DarkFury
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- #21
NOT if they re-list or remove it from the FDA list.Those 'precedents' are incorrect though. In order to actually address this there needs to be a law passed the proper way through congress.I am willing to bet that there is a federal 'solution' to this before it even gets through the courts. It is high time that they punted this back to the states where it belongs anyway.The problem is, an Article V convention doesn't negate the requirement for ratification. Whatever you come up with has to garner an enormous amount of public support or it fails.
With pot, it's like JoMama said, it doesn't need a constitutional amendment, it simply needs to be enacted into law by congress. It could probably be effectively decriminalized through DEA by executive order.
I've felt like for a while, this is the best way to go about it, kill the federal drug classification and decriminalize it. With all the states now having pot statutes on the books and up and running, I expect to see a case come before SCOTUS soon. You simply cannot prosecute me for a felony in Alabama when my action is perfectly legal in Colorado. This is what "equal protection under the law" is all about. Sooner or later, someone will bring the case and the SCOTUS could rule federal marijuana laws unconstitutional.
I think you are wrong about this Boss. Equal protection is not about laws being the same in each state but rather about people being treated the same and not having laws apply differently based on a particular characteristic of a person. Even then there are exceptions, as not all characteristics are protected; a felon may be arrested for owning a firearm, for example, where a non felon is not.
There are certainly laws which apply only in certain states and not others. Age of consent laws differ from state to state as an example. It may be perfectly legal to have sexual relations in one state that would lead to criminal charges in another.
Now, if medical marijuana laws only applied to, say, people of Iranian descent, that would fall under equal protection.
State to state, you can have differences in the law. The issue here is federal statute. You can't apply a federal statute to members of one state while excusing members of another state. What you are presenting with the Iranian is basic discrimination based on national origin.
So again to clarify, "equal protection" isn't to make laws the same in all states, it is to ensure uniform application of federal law across the several states.
Precisely, and as I said before, with the precedents Obama is setting with regards to executive branch powers and executive orders, the federal decriminalization of pot is simply a matter of signing a document.