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U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

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Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#81

Post by jdblair »

danschumann wrote: post #8

I think weed should be legal. I also think Sessions should enforce every law, lest he pick and choose what is illegal and what is not, thus becoming the most powerful law-maker ( or unmaker ) in the land. Passing a law is the act of the legislative, and repealing a law is too. If he does not enforce all the laws, he basically is seizing the power of congress and repealing those laws, for his term. Imagine Sessions ch…

> Sessions will instead let federal prosecutors where pot is legal decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law, the people said.

He's pushing the choice to whether "to defend every law" down to regional federal prosecutors. Prosecutors always decide what laws to enforce by deciding how to allocate their scarce resources. This is an established legal custom called "prosecutorial discretion."

Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#82

Post by ams6110 »

karmelapple wrote: post #69
danschumann wrote: post #8

I think weed should be legal. I also think Sessions should enforce every law, lest he pick and choose what is illegal and what is not, thus becoming the most powerful law-maker ( or unmaker ) in the land. Passing a law is the act of the legislative, and repealing a law is too. If he does not enforce all the laws, he basically is seizing the power of congress and repealing those laws, for his term. Imagine Sessions ch…

Police officers can choose whether or not to enforce a law. Someone is driving 50 in a 35 mph zone. Police officer’s radar says it, the gun is calibrated, and it’s illegal to do that. Police officer pulls that person over, then after a little chat, decided to let them go with a warning. Presumably the reason for letting someone go is because they feel the penalty imposed by the law is too stiff in this case. Okay, th…

That's still enforcing the law. Not enforcing the law would be witnessing the person driving 50 in a 35 zone and doing nothing.

Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#83

Post by Clubber »

djsumdog wrote: post #75
mcny wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why just marijuana? Why not every drug? In fact, why is possession of anything a crime? We already have laws about improper storage of hazardous materials. Possession of anything should be legal. Now distribution and sale is a trickier subject but pretty easy as well. As long as you don't misrepresent what you're selling, it should be legal as well. If we are for a small government, we have to walk the walk.

> In fact, why is possession of anything a crime? Child pornography. Do you want possession to not be a crime? This is one of the most fascinating cases since it is one of the core limitations of free speech. Richard Stallman actually has some very interesting and very controversial arguments about this in regards to speech.

I think the government has gone way overboard on sentencing of having a video, as abhorrent as it may be. If you can take the morality out of it.

Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#84

Post by [deleted] »

ProblemFactory wrote: post #53
dbingham wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's not how it works, at all. Especially when there are legal conflicts between the state and federal governments like this. There are so many laws on the books, many of them horribly outdated, and legislatures are overworked / grid locked. Often, the only way for us to have a working body of law that makes sense is for the government to simply stop enforcing the outdated ones. In the case of the Oba…

> There are so many laws on the books, many of them horribly outdated, and legislatures are overworked / grid locked. Often, the only way for us to have a working body of law that makes sense is for the government to simply stop enforcing the outdated ones. Normalising this is a dangerous precedent. It leads to the situation where every citizen is technically a criminal according to the letter of the law, but it's no…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#85

Post by Clubber »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #60
owenmarshall wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a method for states to nullify federal laws they disagree with; the last time we tried it, though, the side effects were a bit undesirable.

Slavery was not against federal law when that happened. It only happened much later toward the end of the war with the 13th amendement.

As an aside, if you believe the Emancipation Proclamation to be legally binding, slavery was legal in the North longer than it was in the South.

Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#86

Post by SauciestGNU »

mieseratte wrote: post #49
dbingham wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To flip this, the minority of the country that live in 39 states should not be able to dictate the law to the majority of the country who just happen to be concentrated in a relatively small area. That's tyranny of the minority, which is arguably far worse than the tyranny of the majority the framers feared.

On the other hand one could frame this as the majority of states decided and those nine states are the tyrannical minority.

Empty land doesn't have a right to suffrage, people do.

Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#87

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

danschumann wrote: post #8

I think weed should be legal. I also think Sessions should enforce every law, lest he pick and choose what is illegal and what is not, thus becoming the most powerful law-maker ( or unmaker ) in the land. Passing a law is the act of the legislative, and repealing a law is too. If he does not enforce all the laws, he basically is seizing the power of congress and repealing those laws, for his term. Imagine Sessions ch…

I feel the same way. Passing 'laws' (maybe decrees is a better word?) through the Executive Branch and even a memo in this case just sets up horrible precedent, as well as being temporary.

In a perfect world, this would actually ignite the public to the point where the Federal Government is forced to actually remove Marijuana from the banned substance list. Republicans aren't so against it today where they wouldn't be able to get it in through a compromise bill of some sort.

Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#88

Post by BearGoesChirp »

dbingham wrote: post #22
danschumann wrote: post #8

I think weed should be legal. I also think Sessions should enforce every law, lest he pick and choose what is illegal and what is not, thus becoming the most powerful law-maker ( or unmaker ) in the land. Passing a law is the act of the legislative, and repealing a law is too. If he does not enforce all the laws, he basically is seizing the power of congress and repealing those laws, for his term. Imagine Sessions ch…

Unfortunately that's not how it works, at all. Especially when there are legal conflicts between the state and federal governments like this. There are so many laws on the books, many of them horribly outdated, and legislatures are overworked / grid locked. Often, the only way for us to have a working body of law that makes sense is for the government to simply stop enforcing the outdated ones. In the case of the Oba…

>Often, the only way for us to have a working body of law that makes sense is for the government to simply stop enforcing the outdated ones.

Fairly enforcing every law on the books regardless of a person's income or gender and ending plea deals, which would tie up the court systems, would create a disaster. But it is something we need, because the law as is, where everything is illegal and the police target whomever makes them mad is even worse of a disaster. (Yes, police do consistently enforce some laws, like no murder, but there are far too many laws on the books police pick and choose to enforce as it suits their prejudices).

>with a lot of very costly court cases and headaches for the various agencies tasked with enforcement.

Sounds good to me. When those agencies are so low on budget they can't enforce the laws and people get sick enough of the status quo they elect law makers who'll actually remove bad laws, then we will end up better off.

Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#89

Post by Clubber »

buttcoinslol wrote: post #25
brightball wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO that's the correct answer. The only reason it was flourishing was due to lack of enforcement of federal law. It needs to be addressed at the federal level or there needs to be a clear method for states to veto/nullify/ignore federal laws that they feel overreach. I can't remember the procedure, but isn't there some method for a state to nullify a federal law that it disagrees with?

Uh, some states tried to use the concept of nullification to keep slavery around and failed. Not exactly a shining endorsement.. edit: It's important to learn about history.

As mentioned before, slavery was legal during the antebellum period, and Lincoln never publicly said he would abolish it (until he did). The political theory though is if new states are required to be slave-free, then the South would end up being suffocated by anti-slave votes over time.

It's an interesting time to try to understand.

Re: U.S. To End Policy That Let Legal Pot Flourish

#90

Post by TillE »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #56
knieveltech wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uh uh. Quirks of population distribution should certainly not permit a minority of citizens from driving policy in directions the rest of the country doesn't want to go. One person, one vote.

California getting to decide the will of Kansas is a broken system. It feels a lot like, say, the king of England ruling the colonies without representation.

States are completely arbitrary political constructs. Why should Albany have power over both New York City and upstate, for example?

You need either much smaller units, or one system with a more democratic structure.

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