Some Americans got all excited over the decision by the United States Supreme Court to let stand a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, regarding a physician’s right to prescribe or recommend marijuana as a treatment for various ailments without fear of federal retaliation and loss of federal license.

The feds contended that physicians, who hold federal licenses to prescribe controlled drugs, should be subject to revocation of their licenses if they recommend or prescribe the use of marijuana to their patients.

The feds’ case was based upon the fact marijuana is deemed an illegal drug under federal law, and that physicians are committing a violation of their license if they recommend or prescribe the use of marijuana. In other words, they contended that federal law always trumps state law, and only the most ignorant of Americans will buy into that argument without question.

Here we have a classic case of states’ rights vs.. the federal government, and in this matter, the feds lost a very unimportant skirmish.

Article X of the Bill of Rights, which has never been amended or abolished, states that the powers of the federal government are limited to those powers granted the federal government by the Constitution – and nothing more. Article X further clarifies that if the authority or power is not given the federal government by the Constitution to control this or that, then the authority and power rests with the states and the people by default.

Back when the federal government foolishly tried to ban alcohol manufacturing, distribution and consumption through Prohibition, they passed a constitutional amendment giving them that authority. They had to do that to make it constitutional. There was nothing in the Constitution that gave the federal government the authority to control “substances” like alcoholic beverages, so unless Congress passed a constitutional amendment, the authority and power to do so rested with the individual states – and the people.

In other words, elected state legislators can enact legislation in their individual states, controlling whatever the feds are prohibited from meddling in by the Constitution and Article X -- or the people can enact state and local legislation through voter initiatives. Either way, if the power isn’t specifically given the feds in clear writing by the Constitution, Article X says the feds are acting illegally if they impose themselves beyond those clearly written constitutional borders. Everything outside of those constitutional borders is state and people’s business to deal with as they see fit, providing the Constitution doesn’t say they cannot.

Here’s Article X in the exact words:

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Kinda makes you want to study the Constitution, now don’t it?

So when the feds wanted to fight the War On Booze, they passed a constitutional amendment, giving them that authority. When Prohibition went down in ignominious flames as a total failure that caused more problems than it ever hoped to solve, Congress abolished that constitutional amendment.

End of story – until now.

Okay, now think real hard: What constitutional amendment gave the federal government the power to wage the current War On Drugs like the feds passed when they prosecuted the War On Booze during Prohibition?

What, you can’t think of one? You are correct: The feds never passed the necessary constitutional amendment giving them the authority to enforce drug laws, drug bans or even to control what physicians prescribe to their patients by issuing physicians a federal license to prescribe drugs. The feds did it in total and blatant violation of Article X, because they figured you citizens wouldn’t gripe about it, and like good little sheep, you didn’t.

You were damned fools, and I was a damned fool just like you. In my twenties, I was a gung-ho drug warrior second-to-none, and as I was to learn, I was also a flaming idiot, second-to-none. I was completely ignorant of the Constitution – just like most cops you meet on the street these days who swore an oath to a document they still don’t know jack about.

Nothing in the Constitution gives the feds the authority to control substances like drugs or alcohol, but this time the feds got cute by insisting the much-abused Commerce Clause gave them that phony authority because “drugs are sold”.

Yeah, right: Drugs are also given away freely, and in some cases, administered without a victim realizing it, but the feds will prosecute under any and all circumstances involving “illegal” drugs, whether they are actually sold or not, so that whole argument citing the Commerce Clause is just plain bogus, and anyone who uses it is just plain bogus.

So now let’s examine this latest U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the light of the canvas I just painted for you. The Court simply told the feds that they couldn’t punish doctors for recommending or even prescribing marijuana to their patients. The ruling to “let stand” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision doesn’t go a millimeter farther than that, no matter what any other writers might claim.

A recent Supreme Court ruling held that marijuana is illegal under federal law, and that the federal law in question made no exceptions for the medicinal use of marijuana. Since the lawyers were claiming a non-existent exception to the federal law for medical necessity, the justices ruled correctly.

The lawyers who argued that case were legal morons. They argued the case based upon their wrong acceptance of the validity of the federal law banning the manufacture, distribution and use of marijuana. It was an amazingly stupid thing to do. What they should have done was to petition the Court that the federal government never had the right to pass a law regulating the use of marijuana in the first place, because the feds had no constitutional amendment giving them that authority. Marijuana, it’s manufacture, its distribution and its use, are entirely a states’ right to control under the constitution and Article X.

It just goes to prove you don’t have to be all that bright to pass a bar exam, or to get certified to stand before the Supreme Court. Amazing.

So as it stands right now, the federal DEA can still blow your house down and seize all your marijuana plants being grown for medicinal purposes. They can still arrest you and prosecute you into prison hell.

Unless the governor of the state which passed your medical marijuana laws has the huevos to call out the state police, the sheriffs and his Iraq-bound National Guard to stop the feds by force of arms, the only difference will be that your doctor gets to keep prescribing controlled drugs under his totally unconstitutional federal license after he advised you to try marijuana as a remedy.

Big deal.

Carl F. Worden

www.thepriceofliberty.org/03/10/22/worden.htm