Trump says he is likely to support ending blanket federal ban on marijuana | Hacker News Reader

Trump says he is likely to support ending blanket federal ban on marijuana

latimes.com

24 pointsadventured28 comments

Marijuana prohibition was never constitutional in the first place. In Gonzalez vs Raich SCOTUS narrowly ruled the commerce clause ('the fed's constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce') gave the feds jurisdiction over personal consumption of plants. As Thomas noted: this case had nothing to do with the commerce clause and gave the fed unlimited power.

Every single civil liberty from gay rights to privacy to prohibition of plants and drinks has to somehow go through a political movement rather than just be acknowledged as already constitutionally granted: the federal government was just never intended to have that power.

Just to be clear, he said he is willing to sign a bipartisan bill to that effect. Congress is doing the work and he's just not overruling them.

Is there a consistant opinion from Democrats on this at a federal level? This is one of the interesting topics that wasn't largely discussed much in the past presidential elections.

I don't think a lot of blue state democrats could get away with a hard stance against marijuana, maybe more so in red states though.

What he would perhaps support was a bill to ensure that each state has the right to determine for itself the best approach to marijuana within its borders [1]. To me, this sounds different from ending the ban on a federal level, which is what the title would suggest.

[1] https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/STATES%20Act%20O... (PDF)

It should be left up to the states, as O'Connor noted in Gonzalez vs Raich and as Thomas noted in the same case: the Federal Government arguably does not even have the constitutional right to do this. In other words, there is a distinct federal ban on marijuana and ending it should have been done a long time ago.

The federal gov’t has no rights. The citizens of the United States have delegated powers and authority to the government. When government officials say the law gives them a right or that the constitution gives them a right, they are simply indulging in tyranny.

> To me, this sounds different from ending the ban on a federal level, which is what the title would suggest.

This is exactly ending the ban on a federal level. It is not affirmatively creating a federal right to marijuana which would prohibit state regulation, but then we don't do that with most things that are legal.

This is pretty exactly what the state was with the end of prohibition of alcohol, for instance.

That does makes sense, thanks.

GDPR block.

edit: other link http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/national/trump-says-he-is...

Which country? I was able to access from Sweden.

It's blocked in Germany.

Under what grounds? Sure, GDPR and all, but what specifically triggered this?

Laziness. Some sites are just blocking all European visitors on the mistaken assumption that that complies with GDPR. They're not willing to undertake any further dev work.

I don't think it's useful to use laziness to describe this, as it's needlessly perjorative. It may be that they've decided that the ROI is not there for complying with GDPR, or that the risk of an inadvertant fail is too high and expensive. Laziness may be the case, but it's unwise to assume.

If the site is the only business they have in Europe, it ought to be GDPR compliant. They’re essentially just pulling out of Europe rather than changing their product. It’s not like GDPR says every website on the internet is forced to serve the European market.

You say laziness, I say censorship. Which one of us is right?

From: http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/latimes.com/ ( hmmm, that is where I get redirected to ).

"Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism."

I bet a lot of money he’s only saying this to annoy Jeff Sessions. We already know that Sessions wants to be hard on marijuana, and Trump is very clearly mad at him.

Either way, does this matter? It should be clear by now the value of one of Trump’s statements. We have more than enough history to know that they’re often not a reliable indicator of anything.

Hell legalize it. Give them zero dollars to work with. Balloon the DEAs budget to new heights. Slow down research initiatives.

Am I the only one who's noticed a huge come back of herion since he's been elected?

Not sure where you’re located but where I’m from there’s been a growing heroin problem since the last recession. Crackdowns on prescription opioids (under Obama I believe) seem to have pushed even more people to heroin. No noticeable change in the last couple years honestly.

In the article it’s mentioned that Trump has already maintained Obama’s policy on this issue by ordering the DoJ not to prosecute anyone in states where it is legal. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that he would support this measure as well.

That may be. He’s very consistent on some things (the wall, Muslim ban) and changes his mind wildly on others.

Given a single quote that I don’t know the history of, I just have to assume it’s not trustworthy.

I didn’t know he had a history of saying this. If he did you’re probably right.

I think Jeff Sessions is a great political tool here. Have him start strictly enforcing the law, shutting down dispensaries all over the place. Then say you're just enforcing the law as your swore to, forcing the legislature to act.

I'll believe it when he puts a bill to Congress, and actively works towards getting it passed. Till then, it's just another thing Trump says he's going to do.

He's saying he will likely support a bipartisan effort already in Congress, so sending a new bill to Congress would be inconsistent with what he claims, and a poor basis for believing it.

Fair enough. When he actively supports that bipartisan effort, then I'll believe him!

With Trump, actions speak louder than words.

I made an identical submission yesterday, which was flagged.

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