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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.
How about not enforcing the laws there since doing otherwise is a stupid waste of law enforcement time and resources? I can't believe anyone can be stupid enough to think cannabis is dangerous enough to merit criminalization. You have to be basically live up your own ass for decades to come up with that opinion.
in many states, and they don't want to lose that revenue. It is not about right or wrong, legal or illegal, it is really about money. But as the various other states see revenue flow into states like Colorado in the form of pot taxes, they may change their minds, just like all states changed their minds about gambling and lotteries.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Why is this any different than counties that don't allow the sale of alcohol adjacent to counties that do? Do the dry counties sue the wet counties because they have to be on the lookout for drunk drivers on their borders? Looks like a way to get some attention or maybe some cash to me...
... this is similar in nature to same sex marriage, and women's reproductive rights.
It's legal some places and banned in others.
America needs to make up its mind. Which way are we going to go?
The decision should be based on case law and public need and citizen's rights.
Legalize all that shit and let's play spin the bottle and stuff.
yw
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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
No because 2nd Amendment.
Same thing happened when they outlawed dancing.
I thought you were joking, but its true.
Also because more guns, less crime.
... this is similar in nature to same sex marriage, and women's reproductive rights.
It's legal some places and banned in others.
No, it's not. Marijuana is still illegal throughout the United States due to federal law. In no state (including Colorado) is it legal. It's simply that Colorado has removed any state law criminalizing it. The federal prohibition remains. That is not the case with same sex marriage and women's reproductive rights. The next president could easily tell the DEA to go in and shut down every marijuana dealer and grower in Colorado if he/she orders it.
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.
I kind of doubt it. States enjoy sovereign immunity thanks to the 11th Amendment and generally can't be sued by other states.
Without this, you would have all manner of lawsuits about neighboring states tax laws, liquor and cigarette control regimes, abortion, etc. Bigger states could dominate smaller states via sheer resources.
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.
Fuck off losers
(From Wiki) - Regulations and restrictions on the sale of cannabis sativa as a drug began as early as 1860 (see Legal history of cannabis in the United States). The head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), Harry J. Anslinger, argued that, in the 1930s, the FBN had noticed an increase of reports of people smoking marijuana. He had also, in 1935, received support from president Franklin D. Roosevelt for adoption of the Uniform State Narcotic Act, state laws that included regulations of cannabis. The total production of hemp fiber in the United States had in 1933 decreased to around 500 tons/year. Cultivation of hemp began to increase in 1934 and 1935 but production remained at very low volume compared with other fibers.
Some parties have argued that the aim of the Act was to reduce the size of the hemp industry largely as an effort of businessmen Andrew Mellon, Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family. The same parties have argued that with the invention of the decorticator, hemp had become a very cheap substitute for the paper pulp that was used in the newspaper industry. These parties argue that Hearst felt that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury and the wealthiest man in America, had invested heavily in the Du Pont family's new synthetic fiber, nylon, a fiber that was competing with hemp. In 1916, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) chief scientists Jason L. Merrill and Lyster H. Dewey created a paper, USDA Bulletin No. 404 "Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material", in which they concluded that paper from the woody inner portion of the hemp stem broken into pieces, so called hemp hurds, was "favorable in comparison with those used with pulp wood". Dewey and Merrill believed that hemp hurds were a suitable source for paper production. However, later research does not confirm this. The concentration of cellulose in hemp hurds is only between 32% and 38% (not 77%, a number often repeated by Jack Herer and others on the Internet). Manufacture of paper with hemp as a raw material has shown that hemp lacks the qualities needed to become a major competitor to the traditional paper industry, which still uses wood or waste paper as raw material. In 2003, 95% of the hemp hurds in the EU were used for animal bedding, almost 5% were used as building material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The stupid thing is: it may well work. The federal government regularly twists the Commerce Clause beyond all recognition. The most egregious case, the one that really set the ball rolling, was the one where the federal government claimed the right to regulate farmers feeding their own grain to their own livestock. Why? Because that meant that they bought less grain from elsewhere, some of which might, potentially come from out of state. Hence, the Commerce Clause allowed the regulation.
Given that sort of precedent, the federal government can justify essentially any regulation that it wants. Certainly including telling Colorado that it's state-wide laws are invalid, because they happen to indirectly affect neighboring states.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
None of the gun rights guys are standing up for the blacks who were shot merely because they had real or toy guns with them. I am sure there will be tons of comments demonizing the dead victims. Will NRA stand up for the blacks to own guns for self protection and to fight against the tyranny of the police?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The state is libertarian, not Bible Belt, and yet Idaho police organizations are incensed over pot legalization in neighboring Oregon and Washington. There have been a number of well-publicized cases of Bad Cop behavior exercised against out-of-state pot users, even to the extent of spying by Idaho cops in the pot-legal states in hopes of entrapping legally operating businessmen passing through Idaho.
Idaho has such a large population of anti-government types that I can see it not only legalizing pot, which they regard as basically a side issue, but being the first state to seriously cut back on law enforcement property seizure powers. Based on this year's headlines, this will start an even more popular serious of referenda across the country than pot legalization.
strip the DEA of scheduling authority!
here's a simple thought experiment:
you just awoke from a 50 year coma and in playing around with this new-fangled interweb thingy you learn that final authority over the legality of a given substance rests NOT with the FDA (an army of PhDs) or the AMA (an army of MDs) but with this new agency called the "DEA" - a bunch of frakin' COPS! "wait? say that again?!?" you say "a bunch of COPS who know as much about chemistry, biology & medicine as my dead cat have VETO POWER over armies of MDs & PhDs on the legality of ingesting a given chemical?!? what rocket surgeon came up with that bright idea?!?"
we need to abolish the DEA not just b/c we happen to disagree with them on THC (and MDMA, etc) but b/c the basic model is IDIOTIC!!!
Make all drugs legal for 1 month out of every year. That way Darwin comes in and filters through all the idiots who can't control themselves. By the end of the month everyone who practices personal responsibility and respect continue contributing to the normal human gene pool. It it's a hit expand it to 2-3 months a year.
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.)
It started with FDR (*), the New Deal, and a little known SCOTUS case involving wheat....
Thanks Democrats!
(*) Actually the progressive philosophy really got started with Wilson but that asshat didn't have FDR's cojones. I guess FDR did save Western Civilization as we know it; that probably should count for something....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Something having to do with a "victim" comes to mind.......?
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
As you can see, the moderation converged on a more proper +5 Insightful
I've read the post carefully and it doesn't qualify as Flamebait IMHO. It states a controversial political opinion and thus invites a discussion, which may lead to flamage, but does not itself lead with a flame.
So this looks like someone who doesn't like the position trying to suppress it, by hitting it with the most plausible -1, in the hope that one more like-minded person will have mod points and get it suppressed before very many people see it. That works for "politically incorrect" subjects (such as criticisms of the "heat death of the Earth, everybody panic and suppress technology" interpretation of climate data), where a crowd of like-minded free speech haters are ready to suppress opposing opinions. But pro-pot doesn't appear to attract that much system-gaming opposition.
Right now it only takes two downmods to hide a non-anonymous itme. It seems to me that we have enough people willing to moderate that it's time to scale up the mod system, so a small astroturf operation can't shut down debate. Say: double it: Mods get 10 points, -2 hides, non-anynomous starts at +2, high-karma at +4, doulble everybody's current karma and readjust the cutpoints for bonuses, caps, and the like. That would mean it would take two moderators to suppress a anonymous post and four for authors willing to risk reputation. (It would also mean more work for those who are willing to moderate - but they might be more willing to spend a point if they had more to spend.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That People article was written in 1980, and the makers of Footloose did read it. See wikipedia.
Going back at least as far as the 1980s, the DEA has used their "emergency scheduling" powers to ban various substances by fiat.
Drugs like MDMA, GHB, "bath salts", and various synthetic cannabinoids were all summarily placed in Schedule I by unelected DEA bureaucrats. All they have to do is wave their pen, and any substance they want to ban is made illegal.
Yes, such actions are theoretically open to review by congress, but in reality Congress has never denied any DEA action of this nature, and simply rubber stamps whatever the DEA does.
So the DEA has the ability to CREATE drug laws, as well as ENFORCE them.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Yes, such actions are theoretically open to review by congress, but in reality Congress has never denied any DEA action of this nature, and simply rubber stamps whatever the DEA does.
So what you're saying is that it isn't really a failure of the DEA, but a failure of Congress?
The same argument can be said for ANY laws that differ from States, Cities, Counties, jurisdictions, etc.
Town X is dry ( no alcohol can be sold ) yet town Y is not. End result is all citizens from Town X drive to Town Y to buy all their alcohol. Town Y planning on suing Town X in the near future because of it ? Unlikely.
State X prohibits gambling, yet all adjacent States have multiple casinos running and welcome all of State X's residents with open arms. Is State X planning on suing all the other surrounding States because of it ? Only if they're idiots. The smart State would legalize gambling, tax it appropriately and quit giving truckloads of tax money to surrounding States instead.
Pick a law. Any law that differs from State to State and try to rationalize going the litigation route claiming it's the other guys fault because they're doing things differently.
The solution is simple, though. Congress can write a law that says that the FDA and/or Surgeon General decides how to classify drugs, and the DEA can only enforce those decisions. If the DEA really needs emergency classification authority, such a decision can be limited to a duration of 1 year before it must be approved by the FDA (of course, I can't think of why the DEA would be better equipped than the FDA to make emergency decisions).
Now if only something this logical had any chance of getting done by Congress.
That is trademarked by Victoria Secrets. They can call them angels, but they are bunnies with wings.
Did you see the footage on that thug tax evader Cliven Bundy's ranch? If the same number of blacks had amassed there with long weapons, you think the law enforcement would be so timid and deferential?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The sad irony. http://www.spiegel.de/internat...