Supremes rule against medical marijuana

I would suspect that the illegality of marijuana strengthens rather than weakens the gateway aspect, lets put it that way.

My thoughts about this dont go much beyond bullet points, really:

- The vast majority of marijuana users do not move on to hard drugs;

- A minority of them do;

- I would suspect that a situation in which marijuana users have to go to drug dealers who also sell hard drugs to get their stuff increases that minority's numbers;

- I would suspect that a situation in which marijuana and hard drugs are treated and described (by police and government campaigns for example) as all the same container category, of irredeemingly illegal and dangerous stuff, fosters a perception among some that hard drugs are indeed the same ("hey, they say marijuana is evil bad, and that wasnt so bad, so perhaps what they say about cocaine or heroin is over the top too?")

- The numbers one reads about, on how drug use in Holland is actually lower than in France for example, seem to confirm my suspicion;

And primarily, to return to the point I actually made in, like Thomas says:

- The article you cited does nothing to disprove it.

And thats about it, really.

I don't want to go through this sentence by sentence.

What percentage of hard core drug users started out using marijuana? That's the gateway. I am not suggesting that every person who smokes dope is going to be snorting cocain in a week, but that people who do go onto take other drugs have a history of smoking marijuana.

Whether it is legal or not has no bearing on that.

I used that article to refute what Cyc said about marijuana not being a gateway drug. That article directly refutes that idea as the researchers found that the early cannabis users were more likely than their twins to use other drugs. They were four times as likely to use psychedelics, three times as likely to use cocaine or other stimulants, and more than twice as likely to use opioids.

And, we said that is because of the nature of the situation, not the nature of the drug.

How many cannabis users started out with Alcohol or Nicotene? Wouldn't that make those the gateway drugs, and not cannabis?

How about sugar, or caffiene? Both are addictive. Are those gateway drugs?

Cycloptichorn

Perhap Ritalin would be good for you. May help keep you to one topic. You can get a prescription for Ritalin at your doctor.

Ritalin, taken by an adult, is a stimulant, you suggesting Cyclo needs a stimulant?

Yeah, right, heh

I notice that you decided to insult me instead of answering my questions. Perhaps you should look into some Ritalin yourself, or may I recommend Ritalin's big brother Adderal.

Cycloptichorn

No, that's invalid reasoning. Whatever that percentage is, the percentage of hard core drug users who started out using soothers as toddlers is even higher. By your logic, that proves soothers are an even worse entry drug than marijuana, and ought to be outlawed with an even higher priority. Which makes it hard for me to buy your logic.

And I dont particularly want to explain the same things to you twice, but here goes.


According to whom? You submit an assertion here, about what does or does not have a bearing on the gateway effect, that in any case is not substantiated by the link you've cited. Which is pretty much the basic point Thomas and I have been making here.

After all, the source you cite explicitly notes that "the effects of the peer and social context within which cannabis is used and obtained" may well have a bearing on the observed gateway effect. And whether the drug is legal or not, I would say, most obviously forms part of the "social context within which cannabis is used and obtained". It could thus well have a bearing on it, going on the study's conclusions.

For example, the way early access to cannabis enhances, as the study finds, access to "other illegal drugs" would be greatly impacted (I'd say reduced) if cannabis was not in fact also an illegal drug - and thus acquired wholly separate channels of sale and distribution.

In short, if cannabis were legal in Australia, the social context would change to such a degree that the gateway effect found in the study might well occur to a stronger - or a much less strong extent. The study explicitly leaves that possibility open.

That means that basically, the observation that a gateway effect occurs within the given social context of the Australian study could just as well be used as an argument for legalisation as against.


A finding that proves that within the "social context within which cannabis is used and obtained" by the Australian sample of respondents, a gateway effect does indeed occur. (Or a correlation, in any case, keeping Scorpia's point in mind about how the coinciding use of both marijuana and hard drugs that's mentioned in the study's summary findings does not in fact in itself prove the progressive (cause-and-effect) relationship between the two that's asserted in the summary conclusions).

The article thus proves nothing about whether cannabis would be a gateway drug (too) if it were legal.


[last paragraph edited for brevity]

A quick summary of McG's rationale--Cancer is the leading cause of statistics.

According to McG's rationale, statistics can prove any position one wishes to support.

The problem lies in the fact that marijuana IS illegal. That's what we have to work with. We can hypothesize til the cows come home.

If you'd like, I can get you more links to examine, but I am sure you can do that yourself if you care enough. You can keep beating up the JAMA article if you like, it won't change the facts.

While the merits or lack thereof of marijuana use could factor into decisions related to the constitutional mandate to 'promote the common welfare', let's bring at least some of the focus back to states rights versus federal mandate. Obviously in the SC ruling, the justices were not in agreement, and with Thomas and Scalia on opposite sides of the fence on this one, it is also not a partisan issue.

Here is some more grist for the mill:

Another label-defying ruling

By George F. Will
Wednesday, June 8, 2005

WASHINGTON -- With the parties warring over the composition of the federal judiciary, and with a Supreme Court vacancy perhaps impending, Americans should use the court's end-of-term decisions as whetstones on which to sharpen their sense of the ambiguities in the categories -- "liberal," "conservative," "activist," "practitioner of judicial restraint" -- used when judges are discussed.

Consider the case arising from the destruction, by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, of Diane Monson's homegrown marijuana plants, a case about which the court's two most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, disagreed.

Monson, and another woman using homegrown marijuana recommended by her doctors, sought an injunction against enforcement of the federal Controlled Substances Act. Both said they had a right to their plants under California's Compassionate Use Act.

Passed overwhelmingly by referendum in 1996, that act allows marijuana use by individuals whose doctors recommend it for the relief of pain or nausea. But this law -- 10 other states have similar ones -- runs contrary to the federal statute.

The two women argued against enforcement of that law, saying that the private use of homegrown marijuana has nothing to do with interstate commerce, hence Congress has no constitutional power to regulate it. On Monday the Supreme Court disagreed.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court held that Congress' claim to exclusive regulatory authority over drugs, legal and illegal, fell well within its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. This was predictable, given what the court said 63 years ago about an Ohio farmer's 239 bushels of homegrown wheat.

That, used for food, seeds and feed for livestock, was raised and used entirely on Roscoe Filburn's farm. None of it entered intrastate, let alone interstate, commerce. So Filburn argued that although the 239 bushels exceeded his production quotas under the federal Agricultural Adjustment Act, they were none of the federal government's business and he refused to pay the stipulated penalty.

A unanimous Supreme Court disagreed, arguing that the cumulative effect of even minor and local economic activities can have interstate consequences. The court said even a small quantity of grain "supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market. Homegrown wheat in this sense competes with wheat in commerce." That said, clearly Congress' power under the Commerce Clause is vast enough to permit Congress to decide that the use of even homegrown marijuana can affect the interstate market.

Writing for Monday's majority, Justice John Paul Stevens, perhaps the most liberal justice, was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Kennedy. Scalia concurred separately.

Stevens said that one does not need "a degree in economics to understand why a nationwide exemption" for large quantities of marijuana cultivated for personal use could have a "substantial impact on the interstate market" for a commodity that Congress aims to "conquer."

Scalia, responding to the two women's and the court minority's invocation of states' sovereignty, cited a previous court ruling that Congress may regulate even when its regulation "may pre-empt express state-law determinations contrary to the result which has commended itself to the collective wisdom of Congress."

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a former Arizona state legislator, dissented, echoing Justice Louis Brandeis' judgment that federalism is supposed to allow a single state to be a "laboratory" to "try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

Her dissent was joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote the court's opinion in a 1995 case that conservatives mistakenly hoped would signal substantial inhibitions on Congress in the name of federalism. In that case, the court overturned -- as an invalid exercise of the power to regulate commerce -- a federal law regulating the possession of guns near schools.

Thomas, the justice least respectful of precedents, joined O'Connor's dissent and also dissented separately, disregarding many precedents giving almost infinite elasticity to the Commerce Clause. He said that the women's marijuana was never bought or sold, never crossed state lines and had no "demonstrable" effect on the national market for marijuana:

"If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything" including "quilting bees, clothes drives and potluck suppers."

Thus "the federal government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."

But that has been the case at least since 1942.

In Monday's marijuana decision, which of the justices were liberal, which were conservative? Which exemplified judicial activism, which exemplified restraint? Such judgments are not as easy as many suppose.

George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post and Newsweek. E-mail him at [email protected]
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/will/s_341835.html

First, let me express by 100% agreement with Cycloptichorn that there should be another choice - Marijuana should be legal. Period.

Marijuana is a real danger to our society.
First, it provides the Puritanical, conservative mind with the excuse and comforting thought that no matter what the cost for the upkeep of marijuana prisoners across the nation(billions or trillions), we can't afford money for social needs - education, roads, bridges, etc. Especially, when it is imperative that our wealthiest citizens be awarded a tax cut.

Second, it keeps our citizenry from seeking secular solutions to problems, instead of seeking the truth. All answers are to be found in the good book. Marijuana is bad. Sick people should not be given access to bad things. Stem cell research is bad. Prisons are good. etc,

Billy, Conservatives have never learned to seek solutions beyond the surface, myopic, goals. That's the reason why we're now involved in the chaotic quagmire in Iraq - to bring democracy to the Middle East that has so far cost us over 1600 of our military men and women and four to five billion dollars every month. This president wants to fix social security that isn't in any emergency (some say social security is funded through 2041) while over 45 million Americans go without health insurance - today. War veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are now being cut from benefits while this president and his henchmen talk about their admiration and respect for our soldiers - and the honorable thing they are doing for our country - whilte they want to make tax cuts permanent that benefit the rich. The federal deficit is so large, our children and grandchildren will be paying for this during their entire life. Just maybe, the American People are waking up to the truth, because Bush's performance rating is one of the lowest in recent history.

The federal prohibilition against marijuana was signed into law I believe in 1937. I believe Roosevelt was president at that time and both houses of Congress were substantially controlled by the Democrats. Since that time the Democrats have had the presidence and control of both Houses of Congress under Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton and there has been no move to change the law. Yet C.I. says it is conservatives who 'don't think below the surface'.

Did you boys miss the part that this is not a partisan issue?

I also don't believe this is a partisan issue, as many Libertarians are for the complete legalization of drugs and many hardcore Dems are not.

I do believe, however, that this is an issue of common sense vs. willfull idiocy.

Cycloptichorn

Foxfyre - George Will appears to be mistaken in calling it a non-partisan issue. The 3 justices who dissented (they include Rehnquist) primarily objected on grounds of protecting state and individual rights from ever-encroaching federal regulation; that's fundamentally the conservative and libertarian position:

_________________________________________

" The Court's definition of economic activity is breathtaking. It defines as economic any activity involving the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities. And it appears to reason that when an interstate market for a commodity exists, regulating the intrastate manufacture or possession of that commodity is constitutional either because that intrastate activity is itself economic, or because regulating it is a rational part of regulating its market. Putting to one side the problem endemic to the Court's opinion--the shift in focus from the activity at issue in this case to the entirety of what the CSA regulates, see Lopez, supra, at 565 ("depending on the level of generality, any activity can be looked upon as commercial")--the Court's definition of economic activity for purposes of Commerce Clause jurisprudence threatens to sweep all of productive human activity into federal regulatory reach."

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=03-1454#dissent1
____________________________________________________________

But Hoft, there are two other conservatives on the court who voted the other way. I think Will is correct. i also agree with cyclop that the current law is nuts and I am pretty darn conservative.

I always thought "conservatism" meant less government intrusion into private lives.

"Pretty darn conservative" is an understatement coming from you. LOL