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A Time for Choosing: The GOP and Marijuana Initiatives

Nov. 15, 2012 11:48am

Under the direction of Tim Lynch, Cato's Project on Criminal Justice has become a leading voice in support of the Bill of Rights and civil liberties. His […]

Under the direction of Tim Lynch, Cato's Project on Criminal Justice has become a leading voice in support of the Bill of Rights and civil liberties. His research interests include the war on terrorism, overcriminalization, the drug war, the militarization of police tactics, and gun control. In 2000, he served on the National Committee to Prevent Wrongful Executions. Lynch has also filed several amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving constitutional rights. He is the editor of In the Name of Justice: Leading Experts Reexamine the Classic Article "The Aims of the Criminal Law" and After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century. Since joining Cato in 1991, Lynch has published articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, ABA Journal, and the National Law Journal. He has appeared on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, Fox's The O'Reilly Factor, and C-SPAN's Washington Journal. Lynch is a member of the Wisconsin, District of Columbia, and Supreme Court bars. He earned both a B.S. and a J.D. from Marquette University. Tim Lynch also blogs extensively at the Cato Institute's National Police Misconduct Reporting Project.

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Attorney General Eric Holder is soon expected to announce the federal government’s response to the marijuana legalization initiatives recently approved in Colorado and Washington. For conservatives and GOP persons in the Congress, it is a time for choosing.

The first path is to turn against the federal drug war. Call it a correction–just as many have acknowledged the runaway spending errors during the Bush years. Recall that conservatives just took a principled stand against federal overreaching in the Obamacare legal fight. It would be a drastic mistake to shift ground now and start defending federal police raids. Clarence Thomas has the constitutional law right. And William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman were right on the policy side–legalization of drugs is the correct policy stance to take. The neocon approach championed by Bush administration alumni (William Bennett, John Walters, and Michael Gerson) has been profoundly misguided.

We’ve heard a lot about demographics in the election aftermath. Immigration has received most of the attention, but consider drug policy. Young people just don’t think marijuana users are “criminals.” Hispanic-Americans see the chaos in Mexico more clearly than average Americans. African-Americans bear the brunt of drug law stops, raids, arrests and incarceration. And let’s not forget that this policy debate is taking place in the context of a fiscal crisis. The GOP likes to think of itself as the party that is willing to tackle government policies that don’t work and have unintended consequences. One cannot talk seriously about criminal justice reform and corrections spending without addressing the drug war. It’s past time to end the federal war on drugs.

The second path is to champion the DEA and federal police powers. Flip-flop back to big government conservatism? From arguing that it’s a federal overreach to fine someone for not buying health insurance …to lock up that gal over there with a joint in her purse? Alienate the tea party folks and their small government movement? Alienate young voters and African-Americans with talk about how the government is helping everyone with increasing numbers of arrests? Alienate Hispanic-Americans and fiscal hawks with talk about another billion dollar aid package to the Mexican government to fight the drug war? Sounds like a foolish consistency with the past.

Betsy Woodruff of the National Review Institute gets it right:

[T]here’s one easy ideological maneuver that Republicans could make that would simultaneously burnish their stance as the party of freedom and expand their base while alienating the president from his. It is a move that might also make one swing state a little easier to win in 2016. Congressional Republicans and conservative leaders could get on the weed bandwagon.

Hear, hear. Some on the religious right–Pat Robertson–are already on that bandwagon.

Some may ask, “Isn’t there some sorta middle position between legalization and stay-the-course-drug war policy?” Yes–that position is this: “I am not sure about Colorado and Washington are doing, but that’s their prerogative in our federal system.”

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, no one is saying the choices are going to be easy, but the policy choices are fairly simple.

Cato Institute / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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Comments (8)

Truth4SureNuff
Posted on November 16, 2012 at 1:15pm
Repeal the Hemp Tax Act, want to create tons of new green jobs?

A Case for Hemp; it could replace fossil fuel, eliminate farm subsidy, replace wood pulp for paper, provide much of the worlds energy needs and it is a highly nutritional food source, it makes better clothing than cotton.
Who would be against a totally green energy source and its by- products?
1 Big Oil, 2 Big Timber, 3 Big Cotton, 4 Big Coal, 5 Big Nuke
Seven states — Hawaii, West Virginia, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Kentucky, and North Dakota — have legalized hemp production; however, not one is producing the crop because of resistance from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Hemp farmers in North Dakota are granted licenses by the state, but they are required to obtain separate permits from the DEA. The agency has continually refused to accept applications, leading farmers in North Dakota to file a lawsuit against the federal government
Hemps hurds are 77 percent cellulose – a primary chemical feed stock (industrial raw material) used in the production of chemicals, plastics and fibers … an acre of full-grown hemp plants can provide from 50 to 100 times the cellulose found in cornstalks, kenaf or sugar cane.
According to Herer’s research, “Farming only 6 percent of the continental U.S. acreage with biomass [from hemp] crops would provide all of Americans’ gas and oil energy needs, ending dependence upon fossil fuels.”

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gobluebuckeye
Posted on November 16, 2012 at 11:22am
Legalize it. If we conservatives are consistent, and I am, this is a individual decision that should only affect the individual. We the people have no right to interfere with the decisions of the individual, unless that individual is stopping someone from living their own life as they wish (commits a real crime). I am a Conservative Christian and I say legalize it. Besides do you know how ridiculous it is to tell children alcohol is legal, and it kills thousands every year, but Marijuana is illegal, and there is little to no deaths associated with it? A crime is when you produce a victim, and who is the victim when you smoke a joint after work. Society?!?!? Give me a break people.

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greenroughneck
Posted on November 15, 2012 at 8:49pm
I can’t believe this is FINALLY mainstream conversation. If you claim to be a conservative you then must answer the question, ” can I live in the country with freedom for me but not for thee?” simple as that folks. What people choose to do with their freedom is their choice. There is nothing in the Constitution that allows prohibition, period. That’s why they amended it for alcohol, then repealed the amendment when they woke up to the miserable failure of it. No such consideration for marijuana. But we know the failure of prohibition as clearly as any thing. To still argue for it puts any conservative into the position of hypocrisy. The war on drugs IS a failure. Don’t agree, fine, show me ONE success. You cannot. But I can give you a full hour litany of the failures, probably more. Please my fellow conservatives, bless your hearts, please take another look at this issue and compare it to your own values of limited government and freedom. Stop with the scare tactics about our children. We protect them by teaching them, not removing all possibility of harm. Look what tobacco education managed. Prohibition must end.

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OniKaze
Posted on November 15, 2012 at 3:11pm
Legalize it on a probationary basis. Say 10 years… (giving it a few years to get the bugs worked out) and after maybe 10 years, have the law come up for review and re-vote…

God knows that 10 years of smoking substance abuse couldn’t be anywhere as damaging as a 8 year Obama presidency…. Plus with the country already going down the toilet, I can’t imagine grass making things any worse than they already are… If anything, it will make the decline slightly more tolerable…

Just an opinion… Take it or leave it….

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- conservative cyclingfan1
  Posted on November 15, 2012 at 9:23pm
  Yeah man!!! I’m looking forward to it!! Pfffffttttt!!!! Good idea otherwise.
  
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- Truth4SureNuff
  Posted on November 16, 2012 at 1:13pm
  Hemp and waste hemp residues after processing can also be used to create fuel pellets. Hemp fuel pellets, unlike other grass pellets produce very little ash, no clinker or **** formations and a very low corrosion risk. These properties will see hemp pellets as key biomass fuel pellet in the future.
  Hemp, like all plants, fix’s carbon from the atmosphere when growing this same amount of carbon is then re released when it is used as fuel, thus you are in a closed loop, you are not adding CO2 to the atmosphere nor are you adding Sulphur, thus you lessen the effects of acid rain significantly.
  Hemps hurds are 77 percent cellulose – a primary chemical feed stock (industrial raw material) used in the production of chemicals, plastics and fibers … an acre of full-grown hemp plants can provide from 50 to 100 times the cellulose found in cornstalks, kenaf or sugar cane.
  The meat of the seed is also highly nutritious and versatile as a seed “meal” and may be made into hemp milk and cheese, non-dairy ice cream, burgers, and anything else one might conceive of. Left over from pressing the oil is the “presscake” — high in amino acids, which can be crushed for animal feed or pulverized for flour to make breads, pastas or pancakes.The whole seed contains roughly 25% protein, 30% carbohydrates, 15% insoluble fiber, Carotene, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, iron and zinc, as well as vitamins E, C, B1, B2, B3 and B6. Hemp seed is one of the best sources of Esse
  
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- Despiser25
  Posted on November 16, 2012 at 1:14pm
  Every single Law should have some form of Sunset Claus to force re-evaluation. It shocks me America doesnt have an Amendement to our Constitution for just that. This will keep the Flame of Liberty burning brightly. Add to that limits on the time Lawmakers meet (like Texas) as mandate and America will quickly rebound. If not, Revolution, pain and suffering.
  
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KidCharlemagne
Posted on November 15, 2012 at 3:01pm
Uncle Sam needs to keep its nose out of the ‘ordinary course of affairs’ of the several states:

———————–
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
-James Madison, Federalist No. 45, January 26, 1788

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