CJLF takes no position on pot legalization. Kent has said he regards it as inevitable. My view is that pot became de facto legal long ago, and that the whole debate is therefore mostly academic. But. yes, if you light up on the steps of the US Attorney's Office, you'll probably get a summons, anyway. Then, in all likelihood, some AUSA will get in your face -- before he dismisses the case or settles for a $50 fine.
One of the items I frequently see from legalizers is the assertion that pot never killed anyone. Of course that's not the point; shoplifitng never killed anyone either, but, if it's not habitual, it's a minor crime deserving minor punishment. Same deal with pot.
As to the "never-killed-anyone" argument itself......well......apparently not.
Bill, do you realize that synthetic marijuana is NOT marijuana? In fact, synthetic marijuana is unsually dangerous mix of strange chemiCal that some folks foolishly use because they cannot get legal access to real marijuana. If anything, the significant number of death associated with synthetic marijuana use provides yet another good justification for legalizing actual marijuana (which, according to all medical science, has never produced a death by overdose).
As I'm sure you're well aware, Bill, "synthetic cannabis" is not marijuana. These products are lab-created attempts to simulate the effects of cannabis. It is broadly accepted that these drugs are far more dangerous than actual marijuana. As one literature review by pharmacology professor William Fantegrossi indicated, "use of K2 products poses greater health risks relative to marijuana."
And why do drugs like K2 and Spice exist? Because marijuana is illegal and some chemists saw an opportunity to make money by selling a product imitating marijuana that arguably wasn't illegal.
Your link doesn't involve a death from marijuana.
Is synthetic pot pot? More people have been killed by drinking too much water (or not enough) than by real pot. (And, no, I have never used pot myself.)
"Bill, do you realize that synthetic marijuana is NOT marijuana?"
I realize that synthetic marijuana is synthetic marijuana.
"Your link doesn't involve a death from marijuana."
The reason I put up the link is to allow readers to see the story for themselves. If you have a problem with it, take it up with its author, CBS. We report, you decide.
"Is synthetic pot pot?"
Is synthetic cloth cloth?
The thing about druggies is that they're constantly in search of a higher high. Pot could be legal (as it is, de facto) or illegal. For present purposes, it makes no difference. Either way, the normal path of drug use is to seek more and more potency as one's tolerance grows greater and greater.
It is the nature of drug use, not its legal status, that causes people to seek increased mind-altering levels. Dependent and addictive traits, and the increasing demand that grows from them, take place in the body's chemistry, not in lawbooks.
As a general matter, Bill, do you think guns or marijuana pose a greater public health risk? What ever your comparative view, would you disagree with the notion that public health concerns can sometimes be more effectively addressed by regulation than by prohibition?
I ask Bill because I respect your perspective as a former lawyer for the DEA and because I assume you are interested in reducing the public health harms that flow from marijuana use. But I also wonder if your views on marijuana prohibition are rooted in morality no matter the public health consequences, just as some views on gun prohibition (or the death penalty or abortion) are rooted more in morality than future consequences.
1. The right to keep and bear arms is expressly protected in the Constitution. The right to keep and bear pot isn't, in any language I (or the Court) has ever been able to find.
2. There have been many instances of successful self-defense with guns. I never heard of someone's defending herself with pot.
3. It is true that guns can be dangerous or worse in the wrong hands. This is also true of pot.
4. When X is illegal, that is a sign to potential users of social disapproval, and of possible (if usually mild) legal risks if you do X. When it becomes legal, both those effects are reversed, and consumption will increase.
Since I don't know a single person who's eager to start his kid on pot, I take it that the majority believes (correctly) that pot is a net negative. Increasing the consumption of something that is a net negative will not improve public health. It will have the opposite effect.
5. My views about drugs and virtually every other topic in criminal law are indeed influenced by morality.
As -- I would take this to be obvious -- are yours.
1. I seek your perspective on public health, Bill, not con law.
2. Many assert medical marijuana is key to their personal well-being, which is somewhat comparable to those claiming they want a gun for personal self protection.
3. Can you expand on the dangers of marijuana in the wrong hands? I worry a lot about my kids being around other kids (and adults) who play around a lot with guns, but I do not worry nearly so much about my kids being around others who play a lot with marijuana.
4. Many parents with kids suffering from seizure disorders are moving where marijuana is legal to seek help for their kids. Have you spoken with any of those parents who are truly desperate to start their kids on marijuana? I have, and my sense is that they are more concern with their kids well-being than parents who are eager to have their kids playing with guns.
5. I am trying to understand if public health interests or other interests drive you policy views as to guns and marijuana. My chief concern in both these settings is public health with a libertarian/individual commitment: e.g., I want government laws and policies mostly driven by public health concerns with an enduring commitment to the reality that individual adults are typically much better than government officials at deciding what activities serve their own public health needs and interests.
6. Hoping this time for an answer, let me ask you this simple question again Bill: do you think guns or marijuana pose a greater public health risk?
As a former DEA official, I remain eager to know your view on this basic public health question. Thanks in advance for trying again to answer it.
As you know, I consider pot already de facto legal and therefore not worth a lot of my time. The whole thing is just a libertarian obsession. I don't share it.
As to public health, the less pot smoked in this country, the better.
As to parents who want pot for kids who have seizure disorders, the realistic prospect of criminal action is approximately zero. Can you name a single mother or father sent to prison in the last five years on a pot charge, where it was clearly established that they had pot solely for the treatment of a kid's disease that could not be treated legally?
That calls for a name. It does not call for a filibuster.
More broadly, I don't know why you continue to think I'm falling for this "medical" marijuana line. It's just cover, and not a very good one, for recreational use. The idea that WHAT WE REALLY WANT HERE IS TO HELP SICK CHILDREN is sheer tripe. What the pot movement REALLY WANTS is getting blasted, not getting healthy. If you want to get healthy, quit smoking (anything) and go to the gym.
I also do not share your anti-Second Amendment animus. Guns and pot are not an either-or proposition. They involve different legal, functional, historical and cultural considerations, one of which is possible use in self defense and another of which is their very different status under the Constitution.
If you think you can censor me or others from remarking upon that, you're mistaken.
I am not trying to censor you in any way, Bill, but rather looking for you to speak more to give me your perspective on one simple question:
Do you think guns or marijuana pose a greater public health risk?
For the record, and as you should know, I am a big fan of the Second Amendment, so I do not understand your claim that I have an animus there. As I have often written on my blog, I think the Second Amendment should work like lots of other constitutional rights and not be forever forfeited based on just non-violent prior offenses and that it should apply much more broadly and robustly than Heller/McDonald suggests (e.g., I think Weldon Angelos and Edward Young should both have had viable Second Amendment claims with respect to their lengthy federal imprisonment based on mere possession of guns and ammo).
And I agree 100% that guns and marijuana "are not an either-or proposition" and also that they involve "different legal, functional, historical and cultural considerations." But that reality still does not serve as an answer to my seemingly simple question --- a question prompted by your main post here about the potential public health harms of marijuana (and synthetic marijuana).
I am sure you understand the question, but I am not sure why you want to avoid answering it. But I am sincere in wanting to hear your views as a matter of public health (and so I want you to speak more, not less):
Hoping this third time might be the charm, let me ask you this simple question yet again Bill: do you think guns or marijuana pose a greater public health risk?
"[D]o you think guns or marijuana pose a greater public health risk?"
I have no way of measuring. It's like comparing apples and wombats.
Guns can be a terrible risk, or a terrific benefit. They can be used by drug dealers, or by police to catch drug dealers. They can be used by women to disable would-be rapists, or by would-be rapists to subdue their victims.
And a million other things.
Smoking pot is less IMMEDIATELY dangerous than guns when improperly used, yup. But, unlike guns, pot is almost always a public health hazard, and its bad effects accumulate over time. There may be a minutely small number of instances in which the active ingredient in pot is useful for a legitimate purpose (which is why we have Marinol). But the huge mass of pot smoking is a public health hazard, you bet.
Tell me you didn't know this.
One other thing: Let's assume arguendo that guns represent ten units of public health damage, and pot smoking represents only one.
Does that mean it's OK to have the one? That because we have some kinds of risks, the smart thing to do is take even more?
What an odd way to think.
Now I will ask again "this simple question" you whistled past, while continuing to pretend that what's really going on in the pot wars is a bunch of desperate parents trying to rescue sick children:
Can you name a single mother or father sent to prison in the last five years on a pot charge, where it was clearly established that they had pot solely for the treatment of a kid's disease that could not be treated legally?
It is never smart for individuals to take unneeded health risks, but in a free society individuals should generally make these decisions for themselves. Because marijuana seems a lot less harmful than lots of other stuff that a free society allows individuals to do, I find little justification for the blanket prohibition.
I cannot name a parent sent to prison in circumstances you mention, and that is why I think the actual federal law in the books should reflect this reality. Am I right that you think no parent should be punished in these circumstances? And if so, will you join me in supporting the CARERS Act so that the law reflects de jure what we both want the law to be de facto?
1. OK, good. So now it's clear that the searing anxiety about desperate parents being sent off to jail is baloney.
This is progress.
The reason it's progress is that it helps make clear that the "medical" pot campaign is just so much smoke (as it were). It has zip to do with medicine. It's the route to pot galore in the DISGUISE of medicine. Californians have known this for years, as the "Compassionate Use Act" became an open fraud.
2. "Because marijuana seems a lot less harmful than lots of other stuff that a free society allows individuals to do, I find little justification for the blanket prohibition."
In the real world, as opposed to the law schools where you and I teach, there IS no blanket prohibition. Indeed, there's HARDLY ANY PROHIBITION. This is the main reason pot doesn't even make the radar screen when people are polled about the issues they care about.
3. "Am I right that you think no parent should be punished in these circumstances?"
Yes you are.
4. "And if so, will you join me in supporting the CARERS Act so that the law reflects de jure what we both want the law to be de facto?"
Nope.
It would be enough for me to say that I have found out quite recently what happens when you ask me to support a given proposal, and then I agree and do so.
What happens is that you bail out on it, and lose interest. This is after weeks of lobbying me, and darkly suggesting all along that I pull secret strings in Congress.
Fool me once, so they say......
There is this in addition: It's getting old to ask me to do the Attorney General's work for him, and Harry Reid's and the rest of the bunch.
If your side thinks this stuff is such a good idea, you literally had years to propose and pass it. I do not help grown men do what they could have done for themselves and chose not to.
As you acknowledge, there is no crisis of good-hearted but frantic parents being sent to jail. Absent that, what's needed is not a change in law. What's needed is for people to wise up; quit complaining that pot laws are a disaster when, in the real world, they're hardly even a problem; and take some personal responsibility.
There are over 14,000 murders a year. There is currently underway in Boston the penalty phase for a sadistic, bloodthirsty hoodlum. That and other serious matters, not joint smoking, is where my attention is going to go.
Point-by-point:
1. Who has "searing anxiety about desperate parents being sent off to jail"? My concern is the rule of law, honesty in the criminal code, and breading respect for the criminal law: if nobody thinks it should be criminal for good parents to experiment with cannabis treatments for sick kids, then the law should not make it criminal for those parents to act that way. Do you disagree that the rule of law, honesty and respect for the law are all harmed if a formal exception in the law is not in place?
2. Bill, there are over half-a-million arrests for marijuana each year. For those arrested people and the cops that arrest them --- as well as millions more forced to break state and federal criminal laws for their intoxicant of choice and the $$ made by drug cartels which sells its product at inflated prices due to its illegality --- prohibition is still very real. I understand that this issue may not be very important to YOU personally, but your past history with the DEA (as well as recent stories about DEA misbehavior) make me especially eager to understand your views on marijuana policy now that this issues is making national news nearly every day and is the subject of an interesting lawsuit between states in the US Supreme Court.
3. Glad to you do not want parents punished for seeking help for their kids through cannabis. That suggests to me you should not and will not oppose bills like the CARERS Act which seeks to make the law formally ensure they will not be.
4. I continue to be confused about what you think I "bailed" out on. I have said repeatedly that I would support a vote on the amended version of the JSVA you scripted. How is that bailing out? And I am not trying to play games or be sinister: I surmise you have the ear of the most important sentencing reform player in DC (Senator Grassley), and I am hoping you will encourage him to move forward the democratic process on various sentencing reform bills that have been put forward by his colleagues.
I am not asking you to do others' work and I am not on any side. Indeed, what is so telling and frustrating is that you persistently approach these important public policy matters as if we are playing some kind of school-yard game in which what matters most is whose teams scores the most points. It is that kind of attitude that has all of us outside the beltway so very disgusted by what we have seen going on in Congress the last few decades. Instead of worrying about advancing good government and good public policy, all that seems to matter is what side you are on and trying to make sure the other side loses. So sad and such a disservice to the national and its people.
Coincidentally on this topic, check out this new story out of Kansas: "Elementary student detained, taken from mother after defending medical marijuana at school"
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/04/18/Elementary-student-detained-taken-from-mother-after-defending-medical-marijuana-at-school/8081429375727/