A conservative quandry

At this point, you needn't be a liberal or a libertarian to recognize that the War on drugs is little more than a failed, extraordinarily expensive exercise in deliberate obliviousness. You just have to be paying attention.

Drugs are even more available and cheaper than they were 40 years ago, when Richard Nixon first launched the retarded endeavor. The more the government spends in suppressing drugs, the richer the traffickers and local dealers become

Moreover, just as was true during Prohibition, the prohibition of drugs have made them a worse public hazard than they were before. Drugs, in and of themselves, kill or seriously harm very few people. The fact that they're completely unregulated, however, has had savage consequences for millions of people. People overdose for the simple reason that they have no idea what the purity of the drug they're consuming is. Instead, they have to rely on criminals to tell them, which is almost never wise.

The foreign policy ramifications of the War on Drugs is easy to see. Countries around the world have been torn to pieces, not because their citizens like doing Tony Montana-sized mountains of blow, but because Americans do. It's almost like the Opium Wars in reverse, except the Opium Wars made economic sense, if only in the most perversely inhuman way. The American drug war is ruining other countries simply because the U.S government has decided to deny the American people what they want. It's almost as if the laws of supply and demand don't exist at all.

The War on Drugs has accomplished nothing other than create a prison industry that is the envy of every country that isn't North Korea or China. That Prime Minister Harper campaigned on bringing those same demonstrably retarded policies to Canada is one of the reasons I voted against the Conservatives this past May.

The cost of the drug war to individual freedom in America has been astronomical. Under asset forfeiture laws - which were designed as a military measure during the Civil War - the government can relieve you of you property, including your house or car, without even charging you with a crime, let alone doing the fairly easy work of obtaining a conviction. Almost all of the most constitutionally egregious anti-terror policies in the last decade have their origins in the drug war in some way. In fact, measures like the USA Patriot Act is almost never used to fight terrorism, but it is used in drug and money laundering cases quite a bit. Square that with what was said during what passed for a debate when it was proposed.

Now the War on Drugs is going to further deny the people their constitutional rights, but this time in ways that should outrage conservatives and Republicans everywhere, although it probably won't.

If my fellow conservatives were even halfway honest federalists, they would repeal federal drug laws that don't involve importation, and leave them to the states. That's what they say they would do with abortion in the event that Roe v Wade was overturned, except that they're lying about that, as evidenced by the continued Republican support for a constitutional amendment barring the procedure.

Republican support for "the will of the people" is undercut by their continued support of the drug war. They love referendums when they deny people the right to marry or make it effectively  impossible for legislatures to impose taxes, but when it comes to drugs, the rhetoric changes dramatically. 17 states - comprising over 25% of the American public - affirmed ballot measures legalizing medical marijuana, effectively decriminalizing the substance.

And Republicans - the very same people who were driven to distraction over Rush Limbaugh's "persecution" for just wanting to be Keith Richards - were indignant. The Bush administration instructed the Drug Enforcement Agency to continue prosecuting federal drug laws in states that had popularly passed medical marijuana laws, and Republicans cheered.

Well, the Obama administration is kicking it up a notch. Enjoy.

Michigan's medical-marijuana users can't catch a break.

Three major state appeals court decisions have gone against them in the last month. Now, federal authorities have issued an order that licensed medical-marijuana users nationwide can't possess a gun.

That means no hunting, no target shooting, no gun collecting and no guns for personal protection -- even by patients who legally cultivate marijuana crops -- according to a Sept. 21 directive to prosecutors nationwide from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The Second Amendment aside, there is a certain logic to this measure. If you consume marijuana - a Schedule One narcotic (which goes a long way in proving that the U.S government doesn't even know what narcotics are) - you're guilty of a federal felony. And felons are subject to a lifetime ban on gun ownership.

I happen to think that this is constitutional nonsense. Nowhere in the Constitution is there a clause that allows for the lifetime surrender of guaranteed rights. Even Antonin Scalia's celebrated opinion in District of Columbia v Heller, which affirmed that gun ownership is a fundamental right of citizenship, cut several giant holes in that right which weren't addressed or anticipated by the Constitution, such as bans on possession by felons, the mentally ill, and near schools and federal buildings. Heller might in fact be the least originalist decision in Supreme Court history precisely because of those unenumerated exceptions.

If you combine Heller exceptions with with the even more dramatically wrong-headed decision in Gonzales v Raich, which extended the interstate commerce clause in ways that can't avoid making ObamaCare constitutional, you have the perfect predicate for potentially denying Second Amendment rights to over a quarter of the American people.

The most odious part of this measure is that it is an ATF directive, which carries absolutely no force of law. The ATF, for the uninitiated, isn't Congress. It is an enforcement agency, not a legislative one. It's a lot like the Environmental Protection Agency, which the GOP has spent the last two years blowing several gaskets over proposed administrative standards that amount to passing Cap and Trade.

Remember, just as the case with asset forfeiture, no conviction or even charging document is necessary. Under DOJ's hyper-stupid letter "Any person who uses or is addicted to marijuana, regardless of whether his or her State has passed legislation authorizing marijuana use for medicinal purposes ... is prohibited by Federal law from possessing firearms or ammunition." Just possessing a medical marijuana card, which in most cases was ratified in state ballot measures, is enough to deny you your Second Amendment rights under the federal Constitution.

And, as expected, no major Republican or Tea Partier has spoken out against this. Not one. This isn't like President Reagan imposing a national 21 drinking age by threatening to withdraw federal highway funds to non-compliant states. This is the DEA, ATF and DOJ saying "because we says so" to the states. There's nothing in the Constitution that guarantees Federal highway money, after all.

If you sense that I'm a little celebratory about this, I commend you on your powers of perception. As I've alluded to over the years, I've been waiting for this day with bated breath. This is because it forces stupid people into a corner of their own twisted logic and just might bring some honesty into the debate.

Among the questions this issue might force some answers out of are;

• Drugs, which actually existed in 1789 (despite the popular Republican perception that they were invented by the Beatles during a break from recording Revolver ), aren't among the enumerated powers of the federal government. Doesn't that make them a state issue under the Tenth Amendment?
• Do popular referendums in the states always mean something, or just when it fits your ideology?
• Why should the ATF have extra-legislative powers when the EPA shouldn't? Is one more special than than the other? If so, under what legislative or constitutional authority?
• Can enforcement agencies circumvent constitutional amendments even with a vote of Congress, let alone without one?
• If a decision by an enforcement agency can deprive medical marijuana users that haven't been charged or convicted of anything of their gun rights, can the same apply to voting rights? How about First Amendment rights? If not, why not?
• If, in 2014, you refuse to buy medical insurance - which will be mandatory under federal law - can you be stripped of your Second Amendment rights, irrespective of what your governor or state legislature says about the Affordable Care Act?
• If medical marijuana users can be denied gun rights by administrative fiat, why can't they also be denied Medicare and Social Security benefits by Treasury and HHS?
• Why are adjudicated prescription drug "users or addicts", like Rush Limbaugh not subject to lifetime gun bans, particularly when they violate both state and federal laws in obtaining their high? Is a state prescribed card or license really worse than doctor shopping?
• If so, can that be enacted by a letter to state and local prosecutors by a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services, absent an act of Congress?

I really look forward to Republican answers to this questions, although I'm not expecting them. At least not sensible ones.