Pubdate: Thu, 07 Apr 2005
Source: Los Angeles City Beat (CA)
Copyright: 2005 Southland Publishing
Contact:  http://www.lacitybeat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2972
Note: Also prints Los Angeles Valley Beat, often with similar content, and 
the same contact information.
Author: Ivan Smason
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)

CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS

I was horrified to read Dean Kuipers' poignantly-titled piece "Why Is This 
Happening?" ["Street," March 24] which detailed an incident in which about 
30 LAPD officers abrogated California law by raiding the dispensary offices 
of the United Medical Caregivers Clinic. If local police openly choose to 
annul the controlling state law that they are sworn to uphold, and have the 
ample time and manpower to do so, then it appears that the incessant 
requests for more police officers (perversely endorsed by all of the major 
mayoral candidates) are based upon a false premise that more of them are 
necessary.

The federal government's unconstitutional prohibition on cannabis use 
directly violates the 9th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. According to 
this sacrosanct amendment, the citizenry is apportioned the incalculable 
powers and unalienable rights necessary to 1.) constitute life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness, and 2.) "secure the blessings of liberty to 
ourselves and our posterity," as ordained in the Constitution's Preamble. 
The 10th Amendment certainly apportions non-enumerated powers to individual 
States to prohibit the rights of their citizens, but nothing anywhere in 
the Constitution apportions similar powers to the federal government to 
prohibit the rights and powers of the nation's citizens, unless enough of 
the people in enough of the States amend the Constitution to do so per 
Article V.

Given these facts, each and every cannabis-related arrest, imprisonment, 
fine, or toxin-adulteration that has followed from these unconscionable 
injustices have violated the Constitution and undermined the noble American 
mission and purpose of the Constitution cited in the Preamble. The Supreme 
Court has capriciously interpreted the Constitution's commerce clause so as 
to disturb the supreme law of the land's balance of powers and rights and 
has unconstitutionally grown the powers of the federal government at the 
expense of the people and the States. It appears that the federal 
government, now with the aid and abetment of ever growing local police 
forces, intends to expand this tyrannical onslaught into citizens' private 
lives.

Ivan Smason, Ph.D., J.D.,

Santa Monica 
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MAP posted-by: Beth