversing it. In Gonzales v. Raich, it gave the conservatives a choice: Uphold the Ninth Circuit's ruling favoring individuals engaged in the wholly intrastate non-economic activity of growing and consuming cannabis for medical purposes as recommended by a doctor and permitted by state law, or retreat from the landmark Commerce Clause decisions of U.S. v. Lopez (1995) and U.S. v. Morrison (2000). Either way the Ninth Circuit wins.
The intriguing part is that in this case, the Ninth Circuit was able to choose defendants who are compelling to at least half of the United States and probably quite a few percentage points more.
Part of what makes this result interesting is that all of the “leftist” members of the court voted to forbid states from letting patients use medical marijuana; the three dissenters were all “conservative” members. Some of the arguments in favor of the status quo were twisted; others simply amusing. Radley Balko at the Agitator writes:
The opinion was written by Stevens, one of the courts more leftist justices. This part is particularly laughable: Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, “but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress.”
As a colleague here in the office points out, the very fact that this case was heard by the Supreme Court arose from ballot initiatives in ten states. That is the democratic process. It’s localism, federalism, and democracy at its most responsive and most representative.
This was not a surprising verdict. I found it pleasantly surprising that three of the federalists stuck to their principles. In any case, compassionate use advocates are moving forward in the federal legislature. Write your congressfolks and let them know you support letting doctors prescribe effective medicine to their patients--or that you just support letting states let doctors do so.
- Tell Congress: It’s up to YOU to protect sick and dying patients
- “The federal government now has a choice: Enact sensible legislation that preserves the quality of life of patients across the country or continue wasting taxpayer money raiding sick and dying patients even when they abide by state and local law.”
- Ninth Circuit reverses Supreme Court
- “Gonzales v. Raich now replaces Wickard v. Filburn as the most far reaching example of Commerce Clause authority over intrastate activity ever decided by the Supreme Court.”
- More Raich
- “Despite ever-loosening attitudes toward marijuana among the public at large, Congress grows more obstinate and more militant. I’ll never understand why people trust Congress more than they trust elected officials closer and more accountable to them.”
- Drug Policy Action: Marijuana Debate Not Over
- “The Drug Policy Alliance is promoting contact with members of Congress to promote legislation to decriminalize medical marijuana. Letters matter.”
More prohibition
- Learning from alcohol prohibition
- If the people against ending drug prohibition had been around in the thirties, we would never have ended the prohibition of beer and cocktails, because of the dangers of pure alcohol and bathtub gin. One of the lessons of the alcohol prohibition era is that we don’t have to go from banning everything to allowing everything. There is a middle ground.
- Progressives ruin a different kind of race in New Jersey
- As a potential triple-crown winner prepares for the third race of the Triple Crown, it’s almost impossible to place a bet in Atlantic City, NJ.
- U.S. homicide rate compared to gun control measures
- Extrano’s Alley lists the U.S. homicide rate from 1885 to 1940, and somebody else puts it into a chart.
- The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition
- Herbert Asbury’s book has to rank as one of the greatest arguments ever written against the drug war; this book about alcohol prohibition chronicles and forecasts all of the problems with modern prohibition that we see today.
- Cannabis Britannica
- Subtitled “Empire, Trade, and Prohibition”, this is an in-depth history of how prohibition came about in Britain, and ends up describing how marijuana prohibition came to the forefront of international attempts to ban opium.
- 26 more pages with the topic prohibition, and other related pages