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Colorado Sued By Neighboring States Over Legal Pot
SternisheFan notes that Nebraska and Oklahoma are suing Colorado over marijuana legalization. The attorneys general of Nebraska and Oklahoma sued Colorado in the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, arguing state-legalized marijuana from Colorado is improperly spilling across state lines. The suit invokes the federal government's right to regulate both drugs and interstate commerce, and says Colorado's decision to legalize marijuana has been "particularly burdensome" to police agencies on the other side of the state line. In June, USA TODAY highlighted the flow of marijuana from Colorado into small towns across Nebraska: felony drug arrests in Chappell, Neb., just 7 miles north of the Colorado border have skyrocketed 400% in three years. "In passing and enforcing Amendment 64, the state of Colorado has created a dangerous gap in the federal drug control system enacted by the United States Congress. Marijuana flows from this gap into neighboring states, undermining plaintiff states' own marijuana bans, draining their treasuries, and placing stress on their criminal justice systems," says the lawsuit. "The Constitution and the federal anti-drug laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local pro-drug policies and licensed distribution schemes throughout the country which conflict with federal laws."
All they need to do is legalize it themselves.
It sounds like the cops have nothing better to do that waste time on pot arrests. They just want money from taxes on pot without having to collect it themselves
If they do win, it will set a nice precedent for the Gun control states to force the neighboring lax gun control laws to clean up their act. Go for it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Chappell, NE is a don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it town of 929 on I-80 between North Platte, NE and Cheyenne, Wyoming. A 400% increase in felony drug arrests sounds like a lot, but how many felony drug arrests could there ever have been in a town of 929? Did we go from 1 to 4?
I also wonder how many shitkicker rural sheriffs in neighboring states went on full batshit alert once Colorado legalized it and began pulling over every car they could with out of state license plates coming from Colorado, knowing that they would hit paydirt on at least some of them? You can pretty easily create your own crisis if you start looking for it.
To be fair to the sheriffs, I don't doubt there is some increased amount of pot leaving Colorado -- it's a tourist destination even without pot and it wouldn't surprise me at all if people who go there for other reasons (like skiing or other outdoor activities) decide to bring some home.
It also wouldn't surprise me if some people went there specifically to bring some home, although from what I've been told the retail pricing isn't all that competitive on a dollar basis with black market pot and the economics of driving cross-country to pick up a couple of ounces of weed don't seem to lend themselves to a lot of people deciding to make that trip.
I don't think you can factor in any kind of organized criminal enterprises into these complaints -- that was a "problem" *before* it was legalized. Bitching about it now because you're frothed up about pot legalization and seeing it everywhere you look just seems paranoid.
Yes. And why did alcohol prohibition require a Constitutional amendment, but not marijuana prohibition? The answer is, during alcohol prohibition, the constitution was being followed. Under marijuana prohibition, they wiped their asses with the Constitution.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/12/department-justice-congress-war-medical-marijuana
The $1.1 trillion federal spending bill approved by the Senate on Saturday has effectively ended the longstanding federal war on medical marijuana. An amendment to the bill blocks the Department of Justice from spending money to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries or patients that abide by state laws.
"I don't care if you go to Colorado and smoke pot, but it's still illegal here and if I catch you with it, I have to arrest you." Law enforcement officers I know are mixed on whether they think pot is okay or not, but they all agree that if you're caught with it, they can't just let you go.
But the police have argued all the way to the Supreme Court that "discretion" is a right of the cops, and they are *never* required to enforce any law.
Learn to love Alaska
The attorneys general of Nebraska and Oklahoma sued Colorado in the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, arguing state-legalized marijuana from Colorado is improperly spilling across state lines
Seriously, wtf. Oklahoma is way up there among the meth'iest states in the Union, and in Nebraska, LEO's report 1 meth lab incident per 200K people (compared to 1 incident per 376K people in Colorado.) Meth is far more dangerous than pot, I would think these two states should get their shit together before trying to drag another state to federal court.
Furthermore, Colorado is doing far better in almost all indicators than these two states. Not because of pot legalization obviously, but because of a variety of reasons (many of them social).
So, Oklahoma and Nebraska, butt off. Get your shit together. Then worry about legal consequences, if any, that you might be experiencing because Coloradoans are baking brownies the type your granny used to eat back in Woodstock (yes, either she did that there or in a barn, get over it.)
From my point of view any compromise in the belief that it is morally wrong to ....
This is why the states rights model makes more sense than overbearing federal laws.
Reading your position, I think you and the people of the bible belt would get along just fine. Nothing negative against you or them is meant or implied in any way. While I may not agree on this specific point, you're promoting personal responsibility, which I support completely.
However, I'm also positive that the people of California and the people of Tennessee have some pretty significant differences of opinion on several legislative topics. There's nothing wrong with either side, the people just need to respect that others may believe differently and not try to force it down each others throats.
If more laws were handled at city and state levels and fewer at federal levels, the discussion could be a lot more rational. i.e., there are people who use marijuana recreationally and there are people who carry loaded guns in public. Both of these groups are generally not going around hurting anyone, so I don't have a problem with either of them. However, those should remain two separate groups and it seems reasonable for people to choose one or the other, not both, just like we do with alcohol today.
The people who are bringing pot from Colorado into the neighboring states are committing a handful of crimes. Those states could pass laws requiring high restitution fees for those crimes to support the increased enforcement costs. Or they could decriminalize or legalize it. Each state should make their own choices and deal with enforcement accordingly. If it's not cost effective to prosecute people who have small amounts of pot and those people are generally not hurting anyone, a good business decision is to look the other way, just like with the other hundreds of thousands of laws on the books that are selectively enforced today.