WFB on POT
The most recent Supreme Court ruling…you know the one…certainly dealt a body-blow to the cause of freedom in many respects. But since there are already several well reasoned rants from a ‘libertarian’ perspective on the matter, I’ll argue from the ‘rule of law’ point of view, in that I tend to favor congressional repeal, rather than ‘judicial activism’, even when I agree with the result of said activism. This is not to be confused with legitimately ruling a law to be unconstitutional, which I don’t think was warranted in this case because of the nature of current ‘drug’ law. Here’s a bit from William F. Buckley Jr.’s latest article:What is depressing is the dim prospect of remedial congressional action. Individual congressmen shun the idea of licensing any use of marijuana, unless they can find a way to say that marijuana eliminates income disparity. But in search of political consensus on the matter, there is nothing clearer than the vote of the legislatures of the ten states that authorized medical marijuana. They did so and survived political vicissitudes. If these ten states can take a progressive position on medical marijuana why can't Congress do as much?Why indeed! Well, it’s because of a populous that can’t see fit to mind its own damn business. In an attempt to sanitize modern culture, moral crusaders cause actual harm in an attempt to eradicate perceived evil.
But if a federal prosecutor is bent on practicing his profession, he is in a position to establish that the doctor whose name the scofflaw is citing as having prescribed marijuana — didn't really do so, or did so in such ambiguous terms as to persuade the jury that the marijuana user is in contempt of the law. On this front, the permissivists have an eloquent martyr, the late Peter McWilliams who ardently championed looser laws, who himself depended on marijuana for relief from the nausea caused by AIDS — and who died during a period when he was under court scrutiny, pending sentencing, and had to do without the drug.
Taking marijuana when young is a stupid thing to do, but the young generation is not (yet) suffering from cancer and AIDS and other diseases from the ravages of which they might find relief, if they can dance through the congestion of laws and opinions that beset us.
posted by Robert @ Tuesday, June 07, 2005
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