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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...
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
Same thing happened when they outlawed dancing.
I thought you were joking, but its true.
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
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
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.)
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.
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