Do a lot of people in CO smoke pot? Should MJ be legal? (Denver: vs, airport)

[onceahogalwaysahog]

Originally Posted by Josseppie

Colorado legalized pot!!!

Rockey Mountain HIGH

[StaggerLee22]

Worst move E V E R !
What in the world are you guys thinking over there?
Sad.

[DurangoJoe]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

That's crap--a bunch of revisionist history. In case you hadn't noticed, during Prohibition, the Federal government asserted itself in a huge way to enforce the Prohibition laws, which is exactly what they should have done. Prohibition was repealed when a sufficient majority was voted into office in the US Senate and House to secure repeal and a sympathetic President was elected to sign the legislation that sent the repeal Amendment to the states for ratification. That's how our representative democracy works.

As for Arizona, the Governor and Legislature there enacted legislation because the Federal government IS NOT enforcing Federal laws that the Executive Branch of the Federal government (led by the President) is bound by their oaths of office to enforce. In that case, the state was trying to compel that Feds to enforce duly enacted Federal law. In truth, the President should have been impeached for his Administration's failure to enforce the existing US immigration laws.

The marijuana issue is just the opposite of both cases that you have cited. Colorado's marijuana initiative is not meant to compel the Feds to enforce existing law--it openly violates that law. It is the people who favor marijuana legalization who don't have the "huevos" to get the job done. Whatever the polls may say, they have not convinced a majority in the US Senate and US House to enact legislation to send to the President for signature to decriminalize marijuana. Until they do that, they are nothing but a bunch of lawbreaking whiners for whom I have no respect. When they moan that those bad ol' legislators won't listen to them, that is the failure of the marijuana-legalization crowd to make a cogent argument for legalization, not the fault of the legislators.

I am vehemently opposed to Amendment 64 because it is nothing but a flagrant violation of federal law that can be squashed like an insect by the Federal government at any moment--creating a huge and expensive financial morass for the State of Colorado (meaning Colorado taxpayers) to pay for. It is a completely stupid and ineffective way to effect public policy.

Sorry Jazz..... that's crap & you lose. Get over it. The people have spoken. If all supreme laws were to be obeyed to a "T", we wouldn't even exist as a country. There would have been no American Revolution. The American people as a whole support legalized marijuana and the politicians are way behind them. As Americans we have a right & a duty to challenge unjust laws. That's part of being American. And non-listening legislators are the exact reason this process took place the way it did. When the legislators won't listen, you take a different route. To insist that the pro legalization efforts couldn't make a cogent argument belies your lack of understanding of this entire issue. Legislators at both the state & federal level have no cojones when it comes to marijuana. It's been one of the true "third rails" of politics so the people were forced to take matters into their own hands. Hope all of the politicians learned a lesson from this and actually listen when their constituents express their opinions.

And guess what, the fed can't squash any of the approved legalization initiatives because they lack the resources and the political will. Did you not wonder why the administration was so silent on these initiatives. Attempts to squash any of this will cause a tremendous amount of blowback & bad press.

This genie is out of the bottle and can never be put back in.

[jazzlover]

Go toke up and continue to delude yourself, soButt. First thing that is going to happen is someone is going to go to Federal Court to obtain an injunction to prohibit the initiative from being actually put into force. They will argue that the initiative violates the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution. Just as was the case with the folks that legally challenged Colorado's Amendment 2 of a few years ago that essentially violated the Federal anti-discrimination laws, they will likely win and the marijuana legalization initiative will be declared unconstitutional.

If by some slim (and very stupid) chance that the marijuana initiative actually gets enacted, all it will take to get things really interesting is for some stoner high on "legal" marijuana to kill someone on the public highways. All hell will break loose because the victim's family will sue the living hell out of not only the stoner (who probably doesn't have any money, anyway), but the state for allowing the stoner to legally buy an intoxicating drug for recreational use that remains illegal at the federal level. I'm sure the Colorado Attorney General is pondering that eventuality right now, and it probably has a lot to do with why Gov. Hickenlooper opposed the Amendment.

Whatever else you may be, soBut, you are completely ignorant about the law. I'm not even an attorney (but I know plenty about law) and I could tear you apart in a Courtroom.

Oh, and as a gay, Josseppie should not be celebrating this, either. If the marijuana initiative is allowed to stand a Supremacy Cause challenge, there would be nothing to stop a new "anti-gay" Amendment 2 to be voted in by the Colorado voters and possibly survive a court challenge invoking the Supremacy Clause. A good attorney would point to the marijuana law and say, "Well, you allowed the marijuana law that violated the Supremacy Clause to stand, so why not this one?" Ugly case law has a nasty way of showing up in unexpected places.

[Dunbar42]

The supremecy clause challenge is nonsense. Recreational use of marijuana is legal in your state, get over it.

"The Constitution does not allow the federal government either to order state governments to create any particular criminal law or to require state and local police to enforce federal criminal laws...Even under national alcohol prohibition, which unlike the federal ban on marijuana was authorized by a constitutional amendment, states were free to go their own way. They could decline to pass their own versions of the Volstead Act (as Maryland did), repeal them (as a dozen states, including Colorado and Washington, did while the 18th Amendment was still in force), or simply refrain from prosecuting people under them (which was common in the wetter districts of the country). The question is not whether a state could change its own laws," Caulkins et al. write. "Rather, the question is how the conflict with the continued federal prohibition would play out."

Colorado and Washington Have Legalized Marijuana. What Now? - Hit & Run : Reason.com

[CosmicWizard]

Mike from back east wrote: We'll know in 30 hours.

Now we know!

[snofarmer]

jazz insert gun instead of car.
Guns kill and they kill in the hands of drunks and stoners .
Yet we can still buy them and get drunk.

Yes, I agree there should be stiff penlites for driving stoned kind of like driving drunk? The drunk has no money or insurance to pay for the damages.
But Booze is still legal.

See the similarity and the flaw to your argument?

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by snofarmer

jazz insert gun instead of car.
Guns kill and they kill in the hands of drunks and stoners .
Yet we can still buy them and get drunk.

Yes, I agree there should be stiff penlites for driving stoned kind of like driving drunk? The drunk has no money or insurance to pay for the damages.
But Booze is still legal.

See the similarity and the flaw to your argument?

Wrong again, snofarmer. Not comparable. Guns are legal at the federal level and so is alcohol. Marijuana is not.

As to Dunbar's gobbledegook, here is the actual Supremacy Clause (my emphasis added in bold):

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

There is nothing ambiguous about it. If a state law or constitutional provision violates federal law, judges "shall" (which, in legal terms means "must" or "will," not "may") be bound to follow federal law. End of argument.

[snofarmer]

The states were allowed to set their own speed limits to,
Until the Govt set a national speed-limit of 55mph.
How did they get compliance?
They threatened to withhold funds.

We will find out shortly what the fed intends to do about it.

In the mean time it's a start.

[snofarmer]

I'm right in comparing them to the dangers you posted.
driving drunk is illegal so is unjustified killing with a gun. But it still happens.

The law does not change that.

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Wrong again, snofarmer. Not comparable. Guns are legal at the federal level and so is alcohol. Marijuana is not.