|
|
| Medical Pot Crackdown Is Ike's Fault |
|
Posted by FoM on February 18, 2002 at 07:49:50 PT By Harley Sorensen, Special To SF Gate Source: SF Gate 
The federal government unleashed its goons again last week to take medicine away from sick people, and you can blame Ike for it. "Ike," for those of you who don't know who you like, was also known as Dwight David Eisenhower. In 1953, he became the 34th president of the United States. One of Eisenhower's claims to fame, other than trimming a few strokes off his golf score during his eight years in office, was sending the 101st Airborne into Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to enforce the racial integration of Central High School. There were a lot of good people in Little Rock in 1957, and a lot of not-so good people, and both kinds warned us liberal Yankees that some day our disregard for states' rights would come back to bite us in the butt. States' rights was the concept that the people in any state can decide for themselves what laws they want, without interference from the federal government. It was the concept used to defend slavery before the War Between the States, and in 1957 it was used to defend racial segregation. We Yankees understood, of course, that the Arkie rednecks were just using states' rights as an excuse to continue the despicable practice of keeping black folks down. What we didn't understand was that they were also right. They were not right in subjugating other human beings, of course, but they were right in pointing out that we would all lose a significant amount of freedom if we let the federal government take over state law enforcement. The role of the federal government in local matters is a two-edged sword. It is hard to believe now, but before the landmark case of Mapp vs. Ohio in 1961, the Supreme Court had ruled consistently that Constitutional protections did not apply to the states. In other words, before 1961 the local cops could bust into your house and search it without a warrant, but federal agents couldn't. That didn't make a lot of sense, but -- generally speaking -- that's the way the Constitution was interpreted before the cops broke into Dolly Mapp's house looking for a fugitive and found instead some porn and gambling devices that violated local laws. So most of us would agree there are definite benefits to having the feds meddle in local affairs. Central High School in Little Rock is a proud, proud place now, and with good reason. It is thoroughly integrated. If the 101st Airborne had not descended on Central High in 1957, we might still have the racial inequities we had then. Likewise, we all have Constitutional protections now that were denied us before Mapp, before Gideon (right to a lawyer), before Miranda (right to remain silent). And yet nine states, including California, are denied the right to determine for themselves what kind of medicine sick people should be allowed to take to ease their pain. Like marijuana, for instance. Last week the head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, Asa Hutchinson, was in town to proclaim the evils of marijuana and the virtue of putting an end to "reefer madness." Hutchinson is the latest in a long line of American drug czars, all of whom talked nonsense for a few years, spent a terrible amount of money, and then claimed partial victory over illegal drugs before turning over their throne to the next pretender. By a remarkable coincidence, Hutchinson's visit was punctuated by raids by federal goons on a couple of local medical marijuana outlets. The people of California made it clear in 1996, by passing Proposition 215, the medical marijuana initiative, that they thought it was OK -- and legal -- for folks with medical problems to smoke pot to ease their pain. The federal government and the federal courts have taken a different point of view, however, and seem to have decided that it's best for sick people to suffer, probably as a way to develop character. So we have this impasse, which might never have happened if Eisenhower hadn't sent in the troops in 1957. What goes around comes around, they say, and now the federal government involves itself in almost every aspect of our lives, from how old one must be to drink alcohol to what should be taught in local schools. Federal control over local problems is a knotty issue. In my opinion, the integration in Little Rock and throughout the country was positive, and perhaps could not have been achieved any other way. It also is to our benefit to have the Bill of Rights apply to the states. However, the federal government really has no business telling states what medicines they can or cannot use, nor should it be interfering in other state issues, like Oregon's "Right to Die" law. We need to exercise more care in what powers we give the federal government, particularly now that we've had two administrations in a row -- Bill Clinton's and George Bush's -- that seem determined to increase federal power as much as possible. The rednecks in 1957 were wrong about integration but right about giving the feds too much power. We should now be reining in that power, not expanding it. Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and iconoclast. His column appears Mondays. Source: SF Gate (CA) Related Articles & Web Sites: DEA Raids Medical Marijuana Club Federal War Against The Sick Pot Club Crackdown Continues 3 Nabbed in Pot Bust Post Bail Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
 |
|
Comment #2 posted by lookinside on February 18, 2002 at 18:30:52 PT:
|
| The Warren Court was the most Constitutionally honest of our century. Alot of decisions that expanded our rights. Every court since then has been undoing that good. [ Post Comment ] |
|
Comment #1 posted by herbdoc215 on February 18, 2002 at 17:37:24 PT:
|
| To coin Jack's phrase, "You (US) can't handle the truth", these issue's are layered on so many prejudices and misconceptions that even defining the root of the problem is beyond the pale. How can we even begin to solve any problem when it's very definition is so shrouded in "double" meanings. As a self proclamed civil rights activist this duality of approving the results and theory of Gov't using federal powers to solve racial injustice, while at the same time being the person who cried loudest when the 'star chamber'made me a second class citizen and enabled Humboldt's version of "Boss Hogg and sheriff Coltrain", ruin my life and run me out of town on a rail because I felt us dying patients transended any 'good ole boy'network games. But where do we draw line and who decides which side of line we sit on? it is very nice to at least see some of these concepts discussed. The civil rights movement didn't even approach it's objectives and it's high time we quit looking at it as history like the gov't wants, IT"S NOW, the time is now. Dr. King's dream still lives in each of our hearts, it has only been through a twisting of public information and discourse of idea's that the white elite hold sway in their fiefdom of D.C. over the entire known world. Ike didn't do what he did to help anyone he did it to diffuse and disorient any real change, only grudgingly have the southern white elite's yielded ANYTHING to ANYONE who isn't already a member of that little club. As educated "poor white trash" from the south I have never seen any black people there treated with anything even approaching Justice even NOW after federal INTERVENTION, all that was done was white wash and window dressing. We must all look really hard into our hearts and challenge what we "believe" because the reality is choking the principles this great nation was born in blood on. We are giving away our real strength of diversity and democracy to panic and prejedice. American has invented a new form of colonialism, only in true ethnocentric fashion we have twisted it into spin central and they tell you it's justified or warrented. We can only function as a nation with the free flow of idea's and information, now the gov't acts as a filter to keep everyone in their born stations. Out of many, One; It's on the back of that thing we all have been tought to worship so well, so many words parroted so few hearts willing to believe. Can anybody ever imagine a world without all this hate and mistrust because if we can't we will surely never live to see it. We should all be ashamed of ourselves for putting man's law before God's law. Steven Tuck [ Post Comment ] |
| Post Comment |  |
 |  |