I wonder how many state has to legalize it before the federal government in USA is forced to change their classification. It seems like more and more state will legalize it over time anyways.
States starting to legalize it was likely a big part of why the Canadian government became comfortable with the idea of legalizing it. The idea of legalization, or at least decriminalization, has been floating around in Canada since the 90s, but a major talking point against the idea has been that it would compromise Canada's relationship with the USA. Obviously as internal parts of the USA are legalizing it this is no longer so much of a concern.
Yes, it's been in the works for years and a multi-billion dollar industry has grown up around recreational cannabis already. Canopy Growth was listed on the NYSE this year.
> I wonder how many state has to legalize it before the federal government in USA is forced to change their classification.
It's already arguably legal under federal law under the equal protection clause because congress legalized it in DC. As far as I know the feds aren't locking anyone up for possession of small amounts.
In this case the author is talking about using the 14th amendment to strike down state laws, but I was just talking about federal law. E.g. if the federal government allows people in DC to do something, then it has to allow everyone else to do that thing also.
The author is right that strictly speaking the equal protection clause only applies to state laws, but the supreme court has also retroactively applied it to federal laws as well:
The parent post was arguing that it would be hard to prosecute marijuana possession under federal law because federal law allows possession in DC. The link argues that state laws against marijuana are not affected by federal law. So in Virginia, you won't be able to escape prosecution for marijuana possession under Virginia's law just because it is not illegal under federal law or another state's law.
You are not missing anything. The link does make the exact opposite point: "you will not be able to argue that you should be protected by the Constitution."
I would argue that the 10 amendment in the Bill of Rights is all that a person would need to nullify gross overreaches of power by the federal government.
In practice your assets will be civily forfeited, you'll be held in pre-trial detention (prison) for months, and then every lawyer will laugh you out of the room when you tell him you want to do a constitutional defense.
"Just take the plea, I can get them down to 2 years. Otherwise youre facing 9 to 20 years."
Not to point fingers, but I feel like some generations were sleeping hard on the government. The Constitution is almost entirely built to give citizens the power, and to limit the role of government as much as possible. And now society has fallen into a trap of misinformation and distraction. Can future generations push out the corrupt leaders after they pass away? #termlimitsoncongress
Who is this "they" you speak of? The citizens elected to govern? Or a shadowy cabal of unknown entities working in secret toward some ominous cause that ends in you being forced to do everything you don't want to do?
Honestly, follow any "we're all screwed our government sucks" logic train to its conclusion and you hit one of two conclusions: A) oh shit, it's actually my fault along with everyone else's that we're in this mess, B) conspiracy theory.
We do actually live in a representative democracy with checks and balances, and we do actually have the power to fix it if we choose to. We have a much better chance of changing things without resorting to violence than a pretty sizeable part of the planet.
"They" refers to anyone who is quite rich and or powerful, and actively uses those resources against others.
So when you start to wonder, "hmm, I wonder why housing is so expensive relative to my income", or, "hmm, I wonder why that policeman gave me a $400 ticket for 'speeding'", or, "hmm, I wonder why those federal agents are killing children in Waco", or, "hmm, I wonder why no bankers went to jail for fraudulent mortgage practices in 2008"...
... I mean, if you ask yourself these questions, and you tell me that these things are happening because we elected people to do these things, then I don't precisely know where you got that notion.
Good luck convincing the Supreme Court to upend the basis of a huge portion of federal law and decades of judicial precedence in favor of very broad readings of the enumerated powers.
How is that a broad reading? Under what reasonable interpretation of the Constitution does the federal government have the power to tell you not to grow plants on your own property for your own consumption?
The same law that’s been used to prosecute other crimes, the federal govt jurisdiction over interstate commerce.
That decision goes back to federal govt controls over wheat prices. Some guy said “i’ll grow what I want, I don’t care about the price controls” and the courts agreed with the twisted logic that it impact interstate commerce, thus they have the power to control it.
The logic in that case isn't really that twisted. One single guy growing more than allowed for personal use won't move the market but if the court ruled in his favor anyone would be able to do the same which would reduce the demand for wheat. If the government has the authority to regulate price controls at the national level control of all supply is kind of required.
You can argue that it's not a reasonable interpretation - I would agree with that. But it is a long-standing one, and there are a lot of things that the feds do today that hinge pretty much solely on it - and that includes pet issues for both the left and the right. Just to give one example, aside from enabling the feds to ban weed, Wickard also enables the feds to enforce the Civil Rights Acts. So it is very unlikely for that interpretation to go away - there's too much staked on it politically.
No, I'm saying the court's reading of the enumerated powers has become very broad.
As for what interpretation, the one held by Robert Jackson and 4 other justices in the Wickard v Filburn case [1]. The justices' interpretations are the only one with legal weight after all.
You're being downvoted because it's Trump, which is bullshit.
It's the first time in modern US history that a sitting President has come anywhere close to declaring support for or proclaiming he'd be ok with the Federal Government legalizing recreational marijuana consumption.
The reason for that, is because Trump is an aggressive populist that doesn't particularly care about entrenched, ancient political live wires. He'll feel entirely free to respond to the Trump voting base as its opinion gradually changes in favor of legalization (as it largely has).
The problem is that legalization of cannabis in US was never actually about cannabis per se. It was about this:
"The primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing."
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
Now, these quotes are from the pre-WW2 period, when this insanity first began. But they lingered for a lot longer than that, even if the language changed. This is from the Nixon era:
"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."
In other words, it was always a weapon in the "culture war". And that is kinda at another peak right now, so I'm not too optimistic about this happening in US until it's over.
Yes, that’s true. Now how many countries would the US recently have watched change their laws around pot vs the discussion currently going on inside of US States?
Is being technically true better than a contextual joke?
I agree FWIW, but I suspect capitalists would be fine discriminating blindly against all colors of a lower class. Race has always been an effective means to this end in America: if the people feeding your wallet are at each other’s throat, they might not notice who’s pocketing the cash.
The people aren't really the ones making the decision.
Here in Ohio, for example, we didn't have a vote on recreational, instead we had a vote on a government sanctioned monopoly possibly leading the way to recreational.
If there was some sort of state issue that could be voted on which was "regulate it like we do garden tomatoes", it would pass.
Leadership has prevented this, not your cartoon idea of the oh so ignorant voter base.
Too often we blame the salt of the earth people for things the media has done. Rule by multi millionaire propagandists.
Meaning that if you were right about the voting base, it would be easy to legalize recreational marijuana without worrying what the leadership thought.
> In the indirect form, initiative sponsors collect signatures and once the signatures are collected, the measure is taken up by the state legislature in their state. The legislature has these options:
> Enact the measure as written in the petition.
> Refuse to act on the measure, in which case it goes on the ballot.
The salt of the earth doesn't give a shit about the local government; they just want to be left alone for the most part.
The issue is getting the signatures in the first place, which requires canvassing, which requires paying someone to organize all of that. The last example of a successful canvassing that we had was a grab at a monopoly over growing ops, which was funded partly by a former member of the boy band NSYNC.
The other hurdle is approval by the legislature. In Ohio it's not as simple as "get signatures, get on the ballot".
> The other hurdle is approval by the legislature. In Ohio it's not as simple as "get signatures, get on the ballot".
I'm open to more specialized information, but the description on ballotpedia strongly implies that it is that simple. Specifically, it says that the steps are:
1. Get signatures.
2. The legislature must consider the initiative, either approving or rejecting it.
3a. If the legislature approves the initiative, it becomes law without having to go on the ballot.
3b. If the legislature rejects the initiative, it goes on the ballot.
Thus, once you have signatures, the worst case is that you go straight onto the ballot, and the best case is that you become law without needing to. Theoretically, it could be possible for the legislature to sit on the initiative without ever approving or rejecting it. All I'm working off here is a cursory description of the law of several states including Ohio. Do you have relevant knowledge of Ohio law?
Politicians are more often mirrors of society than agents of change. Demand change from them, they aren't reading Hacker News. If they refuse change, campaign against them.
And then suddenly when the death threats and FBI audits and etc start showing up in your life, and you lose the campaign anyway, you'll say to yourself, "shit, this isn't a democracy we're living in, this is just a mafia state."
Would you prefer cabal? It was a certain group of a limited number of people who could grow, with nothing in the lines of allowing private growers to create startups.
