I wonder how many state has to legalize it before the federal government in USA is forced to change their classification. It seems like more and more state will legalize it over time anyways.
It's already arguably legal under federal law under the equal protection clause because congress legalized it in DC. As far as I know the feds aren't locking anyone up for possession of small amounts.
E.g.: https://novacriminalattorney.com/marijuana/marijuana-legaliz...
The author is right that strictly speaking the equal protection clause only applies to state laws, but the supreme court has also retroactively applied it to federal laws as well:
"Just take the plea, I can get them down to 2 years. Otherwise youre facing 9 to 20 years."
It is worse than anarchy. It is arbitrary democracy.
Take a look around-- how many of your friends have jumped multiple social classes in the past decade?
Honestly, follow any "we're all screwed our government sucks" logic train to its conclusion and you hit one of two conclusions: A) oh shit, it's actually my fault along with everyone else's that we're in this mess, B) conspiracy theory.
We do actually live in a representative democracy with checks and balances, and we do actually have the power to fix it if we choose to. We have a much better chance of changing things without resorting to violence than a pretty sizeable part of the planet.
So when you start to wonder, "hmm, I wonder why housing is so expensive relative to my income", or, "hmm, I wonder why that policeman gave me a $400 ticket for 'speeding'", or, "hmm, I wonder why those federal agents are killing children in Waco", or, "hmm, I wonder why no bankers went to jail for fraudulent mortgage practices in 2008"...
... I mean, if you ask yourself these questions, and you tell me that these things are happening because we elected people to do these things, then I don't precisely know where you got that notion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Division_v._Smith#F...
That decision goes back to federal govt controls over wheat prices. Some guy said “i’ll grow what I want, I don’t care about the price controls” and the courts agreed with the twisted logic that it impact interstate commerce, thus they have the power to control it.
You can argue that it's not a reasonable interpretation - I would agree with that. But it is a long-standing one, and there are a lot of things that the feds do today that hinge pretty much solely on it - and that includes pet issues for both the left and the right. Just to give one example, aside from enabling the feds to ban weed, Wickard also enables the feds to enforce the Civil Rights Acts. So it is very unlikely for that interpretation to go away - there's too much staked on it politically.
As for what interpretation, the one held by Robert Jackson and 4 other justices in the Wickard v Filburn case [1]. The justices' interpretations are the only one with legal weight after all.
Gay sex and gay marriage cases were great and justified expansions on the 5th amendment (substantiative due process of the law).
It's the first time in modern US history that a sitting President has come anywhere close to declaring support for or proclaiming he'd be ok with the Federal Government legalizing recreational marijuana consumption.
The reason for that, is because Trump is an aggressive populist that doesn't particularly care about entrenched, ancient political live wires. He'll feel entirely free to respond to the Trump voting base as its opinion gradually changes in favor of legalization (as it largely has).
"The primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing."
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
Now, these quotes are from the pre-WW2 period, when this insanity first began. But they lingered for a lot longer than that, even if the language changed. This is from the Nixon era:
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
In other words, it was always a weapon in the "culture war". And that is kinda at another peak right now, so I'm not too optimistic about this happening in US until it's over.
Is being technically true better than a contextual joke?
Here in Ohio, for example, we didn't have a vote on recreational, instead we had a vote on a government sanctioned monopoly possibly leading the way to recreational.
If there was some sort of state issue that could be voted on which was "regulate it like we do garden tomatoes", it would pass.
Leadership has prevented this, not your cartoon idea of the oh so ignorant voter base.
Too often we blame the salt of the earth people for things the media has done. Rule by multi millionaire propagandists.
Meaning that if you were right about the voting base, it would be easy to legalize recreational marijuana without worrying what the leadership thought.
> In the indirect form, initiative sponsors collect signatures and once the signatures are collected, the measure is taken up by the state legislature in their state. The legislature has these options:
> Enact the measure as written in the petition.
> Refuse to act on the measure, in which case it goes on the ballot.
https://ballotpedia.org/Initiated_state_statute
The leadership is not capable of preventing legalization if the salt of the earth is in favor of it.
The issue is getting the signatures in the first place, which requires canvassing, which requires paying someone to organize all of that. The last example of a successful canvassing that we had was a grab at a monopoly over growing ops, which was funded partly by a former member of the boy band NSYNC.
The other hurdle is approval by the legislature. In Ohio it's not as simple as "get signatures, get on the ballot".
I'm open to more specialized information, but the description on ballotpedia strongly implies that it is that simple. Specifically, it says that the steps are:
1. Get signatures.
2. The legislature must consider the initiative, either approving or rejecting it.
3a. If the legislature approves the initiative, it becomes law without having to go on the ballot.
3b. If the legislature rejects the initiative, it goes on the ballot.
Thus, once you have signatures, the worst case is that you go straight onto the ballot, and the best case is that you become law without needing to. Theoretically, it could be possible for the legislature to sit on the initiative without ever approving or rejecting it. All I'm working off here is a cursory description of the law of several states including Ohio. Do you have relevant knowledge of Ohio law?
And then suddenly when the death threats and FBI audits and etc start showing up in your life, and you lose the campaign anyway, you'll say to yourself, "shit, this isn't a democracy we're living in, this is just a mafia state."
One single corporation was going to control the whole cabal?
You are misrepresenting facts.