Drug WarRant

It’s really hard for me to follow everything while I’m out of town conducting tours and seeing six shows in six days. I don’t have a clue how I’m going to catch up with all the reactions, but I’ve been reading as much as I can. In the meantime, for the rest of you… well, it’s everywhere.
The great thing about Raich (and all the delays in releasing the decision) is that everyone is talking about it. The Daily Show covered it (with a delightful moment with Jon trying to figure out whether it makes more sense to decide on your medical treatment by consulting your doctor or Calvina Faye).
Along with many others, be sure to follow Last One Speaks (and yes, Libby, you do owe me that half dollar) and Radley at the Agitator has been on fire. He notes this piece by Geoffrey Norman at the American Spectator:

According to John Walters, the Supreme Court got it right on medical marijuana. His argument comes down, essentially, to saying that medical marijuana doesn’t work, and should be illegal, even if it does make some people “feel better,” a phrase which Mr. Walter puts, condescendingly, inside quotes. As though feeling better when one is sick is somehow no big deal and a vaguely tawdry aspiration.

Mr. Walters is the nation’s “Drug Czar,” a hideously ugly title that any American should be ashamed to hold.
[…]
You would think a man with $35 billion to spend would have more important things on his agenda than doing an end-zone dance over the bodies of a few cancer patients looking for a little relief from the side-effects of chemo.

A very graphic image.

In the wake of the Raich ruling, the Wisconsin State Journal featured a counterpoint-style article with the question: “Medical Marijuana: Should it be legal?”
On the “Yes” side is the fabulous Gary Storck – a prominent reform leader in Wisconsin.
On the “No” side is the head of the DEA, Karen Tandy. (I’ve written about her before.)
Tandy said a lot of ridiculous stuff, as usual, but ended with saying that we need to stop the “myths” about medical marijuana “before the myths kill any more people.”
Tell you what, Karen. I will show you the graves of people the DEA has killed. Can you produce the ones that medical marijuana has killed?
How dare you? Over and over again marijuana has been proven safer than just about any other drug prescribed by doctors. It helps sick people. Proven. While your reign of terror has caused destruction throughout the world. Don’t you dare lecture to us about prevent killing, you death-monger.

Fascinating! From MPP:

The Rhode Island Senate today passed
medical marijuana bill S.B. 710 by a 34-2 margin. The vote signals
support for medical marijuana after Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling
that upheld the right of states to pass medical marijuana laws, but
also affirmed the right of the federal government to prosecute
patients under federal law. […]

“In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, it’s more important
than ever that states pass medical marijuana laws,” said Neal Levine,
director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, based in
Washington, D.C. “Rhode Island lawmakers have demonstrated that the
Supreme Court decision does not prevent states from protecting medical
marijuana patients from arrest.”

34-2. The day after the Supreme Court decision.
Maybe the Hinchey amendment in the U.S. Congress (to prevent using federal funds to harrass sick people) has a chance. Time to apply pressure.

This is a rallying call, and it’s one challenge we’re ready to meet.
Radley is right.

Consider this a challenge. If you blogged about Raich today, give us at least three posts a week for the next three months aimed at making Hinchey-Rohrabacher and the Truth in Trials Act law. Let’s find out what Congressmen are standing in either bill’s way. Let’s shame them. Let’s pursuade those on the fence to come down off of it. If you lean Republican, and your Congressman is a GOPer who has voted against bills like these, explain their hypocrisy to them. Ask them what happened to federalism, the Tenth Amendment, and the right of states to set their own rules and policies when it comes to medical treatment.

I’ll take the pledge.
And for those of you who aren’t bloggers? Same thing goes. Here’s how you can find out how your Congressperson voted in 2003 and 2004 (An ‘Aye’ vote is good — means stop spending federal money to harrass patients in states where medical marijuana has been legalized by the state. A ‘No’ vote means to continue to go after medical marijuana patients.)
Once you find out, write them and either encourage them to continue voting Aye or change from No to Aye. If they voted No in the past, also write a letter to your paper, wondering why your Congressperson wants to waste your community’s tax dollars by going after sick people in California, and encourage a change in vote. Or, if you live in California or one of the medical marijuana states, ask why your Congressperson doesn’t care about the laws and the will of the people of their own state — do they care more about Washington DC than [your local town]?
We’ve waited for too many months hoping for the Supreme Court to solve our problems with Congress’ Reefer Madness. We have to make it clear now that we will no longer allow them to act this way — and we need the active and loud support of ordinary people.
We also need to continue to apply pressure on the re-scheduling efforts (which includes peripheral efforts like ASA’s challenge of HHS under the Data Quality Act). This is particularly important since the Raich decision did leave some potential warnings by the court…
Again from Radley, via Mark Moller at Cato:

Stevens, in footnote 37, suggests that “evidence proferred by respondents . . . if found credible after trial, would cast serious doubt on the accuracy of the findings that require marijuana to be listed in Schedule I.” I think that’s a clear signal to lower courts to give a serious hearing to any medical marijuana proponents seeking review of a DEA reclassification hearing under the current Controlled Substances Act–and a warning to the DEA to take those arguments seriously.

Interesting.
And while I’m touting Radley’s coverage of Raich (which has been outstanding), I’ve got to say that I agree with his criticism of Raich coverage from portions of the left. Shameful.

COURT’S RULING ON MARIJUANA REEKS OF ‘REEFER MADNESS’

… The Court’s 6-3 decision was a stretched interpretation of the clause in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.

Under Monday’s ruling, growing marijuana at home for medicinal purposes, with no money changing hands, is somehow now a form of interstate commerce. It makes you wonder what the majority was smoking. As Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissenting opinion, “If Congress can regulate this … under the commerce clause, then it can regulate virtually anything.”

That warning ought to be a rallying cry for conservative members of Congress elected under the banner of small government and respect for states rights. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the court’s majority, told Monson, Raich and anyone in a similar fix that their recourse is to get Congress to change the 1970 federal law that bans possession or distribution of marijuana.

Given the “reefer madness” in Washington that has led to an overemphasis on marijuana prosecutions in the war on drugs, the prospects for early congressional action seem remote. In the meantime, surely federal prosecutors and drug-control agents have better things to do than to swoop down on critically ill people who are abiding by state law and haul them off to court.

So for weeks now, I’ve been arranging my work schedule to be around at the time when decisions were announced. But today, no. This trip to New York had been scheduled for over a year, and naturally the Supremes decided to release it today.
So then, I spent all day in an airplane on the ground parked in O’Hare airport waiting for clearance to LaGuardiia. Finally made it to my hotel room.
I’m exhausted, and don’t feel like discussing Raich today. Sorry. Please feel free to continue to discuss in the comments.
Since I missed the opportunity to give the quick response, I’ll take my time reading the decision and comment in greater detail later this week.
However, a couple of quick notes:

• Raich was always only one effort among many in this, and it served to give a lot of publicity to the issue.
• We must go after Congress. Period. They have the power to change all of this. Which means grassroots support. Which means people talking. It means supporting the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act and similar provisions.
• Remember that this ruling does not invalidate any of the current or future state medical marijuana laws. It only means the Feds can go back to looking really silly locking up sick people.
• We’ve got a lot more work to do.

Today is a possible day for the Supreme Court to hand down an opinion on Raich v. Ashcroft.
Unfortunately, at that time I will be on a bus, and then in an airport, and then on a plane to New York. So I probably will not be able to give you updates in as quick a manner as you have come to expect.
So, head over to SCOTUSblog for the freshest Supreme Court news. They’ll post the information on what decisions are handed down by about 10:30 am Eastern (they blog live, so watch for their post to change as more decisions are released).
Then use this as an open Raich thread. If Raich comes down today, you can bet I’ll be blogging about it tonight from NY.