Paul Ingrassia makes “The Case against Legalizing Marijuana.” It’s a bad piece because it asks the wrong questions, and thus comes to the wrong conclusions. It approaches the question from a harm/benefit analysis angle, without ever pausing to ask: Why is this the government’s concern?
The question it doesn’t ask is: Is it the federal government’s job to continue federal marijuana prohibition?
Missing from this piece: Any mention of the Constitution. Where in the Constitution did the founding fathers list control of what people might grow in their own ground as an enumerated power of the federal government?
Nowhere.
The statutory standing of the federal government to do so rests on a tendentiously expansive reading to the commerce clause in Wickard vs. Filburn, which radically expands the power and scope of the federal government. Absent interstate commerce, federal marijuana regulation is neither necessary nor proper.
The question of benefit or harm of marijuana is irrelevant to the question of whether the federal government has the enumerated constitutional power to regulate marijuana if it is not being sold across state lines. It does not. Therefore, under the Tenth Amendment, federal marijuana prohibition should be ended and the power of non-interstate commerce regulation on marijuana should devolve to the states, to regulate or not as voting citizens and their representatives see fit.
Further nits:
Tags: American Thinker, Crime, marijuana, Paul Ingrassia, Regulation, Wickard vs. Filburn
Personally, I do not care what you do in your own home, on your own time. That is between you and whatever deity or conscience you reflect on. I did plenty of dumb stuff when I was young, invincible and knew everything…
However, as a manager of a business I feel that a seldom (never) discussed part of the legalization argument is the potential impact on work-place injuries and workmens compensation claims.
Under current law (at least here in mid-west flyover country) any injury on the job that is submitted to workmens compensation requires a blood test to be administered for drugs and alcohol.
State of Ohio “Worker intoxication”
Mixing drugs, alcohol, and the workplace can be a bad combination. Ohio courts have struggled with how an employee’s impairment should impact eligibility for
workers’ compensation benefits, and under current Ohio law, impairment at the time of injury may be grounds for denying a claim, but is not always so. The legal concept of
rebuttable presumption holds that an IW has to overcome the burden of proof that drug and/or alcohol related impairment was the proximate cause of the work-place
injury, and that the claim should be denied.
Since THC has a much longer residual time in body than alcohol or many stronger drugs, the likelihood of it appearing on a test and becoming an issue is VERY HIGH. Legalization “muddies the water” significantly from a legal standpoint.
If someone can show me a “line in the sand” medical report that is peer reviewed and supported by a major medical research organization that states marijuana use is statistically irrelevant to employee impairment after XX number of hours, and have a test that allows that to be definitely established so that I, as employer, am indemnified against potential claims then I could support legalization.
Before someone pipes up and says this is unlikely to happen, write me a check for the $57K I paid out on an employee claim 2 years ago… then I’ll listen. I would be fascinated to hear how the hard core wookie-suiters want to proceed on this very narrow issue without tackling Tort Reform and the legal systems desire to transfer personal accountability/responsibility onto the nearest “deep pocket(s)” they can get their hooks into…
These same issues of accountability are a big part of Health Care problem as well….
[…] in the “remove federal prohibition (on Tenth Amendment grounds), then let each state vote on legalizing, regulating and taxing it” camp. While I might vote for […]