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Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

This was a great decision. Such a monumental shift in drug policy should be enshrined in federal legislation, and not dictated by the courts.

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The complaint is that that Colorado is acting in violation of federal law. If you feel that changes in drug policy should be pursued through federal legislation, then you should be in favor of the Supreme Court upholding existing federal law. Having said that, I agree with Colorado's assesment that the currect target of prosecution is the federal government for failing to enforce its laws (unless there is a specific provision compelling states to act in a certain way).

> If you feel that changes in drug policy should be pursued through federal legislation, then you should be in favor of the Supreme Court upholding existing federal law.

Personal possession of weed is already completely legal under federal law via the equal protection clause. Once they passed the law saying that it's legal in DC, that means that it's now legal everywhere, even if they haven't yet taken the time to strike the old language from the books.

The only time federal charges are still pursued is if there is a firearm involved.

Have a source for that? That one's novel to me.

Sorry for the lack of a more credible source, but for what it's worth:

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/02/congress_oks_medical_ma...

Can this be used as the basis for motions to dismiss in any state court outside of DC?

In theory, yes. In practice so few people are getting charged with personal possession under federal laws that a challenge is unlikely to happen before marijuana gets rescheduled.

Thank you for the reply!

This is the view of one private attorney, and one that has not been tested in any court and is definitely a minority view. I would be highly skeptical of his opinion (and I am surprised this attorney was willing to attach his name to it publicly).

The author's argument is that medical marijuana related activities are no longer subject to federal law. This sounds a little dubious on its face, but maybe it is a compelling argument.

This doesn't argue that possession is legal everywhere. It specifically talks about Nebraska, one of the states in the lawsuit: ""In states where voters have not voted on it, for instance Nebraska, of course it's not going to be legal there," Pappas told us. "But patients and medical marijuana centers operating in full compliance with state laws -- through equal protection -- are not going to be subject to federal prohibition.""

This is essentially the current status quo. The author's argument would only apply in the case where a future president acted to enforce federal statues in states where medical marijuna is legal. Then this arguement could be tested in court.

This is the moral equivalent of people telling others they don't need to pay income tax because the fringes of the flag in courtrooms have yellow tassels.

There are zero precedents under the equal protection clause that do anything like what the link suggested. On top of that the equal protection clause by its terms doesn't even apply to the federal government, since it is situated in the fourteenth amendment. It has been reverse incorporated via the fifth amendment due process clause, but again never in any case remotely like what is being suggested. You can't just look at the words "equal protection" and start extrapolating wildly. That's not how these things work.

There are several memorandum from office of the Attorney General that state Justice Department policy as to where efforts should be focused (e.g. https://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/305201382913275685...) and even before that the federal government tended not to exert a lot of effort on small time marijuana users. But it is emphatically not the case that "personal possession ... is completely legal under federal law".

Please do not spread this type of misinformation, it can be have enormous consequences.

Fair enough. In practice though even if the theory doesn't hold up, you'd need to work pretty hard to get charged with possession by the feds. Even if you punched a federal judge while holding a bag of weed, they'd probably still toss the possession charge just to keep jury nullification types from trying to get seated.

>Personal possession of weed is already completely legal under federal law via the equal protection clause. Once they passed the law saying that it's legal in DC, that means that it's now legal everywhere, even if they haven't yet taken the time to strike the old language from the books.

Pot isn't legal in DC. It's still against federal law everywhere in the US.

Not that Congress actually has the power, under the constitution, to make possession illegal. But that boat sailed long ago.

Also FTA:

The Obama Justice Department urged the Supreme Court not to take the case. "Entertaining the type of dispute at issue here — essentially that one state's laws make it more likely that third parties will violate federal and state law in another state - would represent a substantial and unwarranted expansion of" of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction.

I think that the Supreme Court is just tired of sorting out the Congress' (and state governments) mess caused by action or inaction.

My uneducated guess is that we will see a lot narrower decisions from the SCOTUS and probably some form of lesser engagement in the next couple of years.

It's literally not their job, if the Supreme Court got involved now... they'd have to tell the states they are not allowed to legalize pot, right?

That is exactly what they did in Gonzales v Raich - reasserted the legality and primacy of federal drug laws.

Wrongly, IMO, but that's the ruling.

It wasn't a decision, per se. The court has simply refused to hear the case, which is what it does with most cases. They can always decide to hear a similar case later, or even change their minds about this one.

I wish they would have heard the case and explicitly found for Colorado. Under the plaintiff's logic, states would have a veto on anything their neighbors decided to do.

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