I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I’VE HAD MORE THAN ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP
Yesterday the Supreme Court handed the Federal Government and the DEA overlord powers to nationally control and continue to criminalize all use of marijuana in the USA, despite the fact that ten states have voted in legislation legalizing to some extent the medicinal use of the drug.
An AP report follows that comes courtesy of Mr MR.

Federal authorities may prosecute sick people who smoke pot on doctors' orders, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state medical marijuana laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug. The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana. The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case that it lost in late 2003. At issue was whether the prosecution of medical marijuana users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional. Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines. Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, "but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress." California's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 1996, allows people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state have laws similar to California. In those states, doctors generally can give written or oral recommendations on marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV and other serious illnesses. In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be allowed to set their own rules. "The states' core police powers have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens," said O'Connor, who was joined by other states' rights advocates. The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years, invalidating federal laws dealing with gun possession near schools and violence against women on the grounds the activity was too local to justify federal intrusion. O'Connor said she would have opposed California's medical marijuana law if she was a voter or a legislator. But she said the court was overreaching to endorse "making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use." The case concerned two seriously ill California women, Angel Raich and Diane Monson. The two had sued then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking for a court order letting them smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home raids or other intrusion by federal authorities.

The War on Drugs has been raging for all my quite extended lifetime, and, in a nutshell, I am heartily fucking sick of the whole feeble-minded fiasco. Billions have spent, and billions upon billions more channeled into global crime syndicates and cartels; hundreds of thousands (if not millions) have been incarcerated, lives have been ruined, a massively corrupt drug enforcement industry has been created, and absolutely nothing positive has been achieved in seventy-some years. Recreational drugs are readily available just about any place, and the current system does nothing to provide regulation or protection where it is needed – as in protecting the young. I personally feel that kids should probably not be getting fucked up on anything until they can read, write, handle basic arithmetic, and have a nodding acquaintance with art, science, history, geography, and literature. The current regulation of alcohol seems to work reasonably well. I don’t want to see any nine year-olds sprawled on my doorstep sucking on a gin bottle, but that’s no reason why I should be prevented from having a martini or a shot of Jack after a hard day. I even advise my hard drinking LA friends to take a cab to the bar. I could go disgustedly on about this for pages, but I won’t. I satisfy myself with just a couple of points.

1) This latest Supreme Court idiocy pushes deep into the vexed question of states rights. For the overseas readers, the question of Fed v local control is a core issue in the USA. The Civil War was fought as much over states right as its over freeing the slaves. (That’s what they tell you in the South, at least.) In this instance, it imposes a uniform legal conformity on an increasing plural culture.

2) The reasons for marijuana being illegal at all are becoming more and more shakily Dadaist with the passage of time. We have gone from Harry Anslinger’s poisonous 1930's disinformation that dope was The Weed of Satan and led to rape, murder, madness, and jazz, to the "gateway drug" theory of the 1960s that reefer was fairly benign in itself but led directly to the horrors of heroin. When it was statistically proved that real gateway drug was actually beer, the story switched to "this ain’t your mom’s pot" – the 1990's contention that modern dope was genetically tailored to be so much more powerful that it had to remain outlawed. Now it seems that those in authority don’t even bother. After the Supreme Court decision, Drug Czar John Walters appeared on TV welcoming the ruling and claiming that it would stop the insidious movement for full legalization, and "save lives." No part of the media questioned what lives might be saved when we still await a single authenticated marijuana death, and it would seem that Waters requires dope to remain illegal simply because he says so. I guess I could get violently angry, but I think I’ll just fire up a blunt.
Here’s a bit more background...
http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/pressroom/pressrelease/pr050405.cfm
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/21922/

LINK
Our pal hipspinster blogs about treason.
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

The secret word is High