From: PA146008@utkvm1.utk.edu (David Veal)
Subject: Re: Here's the problem
Organization: University of Tennessee Division of Continuing Education
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 18:30:26 GMT

In article <jrh.2b36d4a7-e@mustang.dell.com> jrh@mustang.dell.com (Randy Howard) writes:

>jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:
>
>>The following came from talk.politics.drugs but I thought it illustrates
>>quite starkly what is wrong with the criminal justice system.  Amazing
>>that is is considered twice as bad to own a chemical as to rob someone
>>using a weapon.
>
>[wizbang charts deleted]
>
>Yeah, I suppose that is because we have declared "WAR ON DRUGS", and have
>yet to declare war on GUNS.  Of course, declaring war on them seems to have
>convinced a lot of drug dealers to stock up on heavy artillery.  :)
>
>This brings to mind (for no obvious reason) a discussion I had a few nights
>ago with an obvious -- shall I say it?  Ok.. the L-word... -- liberal who
>was trying to justify legalizing drugs to make the problem go away.  Somehow, 
>I still don't understand the exact case he made, he used the pro-gun reasoning
>to justify his position.  The basics were the belief that if you outlaw guns,
>only outlaws have guns, and the same thing applies to cocaine and other
>illegal drugs.  I was stunned, but after seeing Clinton elected, this was 
>by far easier to grasp, I had been immunized to such obvious stupidity.
>
>My response was simple..  "I see no Right to Bear Drugs in the Bill of Rights,
>so I don't think the people can claim they have any SPECIFIC right to drugs.

        The Bill of Rights never makes any claim to be the sole listing of 
rights of people in the United States.  In fact, the ninth amendment 
specifically says that it is not.
        Any right to "bear drugs" exists independent of the Constitution, 
because (and this is important) the Congress is granted no power to restrict 
the sale, posession, or manufacture of drugs within the borders of a state.  
They have the power to regulate it's transport across state lines, and 
restrict importation of it, but inside state lines, it's the state's 
decision, period.  The Bill of Rights was not intended to state what was and 
what was not a right.  It was intended to make explicit in some cases what 
the Constitution said implicitly by not granting powers to infringe those 
rights.  The Federalists thought the Bill of Rights was redundent, since, 
for instance, the Congress didn't *have* the power to restrict free speech.  
Why then have a prohibition against using a power they didn't have?

>Of course, there are lots of general broad references to freedom, but of
>course nothing anywhere near as clear as the 2nd.  

       What the Constitution does not say is as important as what it does 
say.  The powers that are not there are as much protections of rights as the 
protections that are spelled out.

>He then was forced to think
>for a minute, an effort that obviously pained him, followed by a claim that I
>have never heard before:  "George Washington smoked pot.  It's in his memoirs."
>
>I have no idea if that is true or not, and I don't really care at this point,
>he's been dead far too long to prosecute.  

        You can't prosecute George Washington for smoking pot, even if he 
was alive.  It was legal when he was alive, and the Constitution forbids ex 
post facto laws.  Of course, it also doesn't have a power to restrict drugs, 
so you might just get away with it.

>I simply said "Well, if he had 
>thought it was as important to keep that right as the RKBA, I assume he would
>have pushed to put it in the constitution".  

        Things were considerably different then.  It really would not have 
occured to them that the federal government would wage an all out war 
against drugs within state borders, or that the states would let them get 
away with it.  (The states held most of the power at the time.)
        Further, it is impossible to place every possible right in the 
Constitution, and they acknowledged this with the ninth  and tenth 
amendments.  
        Don't forget that "he" (meaning Washington) did not write the Bill 
of Rights.  Madison did.

>I know, a weak comeback, but I
>was caught offguard by his claim, and I don't put any effort into learning 
>the precedents for drug legalization.  The only thing that stuck me funny is,
>if this is really a common argument that they use (the firearm reference),

        In my experiance, this isn't common at all.  While the same 
arguments seem to apply to drug legalization as to the RKBA, a great many 
people support one, but not the other.  Those that support both, 
unfortunately, appear to be in the minority.  (And before a lot of people 
respond to this post with "I'm a data point," posts, consider that Usenet 
isn't by any stretch of the imagination representative of the general 
population.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Veal               University of Tennessee Div. of Cont. Education
                         Information Services Group
PA146008@utkvm1.utk.edu  (Mail to VEAL@utkvm1.utk.edu will bounce.)