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Should Jeff Sessions prosecute marijuana/cannabis users, suppliers, and growers?

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  • Should Jeff Sessions prosecute marijuana/cannabis users, suppliers, and growers?

    "The use, possession, sale, cultivation, and transportation of cannabis is illegal under federal law in the United States." (wiki)

    However, the vast majority of US states have decriminalized or legalized the use of marijuana/cannabis for medical or personal use under their state laws. Only states shown in white have state laws that fully criminalize the use and possession of cannabis, and all other states have legalized or decriminalized it to one degree or another:


    In the US, however, federal law overrides state law. The fact that cannabis/marijuana is illegal under federal law means that all users and possessors and sellers in all states are breaking federal law when they use or distribute the drug, regardless of whether the state has voted to make it legal under state law.

    At Obama's direction, his attorney generals have chosen to not enforce this federal law, and thus allow people to use and possess marijuana/cannabis if their state has legalized it.

    However, incoming Trump appointee Jeff Sessions has a long history of being personally very strongly against the use and legalization of marijuana. Sessions has not ruled out choosing to use federal law enforcement to go after marijuana users in states that have legalized it.

    Many of the states concerned have legalized marijuana use by ballot initiative, and therefore a choice by the Sessions/Trump administration to prosecute marijuana use in these states will be directly contrary to the expressed democratic will of the people in these states. However, given the way the government is set up in the US, with federal law overriding state law, the Sessions/Trump administration would have every legal authority for choosing to undertake such prosecutions.

    So I am interested to see what conservatives and Trump/Sessions advocates in this forum think concerning whether the incoming administration should enforce the federal marijuana laws at the expense of the state laws...
    16
    Yes
    43.75%
    7
    No
    56.25%
    9
    Last edited by Starlight; 01-15-2017, 04:41 PM.
    "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
    "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

  • #2
    Unless Congress changes the law, the law should be enforced.
    "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings." Hosea 6:6

    "Theology can be an intellectual entertainment." Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

    Comment


    • #3
      I have a hard time philosophically saying no, given that if a law is on the books, it weakens the rule of law to selectively enforce it.

      On the other hand I firmly support medicinal (but not recreational) marijuana and find it cruel to prosecute people for whom it may be the only way to relieve pain. That's largely on the FDA; it's silly for marijuana to be a Schedule I drug.

      I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker recently. She is deeply conservative and anti-drug, but she also lost her grandson recently to a terrible illness. She admitted to me that despite her deep misgivings about drugs, her family had considered medicinal marijuana if it was the only thing that could relieve the pain, and that her view was not black and white on that issue.

      Maybe the best way forward would be for Sessions to simply enforce the law, though focusing on suppliers and not individual users. This could get the gears moving for change in marijuana policy, especially relating to medicinal marijuana. (This is similar to what pro-lifers generally want; an abortion criminalization that focuses on abortion providers.)
      Last edited by KingsGambit; 01-15-2017, 04:57 PM.
      "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

      Comment


      • #4
        What KingsGambit said.

        Comment


        • #5
          Federal laws against marijuana amount to a subsidy for importers, and even US growers.
          Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

          Comment


          • #6
            Conservatives favor states' rights except when they are in control of the federal government.
            βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι᾿ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον·
            ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους, τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην.

            אָכֵ֕ן אַתָּ֖ה אֵ֣ל מִסְתַּתֵּ֑ר אֱלֹהֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מוֹשִֽׁיעַ׃

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by robrecht View Post
              Conservatives favor states' rights except when they are in control of the federal government.
              I have come to believe this is very very true. I think the "states rights" slogan has never been primarily about any sort of serious belief on their part with regard to different governmental powers. What it has been about is getting their policy views passed into law as much as possible. Historically, "states rights" served as a tool to try and allow segregation to be legal in conservative states when it was banned by the federal government. And we have seen prominent "states-rights" advocates (e.g. Scalia) be utterly hypocritical by completely ignoring all states-rights arguments as soon as the possibility existed of the federal government enforcing their own personal views as policy for all states. We see the same hypocrisy on the subject of marijuana... "states rights? Bah, we control the federal government!!! So ban it!"
              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

              Comment


              • #8
                The Constitution only gives authority for interstate commerce. They don't have authority to make laws for marijuana grown and sold locally

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                  "The use, possession, sale, cultivation, and transportation of cannabis is illegal under federal law in the United States." (wiki)

                  However, the vast majority of US states have decriminalized or legalized the use of marijuana/cannabis for medical or personal use under their state laws. Only states shown in white have state laws that fully criminalize the use and possession of cannabis, and all other states have legalized or decriminalized it to one degree or another:
                  Maybe it's just me, but I don't see any "white" states

                  I'm always still in trouble again

                  "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                  "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                  "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                    I have a hard time philosophically saying no, given that if a law is on the books, it weakens the rule of law to selectively enforce it.

                    On the other hand I firmly support medicinal (but not recreational) marijuana and find it cruel to prosecute people for whom it may be the only way to relieve pain. That's largely on the FDA; it's silly for marijuana to be a Schedule I drug.

                    I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker recently. She is deeply conservative and anti-drug, but she also lost her grandson recently to a terrible illness. She admitted to me that despite her deep misgivings about drugs, her family had considered medicinal marijuana if it was the only thing that could relieve the pain, and that her view was not black and white on that issue.

                    Maybe the best way forward would be for Sessions to simply enforce the law, though focusing on suppliers and not individual users. This could get the gears moving for change in marijuana policy, especially relating to medicinal marijuana. (This is similar to what pro-lifers generally want; an abortion criminalization that focuses on abortion providers.)
                    While I favor the decriminalization and possible legalization of marijuana (that isn't the same thing as encouraging people to use it), I agree with you in that I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea of selective enforcement of a law that is on the books.

                    The proper action is to repeal the federal laws.

                    I cannot help but think that the current situation sets it up for the feds to prosecute only people that they don't like while turning a blind eye to everyone else.

                    I'm always still in trouble again

                    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                      Maybe it's just me, but I don't see any "white" states
                      The lightest shade of gray/grey for the pedantic.
                      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        The Federal Marijuana Laws are hitching post laws passed relatively recently to preserve the monopoly of the tobacco industry.

                        It is time for them to go one way or another.
                        Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                        Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                        But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                        go with the flow the river knows . . .

                        Frank

                        I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                          The Federal Marijuana Laws are hitching post laws passed relatively recently to preserve the monopoly of the tobacco industry.
                          Don't forget the alcohol industry. And don't forget racial and political motivations and the belief that it was Blacks and Hippies and Mexicans who smoked marijuana and other drugs and the beliefs that the laws could be selectively enforced against such people.

                          Aide says Nixon's war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies

                          One of Richard Nixon's top advisers and a key figure in the Watergate scandal said the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies, according to a 22-year-old interview recently published in Harper's Magazine.

                          "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.
                          "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
                          "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                          "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                          "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Thoughtful Monk View Post
                            Unless Congress changes the law, the law should be enforced.
                            By this logic, all sorts of goofy laws that are still technically on the books should be enforced. In Alaska, do you think people should be charged with the crime of looking at a moose from an aircraft? (that is apparently actually against the law)

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                              The lightest shade of gray/grey for the pedantic.
                              Since we're being pedantic....

                              Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                              At Obama's direction, his attorney generals have chosen to not enforce this federal law, and thus allow people to use and possess marijuana/cannabis if their state has legalized it.
                              It's "attorneys general", and Obama only has one. (And only for a few more days )
                              The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                              Comment

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