Reason Magazine - Topics > Federalism

Libertarians for Gay Marriage—Including Bob Barr!

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:43:00 EDT

From the chair of California's Libertarian Party:

People who truly cherish freedom see today's Supreme Court decision as a victory for liberty and common sense. There's no reason why consenting adults should not be allowed to marry so long as their arrangement doesn't interfere with any other individual's ability to live their life in any way they want to.

Many supporters see the decision as a repudiation of bigotry and narrow-mindedness. But Libertarians also see it as a step towards a revision of the larger public policy issue surrounding marriage. Californians should start asking their elected officials why government is involved in granting marriage licenses at all.

And here's Libertarian presidential hopeful Bob Barr (via Marc Ambinder):

Regardless of whether one supports or opposes same sex marriage, the decision to recognize such unions or not ought to be a power each state exercises on its own, rather than imposition of a one-size-fits-all mandate by the federal government (as would be required by a Federal Marriage Amendment which has been previously proposed and considered by the Congress). The decision today by the Supreme Court of California properly reflects this fundamental principle of federalism on which our nation was founded.

Republic of Montana

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Several dozen Montana politicians, including Secretary of State Brad Johnson, have adopted an unconventional take on the Second Amendment case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court: They’ve threatened secession. D.C. v. Heller, the first substantive Second Amendment case the Court has heard in nearly 70 years, could definitively settle whether the right to bear arms is an individual right or a collective right.

In a joint resolution, the Montana politicians argue that when Washington approved the state constitution, including a clause granting “any person” the right to bear arms, upon the Treasure State’s entry into the Union in 1889, the federal government recognized that clause as consistent with the Second Amendment. If the Court comes down on the side of a collective right, they argue, it would breach the compact for statehood between Montana and the federal government.

“Some speak of a ‘living constitution,’ the meaning of which may evolve and change over time,” supporters of the resolution explain on their website. “However, the concept of a ‘living contract,’ one to be disregarded or revised at the whim of one party thereto, is unknown.” Therefore, they argue, “A collective rights holding in Heller would not only open the Pandora’s box of unilaterally morphing contracts, it would also poise Montana to claim appropriate and historically entrenched remedies for contract violation.” Said remedies include opting out of its breached compact with the federal government—in other words, seceding from the Union.

Tax Revolt in Tea Party Zone

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:00:00 EDT

Massachusetts must have been a terrifying place in 1995. A relatively recent arrival in the commonwealth myself, I had no idea that the mid-90s was a time when health care was unobtainable. I didn't know about the washed out bridges and unplowed roads. Nor do I recall seeing bands of feral children roaming the streets from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm due to the lack of public schools.

But a popular ballot initiative to eliminate Massachusetts's income tax—thus bringing the state budget back to 1995 levels—is being greeted with howls of protest and predictions that the state will degenerate into underfunded chaos.

Gov. Deval Patrick sees trouble ahead should the flow of income tax revenue be dammed up: "Just as it is the people's money it is also the people's bridges and the people's roads and the people's schools and the people's broken neighbors, in some cases."

Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray says she understands that people would like to have their money back—the average taxpayers would pay about $3,600 less in taxes—"but when their child has no school to go to and they can't get out their door to go to work because the street hasn't been plowed in the winter, I think the public would be back here really quick saying, 'Please, fix this.'"

New Hampshire, Texas, and Florida are doing fine without an income tax, but the Bay State (or Taxachusetts, as its citizens fondly call it) has a current rate of 5.3 percent on income.

The initiative is brutally simple: A 50 percent decrease in the income tax rate effective January 1, 2009, and the rest abolished one year later. That takes the state from its current revenues of about $28 billion down to the $17 billion it had in 1995.

The initiative process has three phases. Last fall, the Committee for Small Government gathered 100,000 signatures, well in excess of the 66,593 needed to push the initiative forward. Then there's a period where legislators can go ahead and pass the proposed law, thus skipping the balloting process. Needless to say, they didn't opt for that. Now the group must gather another 11,099 signatures and they'll be on the ballot.

"People think of us as a liberal state, but we're pretty good at [anti-tax] ballot initiatives," says Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, a group that's been fighting taxes in Massachusetts since the 1970s. In 2000, her group used the ballot to win a rollback of a "temporary" tax increase still in effect from 1989. The tax rate was supposed to gradually decrease until it hit 5 percent. In Massachusetts, however, ballot initiatives are just for statues, not constitutional amendments (as they are, for example, in California). This means that the legislature can override them, which is exactly what happened. Lawmakers froze the rollback in 2002 at 5.3 percent.

This means that there is a chance the legislature could simply repeal the income tax elimination initiative as well. Given the popular support for the initiative, however, Anderson wonders if legislators might be feeling cautious. "If a few of them lose their jobs in November, I don't think the others are going to want to come back in and repeal right away."

In 2002, the Committee for Small Government snagged 45 percent of the vote with a similar initiative. "We found we could get a good respectable vote," says committee chair Carla Howell. The effort got almost no coverage, and every single one of the few editorial pages that took notice of the proposal opposed it, says Howell.

This time around, people are taking notice, in part thanks to a big campaign gearing up against the initiative. A far-from-ragtag crew of union members and city and town employees groups have brought in a hired gun in the form of former Blue Cross Blue Shield executive and civic leader Peter Meade to lead their Coalition for Our Communities. Howell is pleased to see the big guns arrayed against her. "The more they advertise, the more they will be helping us out. We don't need to sell our side. Our biggest challenge is just making sure that every voter in the state knows about it."

Howell also rejects concerns that the measure is too radical: "To be increasing the price of government continually where people in the private sector are dealing with wage freezes and job losses, that's radical!" Anderson echoes the sentiment: "It doesn't matter if you phase it in over 14 months, or 5 years, or 10 years, you're going to get the same rhetoric," she says, "It's the end of the world!" Might as well go whole hog.

Plucky though these small government campaigners may be, it's unlikely that Massachusetts lawmakers will actually stand by while $11 billion slips through their clammy fingers. Instead, they'll increase sales taxes, luxury taxes, and other fees. In fact, they probably won't even let the income tax phase out all the way. But having these kinds of fights in the past has at least staved off more increases, which would be better than nothing.

A statewide survey in April by polling firm Fabrizo McLaughlin found that Massachusetts voters think their government wastes about 41 cents [PDF] for every dollar of revenue. Elimination of the state income tax would reduce the state's budget by about 40 percent. As the kids used to say in the '90s: Coincidence? I think not.

Katherine Mangu-Ward is a reason associate editor.

The Paleo Case for Judicial Activism

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:06:00 EDT

Following up on Nick Gillespie's Supreme Court post earlier this morning, I see that our friends over at LewRockwell.com have run a very interesting piece arguing that "judicial activism is only lamentable when the judges actively ignore the Constitution." From historian Kevin R.C. Gutzman's article:

"Judicial restraint," in and of itself, is not a virtue. The idea of judicial restraint first gained currency in legal academia in the first third of the twentieth century. Then, it was the slogan of such as Felix Frankfurter, an Ivy League law professor and high ACLU mucky-muck who wanted conservative activists to cease imposing their laissez-faire vision on America.

The laissez-faire Supreme Court, in particular, was partly in the right and partly in the wrong. In a series of cases, the Court of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century disallowed wage and labor legislation passed by both state and federal legislatures. The Court was right to do this in regard to the congressional statutes, because, as the justices said, the Tenth Amendment represented the constitutional principle of federalism—that control of those matters had been reserved to the states.

Whole thing here.

I'd argue that it's Gutzman who is partly right and partly wrong. As I describe in my libertarian case for judicial activism, Supreme Court justices such as Stephen J. Field correctly read the Fourteenth Amendment as applying the Bill of Rights (including the Ninth Amendment's guarantee of unenumerated rights) to the states. So the laissez-faire Court was right in Lochner v. New York (1905), for example, when it struck down the state's maximum working hours law for bakeshop employees as a violation of liberty of contract, just as it was right to strike down federal New Deal laws three decades later. In other words, we'd all be better off with an activist Supreme Court that consistently upheld individual rights while strictly limiting state and federal power.

Arnold Among the Lilliputians

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:00:00 EDT

It was the perfect day for a conference on climate change at Yale University last Friday. In New Haven, Connecticut, the crocuses were peeking out from the soil. A group of state governors emerged from their winter stupor and milled around on unsteady feet, climbing in and out of zero-emission busses. A couple of Canadian legislators were present, perhaps stopping over on their return migration to the north. Ah, spring.

"I would not recommend that you have a public relations campaign on global warming in January and February in Manitoba," said Manitoba Premier Gary Doer. Ne'er have truer words been spoken.

The governors were in town to sign the Governors' Declaration on Climate Change—a soft and fuzzy document "recognizing new threats" and "recommitting to the effort to stop global warming"—but pretty much everyone else was just there to see Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, delegate from the land of perpetual sun, California.

In the morning sessions, the participants uttered the usual soundbites. The governors cheerfully rejected any suggestion that government-mandated reductions in carbon output might have economic costs. Gov. Jon Corzine (D-N.J) got a round of applause for saying that higher prices on energy and restrictions on use would be "an economic opportunity, not an economic burden." Gov. Jodi Rell (R-Conn.) crowed about "green collar jobs."

But a surprising new message was on display as well: States' right are back in fashion, and this time it's liberals singing the praises of federalism.

"States' rights, particularly in the last century, were regarded as the most regressive kind of policies," said Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kansas). "The federal government would set a high bar on civil rights, or safety net issues. And states' rights was going to drag that back, to claim the opportunity to have a lower bar at the states. I want to suggest that in the 21st century this has been flipped." She expanded on that theme in an interview: "When I was young, states' rights was a pejorative term. But the federal government has been very laissez-faire in all sort of areas, so states are stepping up to fill the void." Gov. Corzine noted "a vacuum in Washington with regard to leadership on the issue of climate change," and apparently New Jersey, like nature, abhors a vacuum, since Corzine has been on the forefront of state-based carbon regulation.

Currently, 18 states have signed the Governors' Climate Change Declaration, but 36 states have enacted some kind of greenhouse-gas plan.

Why hundreds of Yalies crowded into a poorly ventilated auditorium on the first really warm, beautiful day of spring became clear when Schwarzenegger swept in at the last moment for a signing ceremony and a speech. He looked sleek in a green tie and a flawlessly uniform tan.

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, was the only one of the governors to acknowledge that states will have to make tradeoffs, mostly economic, if they are serious about reducing carbon emissions.

The biggest applause line of the day came when the seven-time Mr. Olympia turned the tables on political conventional wisdom about who is hurting the environment and who is helping. "It's not always Republicans" or big corporations, he said, that slow environmental progress. Several companies want to build solar power plants in the Mojave Desert. However, the place where they want to build may be the kind of territory that a particular kind of endangered squirrel would prefer to frequent. Efforts by the California Department of Fish and Game ("my own agency, that I'm supposed to be the head of and the boss of!") to protect "this little creature" have thwarted plans to build planet-saving solar arrays. "If we can't put a solar power plant in the Mojave Desert," Schwarzenegger thundered, "I don't know where the hell we can put it!"

Schwarzenegger has also pushed back, with lawsuits and a P.R. campaign, against the strongly worded suggestion from the Environmental Protection Agency that states are forbidden to go beyond federal standards for carbon emissions and set stricter standards of their own.

Of course, with his global fame and private jet, Schwarzenegger has taken advantage of this new states' rights doctrine more than most. Article 10 of the Constitution states that "no State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation," and also looks down on states that "enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power." But between rallying governors for carbon limits and hobnobbing with Kyoto protocol signatories, Schwarzenegger has probably already breached that dam when it comes to environmental issues. Last October, for instance, California and a coalition of European Union countries, U.S. states, Canadian provinces, Norway, and New Zealand formed the world's first International Carbon Action Partnership.

One of Schwarzenegger's applause lines: "We don't wait for Washington, because I've always said Washington is asleep at the wheel." This newfound pride in federalism has its definite limits. For every states' rights rah rah, there was a wistful plea for more federal regulation on carbon production. Even states' rights revisionist Gov. Sebelius said she hoped that "the roles will be reversed in the next administration." A proposed cap and trade plan, Gov. Jon Corzine said, is something he'd "love to see globally, love to see nationally, but unfortunately narrowed to regional efforts."

All of the governors present, including Schwarzenegger, agreed that no matter who took office in January, he or she would be "better on the global warming" than the Bush administration—meaning that some sort of national cap and trade or carbon tax was almost inevitable, whether under President McCain, President Obama, or President Clinton, and stricter federal regulations would again become the gold standard of environmental controls.

Even in this moment of states' rights redemption, the newly empowered governors restated their longing to return to the old way, when their marching orders come from Washington. This is understandable, since a uniform national policy will be easier on companies that do business in more than one state, and will send a clearer message to other countries about the United States' position on the issue. Plus, governors won't have to take the blame when their constituents object to higher prices at the pump, at the register, and at the car dealership.

Still, it is a little sad to see that even the Governator would cede power to Washington so gladly. In the meantime, he's making his own dubiously constitutional way in the enviromental future, winning the hearts and minds of Yalies, and making the other governors seem like girlie men.

Katherine Mangu-Ward is a reason associate editor.

Burn the Byrne

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:00:00 EDT

Last month, police in Kentucky went on a 24-hour drug raid blitz. According to local media accounts, the raids uncovered 23 methamphetamine labs, seized more than 2,400 pounds of marijuana, identified 16 drug-endangered children and arrested 565 people for illegal drug use.

That's quite a day's work.

What inspired the blitz? Complaints from the citizenry? A vicious string of drug-related murders? An outbreak of overdoses?

No, none of that.

It seems that they were concerned that the federal government is about to turn off the funding spigot.

"During 'Operation Byrne Blitz,'" a local television station reported, "state police and highway patrol agencies, local police and sheriff's departments, and drug task forces throughout the country conducted undercover investigations, marijuana eradication efforts and drug interdiction activities. The collaborative effort, named for the federal grant program which funds many of the anti-drug efforts, underscored the impact that cuts to this funding could have on local and statewide drug enforcement."

The federal grant they're referring to, the Byrne Grant, is problematic for a lot of reasons. Chief among them is the way it warps police priorities by tying drug arrests to the federal teat.

The grants are often tied to arrest statistics, which encourage police officers to target low-level drug offenders instead of major dealers and suppliers. The grants often create multi-jurisdictional "drug task forces," which—because their authority extends across several counties—many times aren't directly accountable to anyone.

It was a Byrne-funded task force in Tulia, Texas, for example, that in 1999 arrested and prosecuted 46 people of drug crimes based on the word of an undercover police informant later found to have fabricated evidence.

Another task force wrongfully arrested and prosecuted 28 people in Hearne, Texas the next year, this time based on the word of a criminal police informant. In fact, the situation got so bad in Texas that the state eventually banned multi-jurisdictional drug task forces.

Because most Byrne grants are also tied directly to drug arrests, they encourage local police departments to use their manpower and resources on nonviolent drug offenses instead of more serious crimes like rape, robbery, or murder.

Surprisingly, it was the Republican-led Congress that started phasing out Byrne grants in the 1990s, a trend that has continued through the Bush administration, though they haven't yet been eliminated completely.

It's a good idea.

Even if you happen to be a supporter of the drug war, these grants do little to help fight it, and only serve to make local police departments less accountable and less transparent. Even the White House Office of Management and Budget has been sharply critical of the program.

Unfortunately, Congressional Democrats (and many Republicans) can't resist the easy, positive publicity that comes with a press release announcing the procurement of federal crime-fighting pork for the local police department.

Congress is now discussing bringing back Byrne grants in full force. One leading senate proponent of re-funding the grants is, unfortunately, Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama.

But let's go back to Kentucky.

Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Secretary J. Michael Brown told one local media outlet of the Byrne-grant bltiz, "The impact of our drug task forces can be clearly seen in the success of this one-day blitz. While combining these efforts in a 24-hour period makes a statement, it's important to remember that these types of activities go on every day, and are a critical tool in eradicating illegal use."

That's one way of looking at it.

But here's a different possibility: If police in Kentucky can go out and find 2,400 pounds of marijuana in 24-hours anytime they want, just to make a political statement, that might be a pretty good sign that the grants—and the drug war in general—aren't working.

Radley Balko is a senior editor for reason.

Montana: Wrong Heller Decision Would Violate Its Compact with the United States

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:13:00 EST

An interesting wrinkle in the gun-rights controversy: Various Montana politicians have signed a resolution arguing that anything other than an individual-right interpretation of the Second Amendment (at issue in the forthcoming Supreme Court case Heller v. D.C.) would violate the compact between Montana and the U.S.

Excerpts from the resolution:

WHEREAS, when the Court determines in Heller whether or not the Second Amendment secures an individual right, the Court will establish precedent that will affect the State of Montana and the political rights of the citizens of Montana;

WHEREAS, when Montana entered into statehood in 1889, that entrance was accomplished by a contract between Montana and the several states, a contract known as The Compact With The United States (Compact), found today as Article I of the Montana Constitution;

WHEREAS, with authority from Congress acting as agent for the several states, President Benjamin Harrison approved the Montana Constitution in 1889, which secured the right of "any person" to bear arms, clearly intended as an individual right and an individual right deemed consistent then with the Second Amendment by the parties to the contract;

............
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the undersigned members of the 60th Montana Legislature as follows:

1. That any form of "collective rights" holding by the Court in Heller will offend the Compact; and.........4. Montana reserves all usual rights and remedies under historic contract law if its Compact should be violated by any "collective rights" holding in Heller.

A longer explanation of their "contract argument."

At Long Last, Have You No Pages Left To Molest...?

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:08:00 EST

Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi channels Little Milton (the singer, not the economist) while watching Congress' latest hearings about baseball and steroids and feels so bad he feels a ballgame on a rainy day:

Clemens probably did it [used performance-enhancing drugs]. But that fact should not obscure larger questions: Since when is it Congress' bailiwick to run banana trials? After all, drug users typically rat out drug dealers. Why is Congress wasting its time on a single supposed user? Are there no congressional pages left to molest? No lobbyists left to schmooze? No tax dollars left to misplace?

More perfectly pitched beanballs here.

Harsanyi in reason here. On reason.tv here.

Matt Welch and I called foul (please, make the sports-themed metaphors stop) on ill-informed congressmen sniffing jocks a few weeks back in the Wash Post.

Giuliani vs. Clinton vs. Our Freedom

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:12:00 EST

In the New Hampshire Union Leader, David Boaz has an op-ed laying out why a likely Guiliani-Clinton match-up come November presents America with a choice between two barely distinguishable visions of the expansion of federal power.

The Federalization of Medicine

info@reason.com (Maia Szalavitz) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:11:00 EDT

After three trials (two mistrials), one appeal, and having served more than three years of a mandatory 25 year sentence, pain patient Richard Paey was given a full pardon by Florida Governor Charlie Crist on Sept. 20. Paey had been convicted of “drug trafficking” due to the high doses of opioids he’d been prescribed for pain resulting from multiple sclerosis and failed back surgery in the aftermath of a car accident.

Even though three months of surveillance produced no evidence he had sold or given away any medication, and even though he’d been prescribed the same dosages for years, the weight of the drugs alone (which, ironically, mostly contained acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol) was enough to provoke the mandatory minimum sentence.

While Paey was in prison, officials refilled a morphine pump that he had fitted during the course of the proceedings. That pump, paid for by the state of Florida, delivered over the course of each 48 hour period a larger dose of opioid medication than Paey had been convicted of possessing in the first place.

Strangely, Florida’s parole board recommended against even commuting Paey’s sentence to time served. But Gov. Crist and his cabinet saw Paey’s case for the injustice it was, and unanimously voted to grant him a full pardon. One of those cabinet members, Attorney General Bill McCollum, a long-time supporter of mandatory minimum sentences, said during the hearing, “This is not a pleasant case. Our laws are very much to blame.”

Paey’s is only one of the most egregious cases of injustice resulting from a recent crackdown on “prescription drug abuse.” Dozens of doctors have also been charged with trafficking, and the overwhelming majority have been convicted or taken pleas, even when there was no evidence that they profited from drug sales or intended to provide highs to addicts. The initiative has been pushed in the media and through the courts by the DEA and the Justice Department starting with the Oxycontin hysteria of 2001.

Siobhan Reynolds, the founder of the advocacy group Pain Relief Network who brought the Paey case to national attention, spots a pattern in the few victories pain patients and doctors have won. She notes that the doctors who avoided conviction and patients who ultimately received justice had all been charged at the state level, not in federal courts.

“We’re thrilled by this victory,” she says, “And this shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that if these matters are to be handled by law enforcement at all, they ought to be handled by the states. Here, where things went terribly wrong, they were able to correct the situation. But at the federal level, we’ve been trying to stop this outrageous crackdown for five years, and haven’t gotten anywhere.”

The most notorious federal case is that of Dr. William Hurwitz, who was originally sentenced to 25 years in prison for drug trafficking. His first guilty verdict was overturned on appeal because the jury had not been allowed to consider his defense that he was merely practicing medicine.

In his second trial, he was convicted on 16 counts of trafficking, but acquitted on 29 other charges. Several of the jurors later told John Tierney of the New York Times that they did not think he was a drug dealer, but that he had “fallen down on the job” by not cutting off patients who showed signs of addiction. In other words, Hurwitz was at worst a bad doctor, not a criminal drug dealer.

Though the judge recognized that Hurwitz had been practicing medicine and even said in her sentencing statement that, “the mere prescription of huge quantities of opioids doesn't mean anything,” she nonetheless did not throw out the “trafficking” verdict. However, she did sentence Hurwitz to just five years, significantly below the federal sentencing guidelines. Prosecutors are now appealing the sentence, claiming that the judge erred in her attempt at mercy.

Other doctors convicted on the federal level include Bernard Rottschaefer, who got six years despite the fact that the prosecution’s star witness admitted to having perjured herself; Deborah Bordeaux, MD, who got 8 years for having worked less than two months at a clinic that prosecutors said conspired to sell Oxycontin to addicts; and Ronald McIver, who was sentenced to 30 years. There have been dozens of others, and, thus far, federal appeals courts have offered little relief.

There have been many convictions in state courts, too, but there have been a few significant victories. California doctor Frank Fisher was originally charged with multiple counts of drug dealing, and even murder, in the death of a patient who turned out to have died of gruesome injuries as a passenger in a car accident. The state had claimed the drugs in her system, not the crash, had killed her. Fisher faced decades in prison, but over time the state’s case collapsed. They finally tried him on fraud charges, and Fisher was acquitted.

In Pennsylvania in 2006, Paul Heberle was acquitted on 26 prescription-related charges, including trafficking and fraud. He’d been asked by the state to take over the care of patients of another doctor who’d been sent to prison for “drug dealing,” and was then prosecuted for having treated some of them.

“I think the states—perhaps because they are closer to the people—are more accountable than the federal government,” says John Flannery, who was Paey’s attorney for his appeal and clemency process, “It’s also a fairer fight in the states because you are not overmatched by the unlimited resources of the federal government.”

Ron Libby, author of The Criminalization of Medicine: America’s War on Doctors and professor of political science at the University of North Florida, is less sanguine. “The only pattern I see is towards being tougher and having a more law enforcement mentality," he says.

But compared to federal prosecutors, who have taken these cases with relish, and even compared accused doctors to the Taliban, state prosecutors seem to be at least somewhat more concerned about the effects of the anti-drug crusade on pain care.

In 2005, the National Association of Attorneys General sent a concerned letter to the DEA and a response to a call for comments signed by the attorney generals of 29 states, the District of Columbia and two territories. The response said, in part, that the AG’s “are concerned that recent DEA actions send mixed messages to the medical community and are likely to discourage appropriate prescribing for the management of pain. Those actions also put the DEA at odds with advances in state policies regarding prescription pain medication.”

The DEA’s only attempt at helping doctors figure out what the police and federal prosecutors see as “appropriate prescribing” and what they call “drug dealing” had been a 2004 FAQ, which was created over years of collaboration between medical experts and law enforcement. It was withdrawn after Hurwitz planned to use it in his defense. Though a “clarification” was published in the Federal Register, re-enforcing the primacy of law enforcement concerns over medical judgment.

Reynolds and PRN would like to see the federal role eliminated entirely through legislation. “Public opinion affects state officials but it does not affect the DEA,” she says. “We’re working with the subcommittee on crime to put together legislation that would shore up the medical exemption to the Controlled Substances Act and restore the supremacy of the states.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, in its decision of the assisted suicide case, Gonzalez v. Oregon ruled that federal prosecutors do not have the power to choose to criminalize entire areas of medical practice. In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote, “This power to criminalize…would be unrestrained. It would be anomalous for Congress to have so painstakingly described the Attorney General’s limited authority to deregister a single physician or schedule a single drug, but to have given him, just by implication, authority to declare an entire class of activity outside 'the course of professional practice,' and therefore a criminal violation.”

The DEA and the Justice Department have nonetheless continued to make federal criminal cases out of what previously would have been at worst incidents of medical malpractice and have in many cases simply been instances of doctors using treatments drug cops don't understand. And they have considerably hampered advances in pain treatment in the process.

Maia Szalavitz is author of Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead, 2006) and a senior fellow at stats.org. Her latest book, co-written with Dr. Bruce D. Perry is The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook. (Basic Books, 2007).

The Limits of Self-Restraint

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:06:00 EDT

In 1995 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law that banned gun possession near schools. For the first time since the New Deal, the Court ruled that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, its usual excuse for meddling in state and local matters.

A year later, Congress passed the same law again, this time specifying that a defendant can be found guilty of carrying a gun in a school zone only if the weapon "has moved in" or "otherwise affects" interstate or foreign commerce. While 72 of his fellow senators pretended to believe this easily satisfied requirement rendered the law constitutional, Fred Thompson voted against the transparent ruse.

It was not the only time Thompson, now a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, found himself on the losing end of a lopsided vote to assert authority Congress does not have. With some notable exceptions, the Tennessee Republican's Senate record suggests he may be that Washington rarity: a politician who means what he says, at least when it comes to the division of powers between the federal government and the states.

As Thompson emphasizes, this division is crucial to our system of government: By avoiding an all-powerful central authority, it protects liberty, promotes accountability, and fosters competition that leads to innovation and diversity in public policy. Recognizing that the federal government has only those powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution, Thompson says, "folks in Washington ought to be asking first and foremost, ‘Should government be doing this? And if so, at what level of government?'"

Although he does not always come up with the right answers, Thompson does seem to ask himself these questions. He brags about casting the lone Senate vote against popular measures that impinged on state or local prerogatives, including bills shielding teachers and Good Samaritans from civil liability and an amendment urging schools to adopt "zero tolerance" policies against violence and drug use.

Thompson also broke ranks with fellow Republicans by opposing federal attempts to limit medical malpractice awards, cap punitive damages in product liability cases, and restrict lawyers' fees, arguing that such issues should be left to the states. In 1998 he was one of 32 senators who voted against an amendment aimed at establishing a national legal standard for drunk driving.

Thompson is no Ron Paul, and he has deviated from his avowed principles on more than a few occasions, including his support for President Bush's expansion of federal involvement in education. The biggest challenge to Thompson's federalism probably has been the temptation to support socially conservative measures that exceed congressional authority.

Thompson backed a federal ban on human cloning and voted repeatedly to prohibit "partial birth" abortion, under the same absurd pretext he rejected in the context of the Gun-Free School Zones Act: The abortion law, which was enacted in 2003, applies to abortions "in or affecting" interstate commerce.

Regarding gay marriage, Thompson has stuck closer to his constitutional principles, opposing a federal ban and saying the matter should be decided by state legislatures. But he recently muddied the waters by advocating a constitutional amendment that would bar state judges from requiring state legislatures to permit same-sex unions.

A more hopeful sign is the Thompson campaign's unequivocal statement that Congress overstepped its bounds in 2005 by intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state whose feeding tube her husband wanted to disconnect, contrary to her parents' wishes. A decent respect for federalism also requires that Thompson oppose the Bush administration's efforts to override state policies regarding the medical use of marijuana, an issue on which he has not taken a stand.

As he chooses between the demands of the Constitution and the demands of social conservatives, Thompson should keep in mind his own warning. Federalism, he wrote last spring, "is something we all give lip service to and then proceed to ignore when it serves our purposes."

Out-of-State Ballot Petitioner Ban Upheld in Oklahoma

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:40:00 EDT

The practice of out-of-state professional petitioning is struck a blow by an Oklahoma court. In a decision last week in the case of Yes on Term Limits v. Savage, U.S. District Court Judge Tim Leonard upheld a challenged Oklahoma state law (in effect since 1969) banning out of state residents from being ballot petition circulators and signature-collectors there.

The plaintiffs (one of whom is occasional Hit and Run commenter Eric Rittberg aka Eric Dondero) argued that the Oklahoma law violated "their First Amendment rights to engage in political association and to speak on matters of public concern," as well as their "rights under the Privileges and Immunities Clause to engage in political speech and to practice their chosen profession in Oklahoma" and the Commerce Clause to boot, because it reserves “the trade of gathering signatures for pay to Oklahoma residents alone.”

Judge Leonard decided that "the residency requirement is sufficiently tailored to meet Oklahoma’s compelling state interests in protecting the integrity of its initiative process and policing the process once it has been completed," largely since it is difficult, he claims, to track down or double-check, and impossible to subpoena, out of state signature collectors.

Leonard grants that the Oklahoma law "would increase the cost of the petition drive," but says "there is no indication that the increased cost would be prohibitive."

Ballot Access News's short report. The full decision.

Is Thompson a Reaganite? Was Reagan?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 17:01:00 EDT

Today's New York Times story about whether Fred Thompson will be accepted as a genuine conservative and a true heir to Ronald Reagan is rather confusing, not least because the Times does not seem to have a clear idea of what it means to be a conservative in 21st-century America. To be fair, neither do I.

Some of the Thompson stances identified as conservative—opposition to the Medicaid drug benefit, support for gun rights and tax cuts, respect for the division of powers between state and federal government, the belief that we "get our basic rights from God, not government"—sound pretty good to me. Others—"unwavering support for the war in Iraq" and a desire to restrict immigration, for instance—make Thompson look less appealing. Likewise one Thompson position the Times identifies as unconservative: his support for the restrictions on political speech known as "campaign finance reform." My personal reactions aside, it's not always clear what makes these positions conservative.

Take the war. The case for invading Iraq relied on a very broad understanding of self-defense that was at odds with traditional conservative skepticism of foreign entanglements, nation building, and attempts to remake the world in our image. Staying there is conservative, I suppose, in the sense that it continues what we're doing. It may also be conservative in the sense that self-described conservatives are more likely to support staying the course than self-described liberals or progressives are, but I suspect those numbers would be reversed if the war had been launched by a Democrat.

Similarly, the Times cites Thompson's desire to restrict immigration as distinctively conservative, ignoring the many self-identified conservatives (including President Bush, John McCain, and The Wall Street Journal's editors) who are more pro-immigration. Conversely, Thompson's opposition to federal caps on punitive damages and lawyers' fees is tagged as unconservative, even though it is consistent with his avowed support for federalism. Speaking of which, the Times notes that Thompson voted against the law that established a de facto national DUI standard by threatening to withhold highway money from states that refused to adopt a BAC cutoff of 0.08 percent. That makes him more of a federalist than Reagan, who went along with similar legislation aimed at establishing a de facto national drinking age of 21.

California Takes Step to Stave Off End Times

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 19:12:00 EDT

From Boing-Boing, the "directory of wonderful things," via the very wonderful Xeni Jardin:

California's senate passed a bill last week that bans the forced RFID tagging of humans (think: prisoners, employees, pedos out on the street who've done their time). The state senator who sponsored the bill described that scenario as the "the ultimate invasion of privacy." The bill is on its way to Governor Schwarzenegger's desk now; if it is signed into law, California would become the third state with such a ban on the books (along with Wisconsin and North Dakota).

Full text of the bill (S. 362).

Free State: Wyoming

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:22:00 EDT

Get five libertarians together in a room, and you'll instantly get 10 factions, as the old movement joke goes. Fission in the "Free State Project " movement gets some press attention, as a gang who never liked the idea of naming cold Yankee New Hampshire as the target Free State make waves in Wyoming.

My Dec. 2004 reason feature on the Free State Project .

Will the Courts Tell the DEA the Difference Between Hemp and Pot?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 12:52:00 EDT

Two North Dakota farmers, one of them a state legislator, filed a federal lawsuit this week asking for a judgment declaring that the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) does not prohibit their cultivation of industrial hemp. In 2005 North Dakota legalized hemp farming, but the necessary state licenses initially required approval from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. This year, after it became clear that the DEA would not give its blessing to hemp cultivation, the state legislature amended the law to waive that requirement. But now would-be hemp farmers are worried that if they proceed with their plans they could face federal prosecution.

The DEA refuses to distinguish between nonpsychoactive hemp, which by definition contains less than 0.3 percent THC, and marijuana, which has a THC concentration at least 10 times as high. Hemp is legally grown in many countries around the world where marijuana is prohibited, and products made from hemp fiber, seed, and oil are legally sold in the United States. But because of the DEA's intransigence, the raw material for these products cannot be grown in this country without fear of arrest.

In their lawsuit, state Rep. David Monson (R-Osnabrook) and Wayne Hauge, who has a farm in Ray, North Dakota, argue that the DEA is misreading the CSA, which specifically excludes the stalks, oil, and sterilized seeds of cannabis plants from the definition of marijuana. This definition, carried over the the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, reflects Congress' intent to allow the continued cultivation of hemp. Monson and Hauge argue that it's unreasonable to claim that Congress meant to ban industrial hemp:

The CSA does not prohibit the Plaintiffs' planned cultivation of industrial hemp on their farms in North Dakota because Congress's own findings in the CSA, read together with the legislative history of the Act, suggest that Congress did not intend to preclude a state regulated regime in which only the non-regulated parts of the plant would enter commerce at all and there is absolutely no risk of diversion of drug marijuana by reason of the cultivation of the hemp plants themselves, which are useless as drug marijuana and the mere cultivation of which cannot in any way affect commerce, whether intrastate or interstate, in drug marijuana.
The CSA does not prohibit the Plaintiffs' planned cultivation of industrial hemp on their farms in North Dakota because Congress could not, in the absence of any risk of diversion, logically have intended to allow someone in Canada to grow Cannabis and export the non-regulated parts of the plant into North Dakota but not allow someone in North Dakota to grow a form of Cannabis useless as drug marijuana and sell or distribute the same non-regulated parts of the plant in the same state, North Dakota. And since Congress would not have logically intended to prohibit such sale or distribution, it could not logically have intended to prohibit intrastate commerce in viable hemp planting seed useless for the cultivation of drug marijuana and useful only for cultivation of industrial hemp for processing the non-regulated parts of the plant for commercial use.

The DEA's interpretation of the CSA vis-à-vis hemp already has been rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which blocked the agency's attempt to ban edible hemp products. In this case, however, there is the added complication that the hemp plants raised by U.S. farmers would include leaves and flowers, albeit with so little THC that they're worthless for getting high. Monson and Hauge emphasize that the leaves and flowers would stay on the farm. There is also the issue of the nonsterilized seeds that would be necessary to grow hemp, which they address by saying that the seeds cannot be used to grow psychoactive cannabis and would in any case stay in North Dakota, where their use would be regulated by the state.

But here is my favorite part of the suit: Even if Congress did mean to ban the sort of hemp farming authorized by North Dakota law, Monson and Hauge suggest, it does not have the constitutional authority to do so:

The CSA cannot be interpreted to prohibit the Plaintiffs' planned cultivation of industrial hemp on their farms in North Dakota because regulation of such cultivation, in the absence of any affect on commerce of any kind in the commodities which Congress has chosen to regulate under the CSA, would exceed congressional power under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Although Congress could regulate interstate commerce, and thus intrastate cultivation and production, of industrial hemp fiber and seed products, Congress has chosen not to do so. By applying the CSA to the Plaintiffs' proposed cultivation of industrial hemp, DEA would be extending its authority under the CSA into areas of interstate commerce Congress has expressly chosen not to regulate under the CSA. In-state industrial hemp plants themselves are in no way fungible with drug marijuana, whether moving in intrastate or interstate commerce, as no part of the industrial hemp plant has utility as a drug. The regulated parts of industrial hemp plants could not possibly be diverted into and "swell" or increase the supply of drug marijuana. Therefore, there is no potential for any effect on interstate commerce in drug marijuana. Intrastate cultivation of industrial hemp thus has no connection or effect whatsoever on the interstate commerce in drug marijuana that Congress has determined to regulate.

For those of us who were wondering, in the wake of the Supreme Court's determination that a pot plant on a California patient's windowsill is "interstate commerce," whether anything could be considered beyond congressional authority under the Commerce Clause, this sounds like a plausible prospect. Since industrial hemp is not a drug, it is even further removed from the interstate cannabis market than medical marijuana is. But note that Monson and Hauge's argument seems to hinge on the fact that Congress has not chosen to regulate the hemp market. If it did decide to do so, presumably it could control (or forbid) production in North Dakota, just as it does with other agricultural commodities.

[via NORML]

New FDA Bill: Blow to Medical Marijuana?

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 14 May 2007 10:04:00 EDT

From the Politico, via Americans for Safe Access. Right before the vote on the new drug safety bill that passed the Senate last week (extending FDA authority over the lifecycle of a drug, not just prior to approval):

An amendment by Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) was adopted that required marijuana to undergo the same Food and Drug Administration approval process that other prescription drugs do.
Until this process is accomplished -- and it typically takes about five years -- those in the medical marijuana business apprehended by federal authorities could face penalties for violating FDA regulations as well as selling an illegal substance, even where state laws sanction the use. [Medical pot] activists say the conservative senator clearly intended to shut down medical marijuana cooperatives.....
Steph Sherer, founder and executive director of Americans for Safe Access, which advocates for medical marijuana only, said her group learned of Coburn's amendment the night before the markup.
Her staff called members of the panel to try to dissuade them from approving the amendment, and she said everyone they talked to voted against it. She's hopeful that Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who voted with Republicans for the amendment, will change their minds.
Karen Woodson, ASA's director of government affairs, said Coburn's amendment is about prohibition, not regulation. The tests necessary to secure FDA approval would be impossible to conduct, she explained, because the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Institute for Drug Abuse don't give researchers permission to grow marijuana.

Questions for Fred Thompson

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:55:00 EDT

Over at Red State, possible presidential aspirant Fred Thompson recently posted an intriguing, dare I say "promising," response to a criticism from Ramesh Ponnuru. Ponnuru had attacked Thompson for his votes on a couple of tort reform bills that would have used federal law to preempt state law to punish trial lawyers.

Thompson's post shows a refreshing respect for and understanding of the principles of federalism, one that's been sorely lacking on the right of late:

Republicans have struggled in recent years, because they have strayed from basic principles. Federalism is one of those principles. It is something we all give lip service to and then proceed to ignore when it serves our purposes. During my eight years in the Senate, I tried to adhere to this principle. For me it was a lodestar. Not only was it what our founding fathers created – a federal government with limited, enumerated powers with respect for other levels of government, it also provided a basis for a proper analysis of most issues: “Is this something government should be doing? If so, at what level of government?”
As I understood it, states were supposed to be laboratories that would compete with each other, conducting civic experiments according to the wishes of their citizens. The model for federal welfare reform was the result of that process. States also allow for of diverse viewpoints that exist across the country. There is no reason that Tennesseans and New Yorkers should have to agree on everything (and they don’t).
Those who are in charge of applying the conservative litmus test should wonder why some of their brethren continue to try to federalize more things – especially at a time of embarrassing federal mismanagement and a growing federal bureaucracy.
[...]
Adhering to the principles of Federalism is not easy. As one who was on the short end of a couple of 99-1 votes, I can personally attest to it. Federalism sometimes restrains you from doing things you want to do. You have to leave the job to someone else – who may even choose not to do it at all. However, if conservatives abandon this valued principle that limits the federal government, or if we selectively use it as a tool with which to reward our friends and strike our enemies, then we will be doing a disservice to our country as well as the cause of conservatism.

Here's my question for Fred Thompson: Does this eloquent defense of federalism apply to the drug war, too? Would a President Thompson support ending federal enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act in states that have legalized medical marijuana? What about cities or states that want to decriminalize the drug in general?

Seems to me that if we're going to separate the principled federalists from the fair-weather federalists, this is the issue that would do it.

I'm not being flip, here. It's hard to read Thompson's thorough defense of federalism and see how he could convincingly still carve out an exception for the drug war.

If Thompson wants to respond, I'd be happy to post his reply.

The Green Mountain Boys Ride Again

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 13:55:00 EDT

The Vermont Senate has voted 16-9 to urge the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. (The AP reports that it's a "nonbinding resolution" -- well, yes, what else could it be?)

Next step: secession!

Back to 18?

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:22:00 EDT

It's been 20 years that America has had a minimum federal drinking age. The policy began to gain momentum in the early 1980s, when the increasingly influential Mothers Against Drunk Driving added the federal minimum drinking age to its legislative agenda. By 1984, it had won over a majority of the Congress.

President Reagan initially opposed the law on federalism grounds but eventually was persuaded by his transportation secretary at the time, now-Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

Over the next three years every state had to choose between adopting the standard or forgoing federal highway funding; most complied. A few held out until the deadline, including Vermont, which fought the law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court (and lost).

Twenty years later, the drawbacks of the legislation are the same as they were when it was passed.

The first is that the age set by the legislation is basically arbitrary. The U.S. has the highest drinking age in the world (a title it shares with Indonesia, Mongolia, Palau). The vast majority of the rest of the world sets the minimum age at 17 or 16 or has no minimum age at all.

Supporters of the federal minimum argue that the human brain continues developing until at least the age of 21.

Alcohol expert Dr. David Hanson of the State University of New York at Potsdam argues such
assertions reek of junk science. They're extrapolated from a study on lab mice, he explains, as well as from a small sample of actual humans already dependent on alcohol or drugs. Neither is enough to make broad proclamations about the entire population.

If the research on brain development is true, the U.S. seems to be the only country to have caught on to it.

Oddly enough, high school students in much of the rest of the developed world — where lower drinking ages and laxer enforcement reign — do considerably better than U.S. students on standardized tests.

The second drawback of the federal drinking age is that it set the stage for tying federal mandates to highway funds, enabling Congress to meddle in all sorts of state and local affairs it has no business attempting to regulate — so long as it can make a tortured argument about highway safety.

Efforts to set national speed limits, seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws and set a national blood-alcohol standard for DWI cases have rested on the premise that the federal government can blackmail the states with threats to cut off funding.

The final drawback is pretty straightforward: It makes little sense that America considers an 18-year-old mature enough to marry, to sign a contract, to vote and to fight and die for his country, but not mature enough to decide whether or not to have a beer.

So for all of those drawbacks, has the law worked? Supporters seem to think so. Their primary argument is the dramatic drop in the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities since the minimum age first passed Congress in 1984. They also cite relative drops in the percentage of underage drinkers before and after the law went into effect.

But a new chorus is emerging to challenge the conventional wisdom. The most vocal of these critics is John McCardell Jr., the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont. McCardell's experience in higher education revealed to him that the federal age simply wasn't working.

It may have negligibly reduced total underage consumption, but those who did consume were much more likely to do so behind closed doors and to drink to excess in the short time they had access to alcohol. McCardell recently started the organization Choose Responsibility, which advocates moving the drinking age back to 18.

McCardell explains that the drop in highway fatalities often cited by supporters of the 21 minimum age actually began in the late 1970s, well before the federal drinking age set in.

What's more, McCardell recently explained in an online chat for the "Chronicle of Higher Education," the drop is better explained by safer and better built cars, increased seat belt use and increasing awareness of the dangers of drunken driving than in a federal standard.

The age at highest risk for an alcohol-related auto fatality is 21, followed by 22 and 23, an indication that delaying first exposure to alcohol until young adults are away from home may not be the best way to introduce them to drink.

McCardell isn't alone. Kenyon College President S. Georgia Nugent has expressed frustration with the law, particularly in 2005 after the alcohol-related death of a Kenyon student. And former Time magazine editor and higher ed reporter Barrett Seaman echoed McCardell's concerns in 2005.

The period since the 21 minimum drinking age took effect has been "marked by a shift from beer to hard liquor," Seaman wrote in Time, "consumed not in large social settings, since that was now illegal, but furtively and dangerously in students' residences. In my reporting at colleges around the country, I did not meet any presidents or deans who felt the 21-year age minimum helps their efforts to curb the abuse of alcohol on their campuses."

The federal drinking age has become somewhat sacrosanct among public health activists, who've consistently relied on the accident data to quell debate over the law's merits.

They've moved on to other battles, such as scolding parents for giving their own kids a taste of alcohol before the age of 21 or attacking the alcohol industry for advertising during sporting events or in magazines aimed at adults that are sometimes read by people under the age of 21.

But after 20 years, perhaps it's time to take a second look—a sound, sober (pardon the pun), science-based look—at the law's costs and benefits, as well as the sound philosophical objections to it.

McCardell provides a welcome voice in a debate too often dominated by hysterics. But beyond McCardell, Congress should really consider abandoning the federal minimum altogether, or at least the federal funding blackmail that gives it teeth.

State and local governments are far better at passing laws that reflect the values, morals and habits of their communities.

Radley Balko is a senior editor for reason. This article originally appeared at FoxNews.com.

Discuss this article online.

California's a Brand New Game

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 20:45:00 EST

Gar Alperovitz sees an upside to Gov. Arnold's increasingly statist economic agenda: a possible federalist revival.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have grasped the essential truth that no nation -- not even the United States -- can be managed successfully from the center once it reaches a certain scale. Moreover, the bold proposals that Mr. Schwarzenegger is now making for everything from universal health care to global warming point to the kind of decentralization of power which, once started, could easily shake up America's fundamental political structure.

Governor Schwarzenegger is quite clear that California is not simply another state. "We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta," he recently declared. "We have the economic strength, we have the population and the technological force of a nation-state." In his inaugural address, Mr. Schwarzenegger proclaimed, "We are a good and global commonwealth."...

Regional devolution would most likely be initiated by a very large state with a distinct sense of itself and aspirations greater than Washington can handle. The obvious candidate is California, a state that has the eighth-largest economy in the world.

If such a state decided to get serious about determining its own fate, other states would have little choice but to act, too. One response might be for an area like New England, which already has many regional interstate arrangements, to follow California's initiative -- as it already has on some environmental measures. And if one or two large regions began to take action, other state groupings in the Northwest, Southwest and elsewhere would be likely to follow....

In the Medical Pot Trenches

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:29:00 EST

An interesting addendum to Jacob's report below on the latest good-news science on the medical benefits of pot is Vanessa Grigoriadis's detailed and fascinating report from the new Rolling Stone (Feb 22 issue) on the high-security, high-stress, quasi-legal business end of Los Angeles's medical pot machinery, in the days leading up to and culminating in last month's batch of federal raids on LA pot providers. Some excerpts:

The security's not for the cops -- it's the robbers that Daniel's [the LA medical pot mogul Grigoriadis's story focuses on] worried about. He's been robbed more than once, but he notes with a touch of pride that he's never had a "takeover robbery." That's when thieves dress up as LAPD and pretend they're raiding the store, then hogtie the clientele and steal everything in sight (in the biz, they're called "Ocean 420s"). When a friend of Daniel's had a takeover robbery, the friend called the cops, and the cops arrested him.
...........
[Daniel tells Grigoriadis]: "Still, cash flow is very difficult. There is no way for me to properly franchise this, to the point where I'm taking a percentage in profits, kicking back and making money." He cannot keep detailed records, he says, because of the possibility of a DEA raid, and he couldn't entrust an assistant to keep records, because of the possibility that he might turn out to be an informant.
The narcs -- they're such a nuisance. Last year, they raided one of his shops, and he lost more than $100,000 in the process. In addition to draining Daniel's bank accounts, the feds did a "snatch-and-grab" at the store -- pot, computers, cash, anything not bolted to the ground -- and even went to the house of one of his employees......Daniel could maybe even get his money back, but he'd have to pay an asset-forfeiture lawyer a third of his winnings plus show the feds all sorts of records, and that's the last thing he wants to do.
.........
"This is our life out here -- feds keep their nose out!" [Daniel] says. "Washington will never understand California, so they write us off as liberal, gay, Jewish subversives undermining the value of America. They don't like us, and I don't like them. This movement is one more way of saying to D.C., 'Step back.' We will not stand for states' rights eroded." He is also in favor of pot as an alternative health-care system: "We have the right to do our own thing, to not support Pfizer, Eli Lilly and the health-care system just because they have more powerful lobbyists in Congress than we do," he says.

Whole story here. It's overall a fascinating tale of a harried small businessman, worried about feckless employees, suppliers who don't want to deal with you if you won't buy every single thing they have to sell since they don't want to be caught on the way home with your money and their illegal substance, and trying to build something like legitimacy and business security in a world where you are an outlaw by definition and the Feds are always ready to slam you, state's rights be damned.

Dirigo

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:04:00 EST

Good for Maine:

The Maine Legislature declared that it would refuse a congressional order to change its drivers' licenses so they can serve as national identification cards.

Supporters of Thursday's nonbinding resolution -- called the first of its kind in the nation -- say the federal program would invite identity theft and cost Maine taxpayers $185 million over the first five years.

The Ten Millionth Nail in the Coffin of Federalism

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 10:39:00 EST

In my hometown of Los Angeles, 11 different marijuana dispensaries--legal under state and local law, as if the feds care--were raided yesterday by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. Details and links from LAist.

The Federal Taint

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 12:34:00 EST

One silver lining to last week's Althouse affair: It prompted Ilya Somin to write a sensible assessment of the relationship between racism and federalism.