Penn on Drug Policy Double Standards

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Some colorful language here….not sure about the numbers discussed….ummm….if anyone can find serious fault with the logic, let me know in the comment section. I’m struggling:

This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2012 at 8:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to Penn on Drug Policy Double Standards

  1. Career Sergeant Zim's avatar Career Sergeant Zim says:
    May 25, 2012 at 8:55 am

    Well for medical marijuana to be a states rights issue, you have to logically remove the FDA and the Federal Controlled Substances Act from the process and all approval of pharmacological drugs must be made on the State level, no? The pro-medical marijuana crowd seems to want to exclude marijuana from our national system of approval of drug approval without a real principled reason to do it.

    The question of total legalization, which Penn drifts in and out of is a different issue.

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  2. matthewladner's avatar matthewladner says:
    May 25, 2012 at 9:22 am

    Zim-

    I’m sure that Penn would start growling something about the 10th Amendment on the Controlled Substances Act, but I think his larger point is that President Obama ought to support decriminalization and hasn’t.

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    • Career Sergeant Zim's avatar Career Sergeant Zim says:
      May 25, 2012 at 9:26 am

      I’d agree with that … but Penn starts off with medical marijuana (as a state’s rights issue) and ends up with decriminalization, his logic is meandering and that weakens his point.

      Reply
      • MatthewLadner's avatar MatthewLadner says:
        May 25, 2012 at 10:00 am

        Now I’m not entirely sure, being only partially fluent in Libertarian Rant, but I believe Penn was complaining about the use of enforcement discretion by the administration to aggressively harass the medical marijuna people. Penn seems to find this an incongrous stance give the “weed and a maybe a little blow” personal history.

      • Brian's avatar Brian says:
        May 25, 2012 at 11:37 am

        Zim–

        Gonzalez v. Raich, the federal case that ruled that state medical marijuana laws are trumped by federal authority, was decided with respect to the Controlled Substance Act (and in a larger sense, the federal Commerce Clause). I don’t believe the FDA has been involved in this dispute. So I think it is actually right for Penn to “meander” towards decriminalization. The criminality issue has been the main barrier that medical marijuana laws have faced.

  3. Christopher Vincent's avatar Christopher Vincent says:
    May 30, 2012 at 1:38 pm

    By the way, any comment on Matt Miller’s column on education policy in the Washington Post? http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/romney-vs-teachers-unions-the-inconvenient-truth/2012/05/30/gJQA7KVv1U_story.html

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