Rocky Mountain High - Colorado Will Now Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol

[onejayhawk]

And apparently Obama and the feds disagree with your position:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/...ry?id=17946783

Far be it from me to support BK on political matters, but he is correct on this one. Not making enforcement a priority is a long way from legalizing it. If there is a major stash located, see if the feds dont land on it. distribution will still be interdicted as it comes up.

J

[Lurker765]

Far be it from me to support BK on political matters, but he is correct on this one. Not making enforcement a priority is a long way from legalizing it. If there is a major stash located, see if the feds dont land on it. distribution will still be interdicted as it comes up.

J

I did not say Obama was legalizing it. Bob said the feds should come down with both feet hard on it. I said they should do what happened in prohibition and that appears to be happening again.

[onejayhawk]

I did not say Obama was legalizing it. Bob said the feds should come down with both feet hard on it. I said they should do what happened in prohibition and that appears to be happening again.

I would suggest re reading the discussion. BK was making a point about federal primacy. He said nothing about "should".

J

[Lurker765]

DoJ should come down on this with both feet-- not because it's marijuana, but because you simply cannot have states setting laws in contravention of Federal Law. What happens next? Does Idaho decide that you can sell organs rather than going through the UNOS donation process? Does South Carolina decide that anyone should be able to buy a belt fed machine gun as long as they have the money? Does Alabama outlaw abortion?

I personally don;t think that narcotics should be legalized, but if the Feds decided to move on legalizing marijuana it wouldn't be the end of the world. That being said, that should be the only way it potentially happens.

I would suggest re reading the discussion. BK was making a point about federal primacy. He said nothing about "should".

J

I would suggest re reading the discussion. BK did indeed say "should".

[baldgriff]

Is it possible that you are both right......

Yes BK said should - - - and his reason was primacy. At least he didnt tell Lurker to "F" off..

[Judge Jude]

DoJ should come down on this with both feet-- not because it's marijuana, but because you simply cannot have states setting laws in contravention of Federal Law. What happens next? Does Idaho decide that you can sell organs rather than going through the UNOS donation process? Does South Carolina decide that anyone should be able to buy a belt fed machine gun as long as they have the money? Does Alabama outlaw abortion?

to move this angle a little closer to the site, the Obama administration has until Jan 20 to intervene in the MLB/NFL/NCAA/NBA/NHL lawsuit that seeks to void NJ's new sports betting law for racetracks and casinos. Suit is on the grounds that a 20-yr-old federal law explicitly prevents NJ and 45 other states from doing this. but if the DoJ doesn't intervene (the dept actually was skeptical of constitutionality of this when it was being debated in Congress in 1991), football fans may be betting legally in NJ in time for the Super Bowl.

and if that happens, look for other states to seek their own sports books.....

[Lurker765]

to move this angle a little closer to the site, the Obama administration has until Jan 20 to intervene in the MLB/NFL/NCAA/NBA/NHL lawsuit that seeks to void NJ's new sports betting law for racetracks and casinos. Suit is on the grounds that a 20-yr-old federal law explicitly prevents NJ and 45 other states from doing this. but if the DoJ doesn't intervene (the dept actually was skeptical of constitutionality of this when it was being debated in Congress in 1991), football fans may be betting legally in NJ in time for the Super Bowl.

and if that happens, look for other states to seek their own sports books.....

I believe I already said this to BK earlier in the thread.

[Judge Jude]

Ah, I see, missed that.

Part of the NJ defense is that there is no intrastate aspect of the sports betting, hence a claim of overreach of the Commerce Clause.
but a complicated legal argument overall.

[senorsheep]

Dr. Sanjay Gupta has some interesting comments on the "science" behind marijuana's misguided DEA classification.

Linky: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have "no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse."

They didn't have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn't have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications.

We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.

...

On August 14, 1970, the Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr. Roger O. Egeberg wrote a letter recommending the plant, marijuana, be classified as a schedule 1 substance, and it has remained that way for nearly 45 years. My research started with a careful reading of that decades old letter. What I found was unsettling. Egeberg had carefully chosen his words:

"Since there is still a considerable void in our knowledge of the plant and effects of the active drug contained in it, our recommendation is that marijuana be retained within schedule 1 at least until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue."

Not because of sound science, but because of its absence, marijuana was classified as a schedule 1 substance. Again, the year was 1970. Egeberg mentions studies that are underway, but many were never completed. As my investigation continued, however, I realized Egeberg did in fact have important research already available to him, some of it from more than 25 years earlier.

In 1944, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia commissioned research to be performed by the New York Academy of Science. Among their conclusions: they found marijuana did not lead to significant addiction in the medical sense of the word. They also did not find any evidence marijuana led to morphine, heroin or cocaine addiction.

Whatever you think of CNN's celebrity doctor - Obama thought enough of him to consider him for Surgeon General a few years back - kudos to Gupta for actually examining the basis for his mistaken beliefs, accepting the truth, and owning up to his errors. Will our government do the same? Or will they continue to allow this issue to be driven by the decades-old fear and lies foisted upon us by the Nixon administration so they could have an enforcement tool to crack down on those dangerous hippies?

[bryanbutler]

thumbs up to this one. perhaps a visit over the border is warranted. i'll be in boulder in october anyway for work .

[Lucky]

I may have mentioned this earlier, but the move to decriminalize has spread. Used to be in Arkansas, anything over an ounce was a felony. Now, to be a felony it must be over four ounces or a second offense. The net effect is that first possession of an ounce is now similar to a speeding ticket.

[Lurker765]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/29/politics/holder-marijuana-laws/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Attorney General Eric Holder, in a conference call Thursday morning, notified the governors of Colorado and Washington that the department, for now, will not seek to pre-empt those states' laws, which followed voters' approval of ballot measures that legalized recreational marijuana use.

[DMT]

Yeah, didn't they already pretty much say the exact same thing, only to end up aggressively prosecuting dispensaries and the like? Holder is so full of shit.

Exactly.