Imagine if the federal government demanded to know if you were a pot smoker before allowing you to register to vote. Then imagine that admitting you were — even in a state with legalized marijuana — meant being denied the right to vote. And, if you lie about it, you could face up to 15 years in jail.
Fifty-three years ago, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, creating a classification system for narcotics. The more fun the drug, the higher it was perched on the government’s “schedule.” Under federal law, for instance, pot was designated a Schedule I narcotic, allegedly among the most dangerous drugs with the highest potential for abuse and no medical use. Other drugs in this category are heroin and meth, and so on. They are all illegal.
Wherever you stand on pot laws, the fact is that states where marijuana has been legalized — either for medicinal or recreational purposes — are technically ignoring federal law. A law that should never have existed. There is no enumerated power that authorizes the feds to ban the sale of a plant or narcotics in states. 2004’s Gonzales v. Raich, which upheld the Controlled Substances Act on the flimsy grounds that pot falls under interstate commerce, was a travesty.
The problem here, however, is that the federal government only ignores the parts of the law it finds inconvenient, which is just another form of lawlessness.
Last week, after Minnesota officially legalized pot, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and
