According to John Walters, the Supreme Court got it right on
medical marijuana. His argument comes down, essentially, to saying
that medical marijuana doesn't work, and should be illegal, even if
it does make some people "feel better," a phrase which Mr. Walter
puts, condescendingly, inside quotes. As though feeling better when
one is sick is somehow no big deal and a vaguely tawdry
aspiration.
Mr. Walters is the nation's "Drug Czar," a hideously ugly title
that any American should be ashamed to hold. In this role, Mr.
Walters co-ordinates -- or something -- the government's $35
billion anti-drug effort. Plainly, this crusade is not working and,
so, according to Mr. Walters's own logic ought to be put out of its
misery.
This, of course, will not happen. Mr. Walters will continue to
spend lavishly to make citizens behave the way he -- and a few
thousand agents and bureaucrats -- believe they ought to. This is
not surprising. It is what people who nurse governmental
aspirations do ... they rule. And they believe that because they
rule, they know best. "We have a responsibility as a civilized
society to ensure that the medicine Americans receive from their
doctors is effective, safe, and free from the pro-drug politics
that are being promoted in American under the guise of
medicine."
No room for individual choice, here. Mr. Walters and the
government -- this is the "we" he is talking about -- have the
responsibility. You? Well, you have the duty to do as they say. And
if you don't, they will put you in jail.
No acknowledgement from Mr. Walters that the government ("we")
might just have it wrong. Even though these are the same guys who
subsidized tobacco and came up with the preposterous "food pyramid"
that contributed to the nation's obesity problem. But these are
trivial errors when compared to the monstrous, grievous, criminal
blunder that Mr. Walter oversees -- namely the federal government's
drug policy.
You would think a man with $35 billion to spend would have more
important things on his agenda than doing an end-zone dance over
the bodies of a few cancer patients looking for a little relief
from the side-effects of chemo. What did Mark Tucci, who lives down
the road from me, ever do to Mr. Walters to make him gleeful that
Tucci now cannot legally use a drug that makes him "feel better."
Tucci has MS and says of medial marijuana, "It is by far the most
benign thing I've pumped into my body. It just gets rid of a lot of
pain. It makes my life bearable."
Not so fast there, Tucci. Your government has a better idea and
if you know what's good for you...
IT COMES AS NO BIG SHOCK that the Feds are busy beating up on
little guys. It is what they do and -- increasingly and sadly --
what we let them do. Nor, one must ruefully conclude, is the
decision of the Supreme Court that much of a surprise. The Court
(note the caps; capitalization reveals a lot) approached the case
not on the issue of whether individuals ought to be free to
medicate themselves. Instead, the case came down to a question of
interstate commerce. Preposterous, maybe, but the Supremes took it
seriously and ruled, 6-3, that states could not allow the
cultivation and consumption, strictly inside state borders, of
marijuana, even when its use had been prescribed by a doctor.
Somehow, in the view of two-thirds of the Court, the weed would be
involved in "interstate commerce," and so, constitutionally,
Federal authority trumps the will of the state voters.
As usual. Back in the '30s the Court ruled that farmers who grew
wheat on their own property and ate it at their own dinner table
were not exempt from federal regulation under the interstate
commerce clause. Which just about sewed it up for the Feds.
But if this week's ruling was no surprise, there was some
bracing language in the dissent of every civil libertarian's least
favorite justice -- Clarence Thomas. "If Congress can regulate this
under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually
anything," Thomas wrote. "...the Federal Government is no longer
one of limited and enumerated powers and may now regulate quilting
bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50
states."
Six other justices -- including those notable defenders of
individual rights, Stephen Bryer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- were
okay with that. So, for opaquely legalistic reasons, was Antonin
Scalia. Justice John Paul Stevens held out the feeble hope that
the whole thing "may one day be heard in the halls of
Congress."
But, Mr. Justice, why does the state of California need the
permission of the U.S. Congress to allow its citizens to do what
they have said at the ballot box they want to be allowed to do
inside their own borders? Why do the John Walters of the world
always get to push the rest of us around?
topics:
Constitution, Supreme Court
