OK, so why is
marijuana illegal?
We've heard all sorts of different reasons:
- Marijuana causes aberrant behavior and lack of motivation
- Weed is harmful and has no therapeutic value
- Pot use leads to use of other drugs
- Buying grass supports violent criminals, and even terrorists
However when the
Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that the federal government can trump state law and prosecute medicinal marijuana users, they didn't rely on any of those reasons. They ruled this way because homegrown marijuana would lessen demand for illegaly sold marijuana, presumably cutting into the profits of career criminals and terrorist networks.
Contrary to the way they act sometimes, the federal government can not pass and enforce any law that it wants to, it has to be something that is in accordance with its delineated powers in
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Often when a law is challenged, the government relies on either their power to regulate interstate commerce or their power to pass laws that are "necessary and proper" to running an effective country. Both vague statements lend themselves to much interpretaion; In this instance, the government chose the former.
The precedent that was cited in the majority opinion was a 1942 case that upheld regualtions on homegrown wheat, because that wheat would have an effect on the national wheat market. Justin Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion concludes that homegrown weed would simularly have an effect on the supply and demand for pot on a national level.
Of course it would, it would decrease the demand for pot from illegal drug dealers- people who the federal government say are apt to be violent criminals and terrorists. So in a bizarre twist on the law chronically ill people are being denied the chronic in order to protect the economic interests of black marketeers.
The federal government has tried using a loose interpretation of the "commerce clause" in other cases in recent years. In 1995 they said they could ban firearms near schools and in 2000 they said victims of domestic violence could bring cases in federal court, both times an imagined effect on interstate commerce was the defense of the constitutionality of those laws. Both times a slim (5-4) majority of the Supreme Court said that although the aims of the laws may be admirable, the laws have no effect realistic effect on commerce and Congress did not have the authority to pass the laws.
This time two of those Justices- Kennedy and Scalia- defected from the "Federalist Five" and said the commerce clause was sufficient authority for the federal law to supercede state laws on medicinal marijuana. This is another case of Supreme Court Justices coming to a decision in their head and then twisting legal logic to meet that decision- a process derided as "judicial activism."
Kennedy and Scalia broke consistency with their previous decisions in order to keep drug dealers from a slump in business.
You gotta love the way our system works sometimes.