Court Opinion

ID: 9646971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:19:03.277139+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:44.369389
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
I agree generally with the majority opinion and in the result it reaches.1 However, since my approach is somewhat different, I take this opportunity to outline it briefly.
This Court may justifiably attribute to the Legislature awareness of the State and Federal constitutional requirement that to be valid and enforceable its statute must not be so broad or vague that persons “of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application,” and, also, of the sound reasons that support the rule:
“Vague laws offend several important values. First, because we assume that man is free to steer between lawful and unlawful conduct, we insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Vague laws may trap the innocent by not providing fair warning. [Footnote omitted.] Second, if arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is to be prevented, laws must provide explicit standards to those who apply them. A vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy matters to policemen, judges,, and juries for resolution on ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application.” Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-109, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 2298-2299, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972).
When it enacted the Dangerous Drug Act, Article 726d, V.A.P.C., 1925, as amended, and in revising it in 1973 and transferring the revision to the civil statutes as Article 4476-14, V.A.C.S., the Legislature expressly declared its policy and intent to be, inter alia, “to complement and supplement the Laws and Regulations of the Congress of the United States and the appropriate agencies of the Federal Government affecting such handling, sale, and distribution” of dangerous drugs. Because we all *839know, the Legislature knew and appreciated that applicable regulations promulgated by appropriate agencies of the federal government are so elusive and difficult to bring to hand, in complementing and supplementing the federal regulations it obviously chose to avoid the vagueness of a category of drugs that are prohibited by federal law from being dispensed without a prescription and opted instead for notice to a person of common intelligence what is manifested by federal law — the legend “Caution: federal law prohibits dispensing without prescription.” 2
In this fashion, I am confident, the Legislature itself adopted as the means of stating an offense relating to a drug not otherwise described in the act, that it bear the legend just quoted. Failure of the indictment to set forth that prescribed identifying element of the offense renders the indictment void because an offense denounced by state law is not alleged. Compare Loya. v. State, 571 S.W.2d 943 (Tex.Cr.App.1978).
Petitioner is, therefore, entitled to the relief he seeks and I join the Court in granting it.
PHILLIPS, J., concurs.

. As indicated in footnote 2 of my dissenting opinion on State’s motion for rehearing in Minix v. State, 579 S.W.2d 466 (Tex.Cr.App.1979), today I do not read and would not apply literally the admonitory language of Article 21.03, V.A.C.C.P. to test sufficiency of a charging instrument. *

. Wisdom of the legislative choice is demonstrated by necessity for the dissenting opinion to resort to an affidavit to determine that sine-quan is regarded by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Public Health Service, Food and Drug Administration, as a prescription drug.