My fellow Kossacks warned me, and now it's here.
A cabal of reactionary right-wing nut jobs has filed a lawsuit asking the Federal Courts to violate the rights of Colorado and her voters under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution.
As we know, Colorado's voters approved legalization of retail sales of marijuana in 2012 by passing Amendment 64. But now, a lawsuit has been filed to forceably reverse this valuable advance in the freedom of Colorado's adults.
Please follow me down below the orange fleur-de-Kos for more details.
The "Safe Streets Alliance", an obvious reactionary right-wing organization, has filed this lawsuit and started its website to reverse the clear message sent by Colorado's voters in 2012. The claims made by the organization, that marijuana prohibition somehow makes us and our streets "safer", is specious at best and more likely pure, unadulterated bullshit. This is simply another attempt to breathe life into the dying Puritan paradigm that anything yielding comfort or enjoyment must be harmful and evil, and must be prohibited to adults because it does so. Never mind those of us to whom legalization has been an unalloyed boon. Never mind the adults who legalization helps to live more functional lives. Never mind the streets throughout Colorado, especially in her major cities, which have become safer because of the decrease in black-market activity due to legalization. If it feels good, it's got to be stopped -- just because it feels good and somebody out there enjoys it.
Let's take a break from my outraged rant for a moment and review a couple of quick facts. No one except a right-ring nut job lawyer would deny that Colorado has the right to legalize marijuana to the adults within her own borders. I present for my readers' careful consideration the last two Amendments in the Bill of Rights:
ARTICLE IX.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
ARTICLE X.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitu-
tion, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.
I respectfully submit that these are also the
only Constitutional passages which apply here. The Constitution never specifically empowered the Federal Government to prohibit anything except alcohol, a mistake which has since been rectified, as we now know it to be one of the worst mistakes we've ever made as a nation. Otherwise, we're dependent on the States to ban things. The only grounds the Federal narcotics laws (or the laws restricting explosives or firearms, for that matter) rest on is the enumerated powers of the Feds to regulate interstate commerce and prohibit the States from maintaining troops, ships, or materiel of war in time of peace. Marijuana is not war materiel, and this is most emphatically not an interstate commerce issue, as any attempt to carry marijuana across a State line immediately exposes the one doing the carrying to both the laws of the offended bordering State and the Federal laws such a person has broken.
So this really isn't a Federal issue at all, despite the boneheaded and deluded attempts of these RWNJ's to make it one. It's just the same old Puritanical same-old, waving the bloody shirt of "Our Children" to deny to Colorado's adults something that they -- we -- have voted to permit ourselves.
And it doesn't end there.
Legalization has made Colorado better off, and her streets and highways safer, in many ways. The tax income has improved all areas of public life here; "Our Children" are receiving a better education because of it, and those taxes have actually made it easier to enforce the laws against driving while stoned, by paying for field equipment and laboratory facilities to build cases against the offenders who so do. Meanwhile, black market activity in many of our poorer urban neighborhoods has decreased. Our streets are safer because of legalization.
Colorado Crime Rates Down 14.6% Since Legalizing Marijuana
Colorado's Crime Rate Dropped Post Legalization Of Marijuana
Six Months In, How Has Marijuana Legalization Treated Colorado?
Crime down and revenue up in Colorado since [legalization of marijuana]
If you actually go and visit the group's website, you'll find that there are some real morans involved with it. (Note capitalization, please! This isn't about anyone named Moran!) "Learn About Our Lawsuit To Block The Legalization Of MarAjuana!"
Gaaakkk!!
There's also a section in the website called "Tell Us Your Story". What they are expecting is for more of their own kind to repeat their bullshit whines in the hope that folks will ignore the facts and buy the whining hype. And this single sentence in the intro to that page struck me particularly hard, too:
And, as is far too often the case, underprivileged black and Hispanic youth are likely to suffer the most adverse consequences from this high risk, no reward social experiment.
-- from the linked "Tell Us Your Story" page
Ah yes, when in trouble, when in doubt, toss a little racism out!
The same "Tell Us Your Story" page asks its readers to check the "research" on the website's "Media" page for "facts" supporting the group's contention that marijuana should remain banned forever. What I found there was poor in research and rich in media hype. Bloody shirts aplenty, though; the same bloody shirts which were waved about to prevent Black and Brown folks from buying homes they could afford in neighborhoods they wanted to live in: "Property Values!" "Our Children!". And, of course, the lauding of the lawyer firm behind this garbage to the highest of the high heavens.
YAWN.
I wanted to go straight into the "Tell Us Your Story" page and tell them about how marijuana legalization has improved my life and the lives of people I know. But I want to hear from my fellow Kossacks first.
* * *
I have bad news for "The Safe Streets Alliance" and all of their repressive Puritanical ilk: Marijuana legalization is here to stay. Colorado and Washington State's voters are the vanguard of the revolutionary movement to overthrow Harry Anslinger's grievous mistake and restore freedom -- real freedom, the right to live as one chooses -- to American adults.
the history of marijuana’s criminalization is filled with:
Racism
Fear
Protection of Corporate Profits
Yellow Journalism
Ignorant, Incompetent, and/or Corrupt Legislators
Personal Career Advancement and Greed
These are the actual reasons marijuana is illegal.
-- from the article at: Why Is Marijuana Illegal?
Colorado's voters know this now. And we won't get fooled by it again. NO SALE.
I now turn the floor over to my fellow Kossacks.