The Los Angeles Times reports today, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the suit brought by the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma challenging Colorado’s legalization of marijuana for recreational use and sale:
By a 6-2 vote, the justices turned away a lawsuit brought by Nebraska and Oklahoma, whose state attorneys complained that illegal marijuana was pouring into their states as a result of Colorado’s liberalized laws.
“The state of Colorado authorizes, oversees, protects and profits from a sprawling $100-million-per-month marijuana growing, processing and retailing organization that exported thousands of pounds of marijuana to some 36 states in 2014,” they said. “If this entity were based south of our border, the federal government would prosecute it as a drug cartel.”
They argued that Colorado’s law violates the federal Controlled Substances Act, which treats marijuana as a dangerous drug and forbids its sale or use. They urged the Supreme Court to take up the issue as an “original” matter and declare that Colorado’s law was preempted by the federal drug laws.
Puritanical attorneys general in these conservative neighboring states will fume, but even Colorado’s former GOP Attorney General John Suthers, certainly no proponent of marijuana legalization, argued that the case from Nebraska and Oklahoma was weak, and the Obama administration urged the case be rejected. Many other conservative states unlikely to legalize marijuana now or in the future nonetheless declined to join.
With today’s decision, Colorado’s burgeoning marijuana industry is safe to flourish once again. And if Nebraska and Oklahoma want to press the matter, we could always strike up a conversation about their meth labs.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
BY: JohnInDenver
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: Chickenheed
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: 2Jung2Die
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: 2Jung2Die
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: harrydoby
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: Duke Cox
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: 2Jung2Die
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: Early Worm
IN: BREAKING: Restraining Order Stops Dave Williams Ouster Efforts Cold
BY: Duke Cox
IN: BREAKING: Restraining Order Stops Dave Williams Ouster Efforts Cold
BY: Duke Cox
IN: J.D. Vance Really, Really Not Going Over Well
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!
Another solid hit against reefer madness.
It's time to acknowledge the utter failure of our trillion-dollar War on Drugs and end the The Great Social Experiment, 'Prohibition'.
Great accompanying photo by the way.
I've acknowledged that failure years ago. Those who favor the war on drugs seem to be similar to the religious extremists who want to dictate how citizens live their personal & private lives. It’s all about having the freedoms that other citizens don’t want us to have.
A liberal friend had a bumper sticker on the car he traded in a couple years ago: “You can’t have my rights. I’m not done using them.”
That, and there's also that group receiving the billions of federal "law enforcement" (eg. HIDTA), and questionable property confiscation, dollars that keep the hardlines enforcers in Humvees, Tanks, and other cool "policing" toys …
We've come a long way from 'reckless' to….oh, never mind. It begs the question on the national scale: Drumpf seems to be mirroring the TrusTED position of 'it's a states rights issue', although you can find statements by Drumpf on both sides of the argument. His plausible AG-nominee is Gov. Donuts, who claimed that if he were elected POTUS that 'we've smoked our last joint'. Pew Research shows that American's are 'over' Prohibition. The numbers in that poll would usually suggest that most politicians would evolve.
That said, even the near-useless DWS can't get it right, held hostage by the wine and spirits lobby.
This was disturbing:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/donald–trump–will–win-in-a-landslide-the -mind–behind–dilbert–explains-why/
Our local news affiliates made much this morning of some get together of cops (second annual, I guess) to see if they can't figure out better ways to bust pot smokers who drive (stoned or otherwise). Your tax dollars at work.
These drug agencies have biliions of dollars of funding they don't want to give up. They seem to spend it almost exclusively nowadays trying to justify their own continued existence..
it's infuriating.
The mass (constructed, paid-for) ignorance in DC over this plant is a stunning poster-child for almost everything that's wrong with our government today. Any politician who thinks we should perpetuate the demonstrably-failed War on Drugs isn't fit for public office.
Not that it surprised anyone, a former Nixon aide confirms the War on Drugs was about marginalizing African-Americans. In classic DC-form, he gave us the EPA (arguably saving a lot of lives) – and the pathway to mass incarceration (as one of his many parting gifts). That, and 40 years later we're still trying to put teeth in the Toxic Substances Control Act after he created CEQ in 1969.
I had work in Hawaii last week and was invited to join a friend for a Sanders event (my first) to hear Jane Sanders speak. She is one impressive woman. Bernie has the most sane position on cannabis: remove it completely from the Controlled Substances Act. Clinton's position is slightly less rational: remove industrial hemp from CSA (it was the express intent of Congress in both 1937 and 1969 that CSA wasn't intended to prohibit the cultivation of hemp for industrial uses) and to 'reschedule' marijuana to Schedule II. That's DC code for 'let's make sure Pharma decides how this is developed (and controlled) in the marketplace. Her position is no less-nuanced than the present position of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: he's one of our best friends in the industrial hemp space but adamantly against medical and recreational mmj. Given that his largest block of donors are from Pharma, they are already controlling his message.
We are winning the war, despite our brave county sheriff's who want to drag us back to the old days. Pew polling has some pretty stunning numbers on just how far John Q. Public has evolved on Prohibition. Like the #Fossilonians who are dying a slow death in the dinosaur dung pits, the #Prohibitionists are nearing their end as well. It's no longer a question of 'if', but 'when'.
The (Prohibitionist) Emperor truly has no clothes.
Well said, Michael. it is, in my view, a mortal sin to spread ignorance for the sake of exploitation…
It was Papa Frank who recently said our greatest world threat is a "crisis of exploitation"..and to use a Christian trope, there is a supposed temple to democracy sitting on a hill in Washington, DC.
Someone needs to clear out the moneychangers and sellers of influence (sacrificial animals, in those days).
It's time for the 'Great Social
Alva – it may have been me or a glitch in the system this morning. I didn't hit the 'post comment' button six words in to my comment, and then it wouldn't let me edit. Feel free to delete if you'd like.
No word on the 2 who wanted tohear the case? I'm ghessing Aliso and thomas
Justices won't hear Nebraska, Oklahoma marijuana dispute with Colorado
But they cite a federal criminal statute – which NE and OK have no standing to enforce – as a basis for their state sovereignty claim.
I figured Alito being a former fed prosecutor would want to hear it.
I called that one, too. Alito and Thomas, of course.
How about this wild and crazy idea?
Let the voters in Nebraska and Oklahoma vote on legalization in their state. Any bets that it wouldn't pass in both states?
You would have to give me odds…big ones..