Jim Cardoza
Eleven years ago, Californians passed Proposition 215, an initiative that gave physicians discretion to prescribe marijuana. This act of democracy obviously inconvenienced the federal government, as it responded with a contradictory law of its own.
Using the grounds that federal law supersedes state law, the feds continue to ignore the California law. Their rationale would be rock solid, except for one small matter. They lack the Constitutional authority.
The federal law in question was initiated in 1997, when then President Bill Clinton signed legislation specifically designed to negate the successful California measure. In that dictate, the National Drug Control Policy said that physicians who recommend and prescribe medical marijuana, as well as their patients, shall be subject to prosecution, even if no state laws have been violated.
It seems curious that marijuana alone receives this distinction when far more dangerous and addictive substances, like opiates and amphetamines, are allowed to be utilized. Do lawmakers have greater medical wisdom than physicians? Do bureaucrats care more deeply about our well-being than both ourselves and our doctors?
As marijuana is virtually impossible to either tax or regulate, it is a natural and organic object of government scorn. Most likely, that is the stubborn root of the weed issue.
While the question of intent is troubling, it is the question of authority that begs the citizen’s grave concern. America is founded on the principle that all power originates with the people. In turn, the government is allowed only those powers expressly yielded to it. The Constitution defines the limits of those powers as adopted by the people through their chosen representatives.
As revolutionaries against a powerful central government, our Founders sought to protect Americans from a similar fate. The Bill of Rights was their noble attempt.
Since those days, our contract with government has undergone a long series of one-sided stipulations, resulting in a significant transfer of power from the individual to the state. Justices deploying a “living and breathing” interpretation of the Constitution have twisted and contorted the fundamental concepts of our founding fathers and ignored the document’s plainly stated language. Instead, they conjure new meanings, based on international law or in the name of social justice.
Let’s say I agree to pay you $10 an hour. But, on payday, I only pay you $8 an hour. You take me to court. The judge asks me where do I get off changing the deal. I explain this way: “Well, your honor, new information came to light. I happened to read an article telling me they only pay $8 an hour for this kind of work in France. Then, I remembered that as a child, I was spanked. Next thing I knew, our contract had lived and breathed its way right on down to $8 an hour.”
The judge would not hesitate to find my defense to be nonsensical and dismiss it out of hand. But somehow, when federal judges apply this very same principle to Constitutional interpretations, it is praised by liberals as great wisdom and thoughtful deliberation.
Since the Constitution does not mention regulation of marijuana, drugs, physicians or medicine among its authorized federal powers, the Tenth Amendment should make things crystal clear: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” But things are not crystal clear.
The amendment Thomas Jefferson considered the cornerstone of the Constitution, has now been reduced to dust. Its plainly stated intentions were hollowed out one ruling at a time, and now scoundrels have filled the void.
In this instance, the culprit is the Commerce Clause, the Constitutional authority of Congress to regulate trade between states. Ever since the days of FDR, the Commerce Clause has been forged into a blunt instrument to rob states of power. The issue of medical marijuana provides a shining example of how this is accomplished.
Say a Californian obtains a marijuana prescription from his local doctor, grows some in his backyard and consumes it in his house. The feds not only can detect a violation of the interstate commerce regulation in this instance, they find one so egregious they are compelled to step between both doctors and their patients, and voters and their will.
You may wonder how the Commerce Clause could possibly apply to the Californian in the example above? By growing the weed and not purchasing it elsewhere (conceivably out of state), an impact is made on the national marijuana market -- Voila!, interstate commerce.
As fig leaves for tyranny go, this one doesn’t provide adequate protection to a gnat. Nonetheless, it stands as strong as if it were enshrined in the Bill of Rights itself, since it is aggressively backed by the national police force.
Until the Supreme Court stops hiding from its job, that of interpreting the original agreement adopted between the people and their government, our liberties will continue drifting into the domain of tyrants.
