Why did the constitution need to be amended for feds to ban alcohol

[Agit8r]

But other substances are still banned by the feds, for which no amendment needed to be passed?

 

[Pogo]

Eureka!

Whole lotta people just got pardoned, many freed from prison, and a huge bottom fell out of the black market, police departments gonna need to compensate for a whole lotta confiscation, and presumably other compensation for illegal imprisonment. You just earned your pay for the week.


They'll say "um.... because it's a Narcotic". Except it isn't.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

Congress could probably have made it illegal without resorting to an amendment, but an amendment was a way to make it more permenant.

 

[Pogo]

Maybe better question - what was the outlook of the sociopolitical landscape that the temperance movement felt it necessary to take the approach of Constitutional Amendment rather than legislation?

Lot of futuristic and revolutionary ideas flailing about at the time...

 

[Agit8r]

Maybe better question - what was the outlook of the sociopolitical landscape that the temperance movement felt it necessary to take the approach of Constitutional Amendment rather than legislation?

Lot of futuristic and revolutionary ideas flailing about at the time...

I think it was the time period and place that each originated in. The temperance movement was embraced mostly by Southern Democrats who were proponents of strict construction. Cannabis was banned during the FDR administration, under a different constitutional doctrine (the one which hypocritical social-conservatives supposedly hate, but openly support when it forbids something that they dislike).

 

[Pogo]

Maybe better question - what was the outlook of the sociopolitical landscape that the temperance movement felt it necessary to take the approach of Constitutional Amendment rather than legislation?

Lot of futuristic and revolutionary ideas flailing about at the time...

I think it was the time period and place that each originated in. The temperance movement was embraced mostly by Southern Democrats who were proponents of strict construction. Cannabis was banned during the FDR administration, under a different constitutional doctrine (the one which hypocritical social-conservatives supposedly hate, but openly support when it forbids something that they dislike).

I'm thinking much larger scale than who the POTUS was -- we could say both were the result of social shifts in their time, and certainly affected by, and to some extent reacting against, accompanying rapid changes in the age of invention which brought much upheaval in how people worked, where they lived, how they travelled, what they did for entertainment, etc.

We could say both alcohol and cannibis were moralist movements in alarmist reaction to such upheaval, ant that perhaps the first evolved naturally and the second artificially, fueling on the racism and xenophobia of its time -- and was largely Anslinger's Revenge, Dirty Harry having nothing to do with his idle mind once Prohibition was squashed.

Ultimately the substance with the longer and deeper history among white people got pardoned, and the other didn't. Of course by now, neither the authorities nor the underworld want that ban lifted, as they're both making too much money.....

wow, dig the dust on my screen, man... look at that... what were we talking about?

 

[Treeshepherd]

The temperance movement was embraced mostly by Southern Democrats who were proponents of strict construction.

The State of Maine passed the first prohibition law in 1851. The Anti-Saloon League was founded in Ohio in 1893. The Temperance Movement has its roots in the North East. An equal number of House Dems and Reps voted against the 18th amendment, but it passed overwhelmingly. I don't think you can pin prohibition on the South.

You can definitely pin it on the woman vote.

 

[Pogo]

The temperance movement was embraced mostly by Southern Democrats who were proponents of strict construction.

The State of Maine passed the first prohibition law in 1851. The Anti-Saloon League was founded in Ohio in 1893. The Temperance Movement has its roots in the North East. An equal number of House Dems and Reps voted against the 18th amendment, but it passed overwhelmingly. I don't think you can pin prohibition on the South.

You can definitely pin it on the woman vote.

I don't know much of that history myself but it is an interesting lead.

There are still lots of counties here in Carolina, and in our colony Tennessee, that are "dry" to this day. There's not a whole lot of sentiment to wetten them any time soon, although mine did a few years ago and the transition seemed to just effect overnight with nary a whimper. But that's probably the exception.

Something to do with the local Southern brand of religion methinks.

 

[Agit8r]

The temperance movement was embraced mostly by Southern Democrats who were proponents of strict construction.

The State of Maine passed the first prohibition law in 1851. The Anti-Saloon League was founded in Ohio in 1893. The Temperance Movement has its roots in the North East. An equal number of House Dems and Reps voted against the 18th amendment, but it passed overwhelmingly. I don't think you can pin prohibition on the South.

You can definitely pin it on the woman vote.

Sometimes I forget that the Klan was all over.

 

[Pogo]

The temperance movement was embraced mostly by Southern Democrats who were proponents of strict construction.

The State of Maine passed the first prohibition law in 1851. The Anti-Saloon League was founded in Ohio in 1893. The Temperance Movement has its roots in the North East. An equal number of House Dems and Reps voted against the 18th amendment, but it passed overwhelmingly. I don't think you can pin prohibition on the South.

You can definitely pin it on the woman vote.

Sometimes I forget that the Klan was all over.

The second Klan was all over, and they did rail against alcohol, but that one wasn't even founded until 1915 and didn't really find its stride until the 1920s. The first Klan (ca. 1865-1880) had nothing to do with alcohol. Except probably drink it in considerable quantities.

 

[Treeshepherd]

Sometimes I forget that the Klan was all over.

Really? You're going to reduce prohibition to that? You're either joking, hahaha, or you have a penchant for severe reductionism.

There were the progressives who were the early 20th century version of Bloombergism; ie the government is going to tell you that you can't drink a large soda. There was the women's vote; they ruin everything. There were the socially conservative Christian leagues. There was anti-German sentiment after WWI, and Germans were the beer makers.

 

[Tennyson]

Because it was a time when the courts adhered to intent and limitations of the commerce clause. Before FDR and Wickard v Filburn.

 

[Agit8r]

Because it was a time when the courts adhered to intent and limitations of the commerce clause. Before FDR and Wickard v Filburn.

So the cannabis ban is the result of judicial activism?

 

[Delta4Embassy]

But other substances are still banned by the feds, for which no amendment needed to be passed?

"The Eighteenth Amendment (Amendment XVIII) of the United States Constitution effectively established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring illegal the production, transport and sale of alcohol (though not the consumption or private possession).

The separate Volstead Act set down methods of enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, and defined which "intoxicating liquors" were prohibited, and which were excluded from prohibition (e.g., for medical and religious purposes)."
Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Good chronological history of drug bans in the US circa 1830s onwards here,
History of drug laws

Various substance bans including alcohol restricted, taxed, or forbade the various movements and production of the substances moreso than the substances themselves were made illegal. Nowadays, the actual chemical definitions are also illegal as with specific chemical formulaes and 'designer drugs' being illegal.

As to why alcohol was done via Amendment and not other substances, I don't know. Googling the question is difficult.

Worth mentioning though the reasons for the repeal of the 18th Amendment banning alcohol (via 21st) mentioned the widespread 'willful' breaking of the law, need to tax alcohol for revenue, and rise in crime resulting from the ban is exactly what's happening with bans on various illicit substances. Why we saw the light once with alcohol, but don't for illicit substances is an equally worthy question.

 

[Pogo]

But other substances are still banned by the feds, for which no amendment needed to be passed?

"The Eighteenth Amendment (Amendment XVIII) of the United States Constitution effectively established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring illegal the production, transport and sale of alcohol (though not the consumption or private possession).

The separate Volstead Act set down methods of enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, and defined which "intoxicating liquors" were prohibited, and which were excluded from prohibition (e.g., for medical and religious purposes)."
Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Good chronological history of drug bans in the US circa 1830s onwards here,
History of drug laws

Various substance bans including alcohol restricted, taxed, or forbade the various movements and production of the substances moreso than the substances themselves were made illegal. Nowadays, the actual chemical definitions are also illegal as with specific chemical formulaes and 'designer drugs' being illegal.

As to why alcohol was done via Amendment and not other substances, I don't know. Googling the question is difficult.

Worth mentioning though the reasons for the repeal of the 18th Amendment banning alcohol (via 21st) mentioned the widespread 'willful' breaking of the law, need to tax alcohol for revenue, and rise in crime resulting from the ban is exactly what's happening with bans on various illicit substances. Why we saw the light once with alcohol, but don't for illicit substances is an equally worthy question.

That's because the PTB came to understand that there was money to be made by keeping it illegal if Authorities and Crime simply work together in a spirit of true bipartisanship. Once they both realized they both prey on a common victim -- the ordinary citizen -- they had a win-win.

 

[Moonglow]

Maybe better question - what was the outlook of the sociopolitical landscape that the temperance movement felt it necessary to take the approach of Constitutional Amendment rather than legislation?

Lot of futuristic and revolutionary ideas flailing about at the time...

I think it was the time period and place that each originated in. The temperance movement was embraced mostly by Southern Democrats who were proponents of strict construction. Cannabis was banned during the FDR administration, under a different constitutional doctrine (the one which hypocritical social-conservatives supposedly hate, but openly support when it forbids something that they dislike).

Pot prohibition started in the 1920's....

 

[Moonglow]

But other substances are still banned by the feds, for which no amendment needed to be passed?

"The Eighteenth Amendment (Amendment XVIII) of the United States Constitution effectively established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring illegal the production, transport and sale of alcohol (though not the consumption or private possession).

The separate Volstead Act set down methods of enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, and defined which "intoxicating liquors" were prohibited, and which were excluded from prohibition (e.g., for medical and religious purposes)."
Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Good chronological history of drug bans in the US circa 1830s onwards here,
History of drug laws

Various substance bans including alcohol restricted, taxed, or forbade the various movements and production of the substances moreso than the substances themselves were made illegal. Nowadays, the actual chemical definitions are also illegal as with specific chemical formulaes and 'designer drugs' being illegal.

As to why alcohol was done via Amendment and not other substances, I don't know. Googling the question is difficult.

Worth mentioning though the reasons for the repeal of the 18th Amendment banning alcohol (via 21st) mentioned the widespread 'willful' breaking of the law, need to tax alcohol for revenue, and rise in crime resulting from the ban is exactly what's happening with bans on various illicit substances. Why we saw the light once with alcohol, but don't for illicit substances is an equally worthy question.

You could get a prescription for booze from the doctor, seems everyone in the family was sick with the same ailment...

 

[Pogo]

Maybe better question - what was the outlook of the sociopolitical landscape that the temperance movement felt it necessary to take the approach of Constitutional Amendment rather than legislation?

Lot of futuristic and revolutionary ideas flailing about at the time...

I think it was the time period and place that each originated in. The temperance movement was embraced mostly by Southern Democrats who were proponents of strict construction. Cannabis was banned during the FDR administration, under a different constitutional doctrine (the one which hypocritical social-conservatives supposedly hate, but openly support when it forbids something that they dislike).

Pot prohibition started in the 1920's....

Usually we think of 1937 with the ridiculous federal "Marihuana [sic] Tax Act" but of course it didn't just pop up overnight:

How marijuana was prohibited

Twentieth-century cannabis prohibition first reared its head in countries where white minorities ruled black majorities: South Africa, where it’s known as dagga, banned it in 1911, and Jamaica, then a British colony, outlawed ganja in 1913. They were followed by Canada, Britain and New Zealand, which added cannabis to their lists of illegal narcotics in the 1920s. Canada’s pot law was enacted in 1923, several years before there were any reports of people actually smoking it there. It was largely the brainchild of Emily F. Murphy, a feminist but racist judge who wrote anti-Asian, anti-marijuana rants under the pseudonym "Janey Canuck."

In the United States, marijuana prohibition began partly as a throw-in on laws restricting opiates and cocaine to prescription-only use, and partly in Southern and Western states and cities where blacks and Mexican immigrants were smoking it. Missouri outlawed opium and hashish dens in 1889, but did not actually prohibit cannabis until 1935. Massachusetts began restricting cannabis in its 1911 pharmacy law, and three other New England states followed in the next seven years.

California’s 1913 narcotics law banned possession of cannabis preparations — which California NORML head Dale Gieringer believes was a legal error, that the provision was intended to parallel those affecting opium, morphine and cocaine. The law was amended in 1915 to ban the sale of cannabis without a prescription. "Thus hemp pharmaceuticals remained technically legal to sell, but not possess, on prescription!" ...

New York City made cannabis prescription-only in 1914, part to pre-empt users of over-the-counter opium, morphine and cocaine medicines from switching to cannabis preparations, but with allusions to hashish use by Middle Eastern immigrants. In the West and Southwest, anti-Mexican sentiment quickly came into play. California’s first marijuana arrests came in a Mexican neighborhood in Los Angeles in 1914, according to Gieringer, and the Los Angeles Times said "sinister legends of murder, suicide and disaster" surrounded the drug. The city of El Paso, Texas, outlawed reefer in 1915, two years after a Mexican thug, "allegedly crazed by habitual marijuana use," killed a cop. By the time Prohibition was repealed in 1933, 30 states had some form of pot law.

The campaign against cannabis heated up after Repeal. "I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigaret can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents," a Colorado newspaper editor wrote in 1936. "The fatal marihuana cigarette must be recognized as a DEADLY DRUG, and American children must be PROTECTED AGAINST IT," the Hearst newspapers editorialized.

Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, headed the charge. "If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marihuana, he would drop dead of fright," he thundered in 1937.

An ambitious racist (a 1934 memo described an informant as a "ginger-colored n****r") who had previously been federal assistant Prohibition commissioner, Anslinger railed against reefer in magazine articles like 1937’s "Marihuana: Assassin of Youth." It featured gory stories like that of Victor Licata, a once "sane, rather quiet young man" from Tampa, Fla., who’d killed his family with an axe in 1933, after becoming "pitifully crazed" from smoking "muggles." (Actually, the Tampa police had tried to have Licata committed to a mental hospital before he started smoking pot.)

Anslinger’s other theme was that white girls would be ruined once they’d experienced the lurid pleasures of having a black man’s joint in their mouth. "Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with female students (white) smoking and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution," he noted. "Result, pregnancy." -- How Marijuana was Prohibited​

--- and lest we forget the context, that era of the early 20th century was the most blatantly and overtly racist this country has ever seen, with race riots and lynchings almost daily including Tulsa, the release of "Birth of a Nation" and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and its expansion nationally...

 

[Tennyson]

Because it was a time when the courts adhered to intent and limitations of the commerce clause. Before FDR and Wickard v Filburn.

So the cannabis ban is the result of judicial activism?

Yes. There is no constitutional authority for the ban under the intent of the commerce clause or previous precedent.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Congress could probably have made it illegal without resorting to an amendment, but an amendment was a way to make it more permenant.

The way I understood the process was that congress wanted nothing to do with the prohibition of alcohol, so the blue-haired church-lady committee that wanted to regulate everyone's lives went over the heads of congress with a grass roots constitutional amendment drive, which happened to be successful.