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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2005-06-07

On Medical Marijuana

The U.S. Supreme Court sent the hopes of medical marijuana users up in smoke Monday, but Colorado authorities say local patients who rely on the drug have no need to fear arrest.

The high court said federal law, which outlaws all marijuana with rare exceptions, trumps the "compassionate use" laws in Colorado and 10 other states.

To do this, the Court--with the strange alliance of Justices Souter, Breyer, Ginsberg, Stevens, Rhenquist and O'Connor--had to extend the federal power to regulate such issues through the Interstate Commerce Clause. While this has a long history of being the most elastically-interpreted part of the Constitution, this is still a bit of stretch (no pun intended).

Mind you, I am no fan of medicinal marijuana. But I've also been prescribed controlled substanced, as has my wife, to manage pain, and, frankly, they've had side effects that were far less pleasant than those of marijuana. If this truly is a medicinal thing, then it doctors should have this shot in their bag.

But, more importantly, this strikes me as the sort of thing for which the several states should be perfectly capable of regulating for themselves when there is truly very little threat of the substance in question being sent over state lines or, in fact, used in any way for "commerce."
Posted by: Michael / 6/07/2005 02:50:00 PM

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