Pubdate: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 Source: Wall Street Journal (US) Copyright: 2015 Roger Pilon Contact: http://www.wsj.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487 Author: Roger Pilon, George W. Liebmann THE FEDS, THE STATES AND THE CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES ACT How exactly is Colorado undermining federal law? Nothing requires a state to make marijuana illegal. David B. Rivkin and Elizabeth Price Foley have risen to the defense of the attorneys general of Nebraska and Oklahoma, who complain about spillover enforcement costs from Colorado's law legalizing marijuana and hence are asking the Supreme Court to declare that law unconstitutional ("oeFederal Antidrug Law Goes Up in Smoke," op-ed, Dec. 29). Along the way they respond to conservative charges of "oefair-weather federalism" by pointing to President Obama's failure to enforce federal drug law in Colorado as the real problem. Yet the gravamen of their legal argument is that, under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, federal law trumps conflicting state law, so even when the president won't enforce that law, states "oemay not pursue policies that undermine federal law," as policies in Colorado and three other states allegedly now do. Do they? How exactly is Colorado undermining federal law? Mr. Rivkin and Ms. Foley cite Colorado's attorney general as saying that "oehis state is "'becoming a major exporter of marijuana.'" He was doubtless speaking loosely there. After all, the state isn't exporting marijuana. In essence, what the state has done is legalize the sale and use of marijuana""as if it had never made it illegal to begin with. Nothing requires a state to make marijuana illegal. Nor is the state doing anything to prohibit federal enforcement of federal prohibitions. It's doubtful, therefore, that there is any conflict here for the Supreme Court to notice. Roger Pilon Cato Institute Washington Maryland, under Gov. Albert Ritchie, steadfastly refused to prohibit alcohol sales throughout Prohibition, and Al Smith's New York repealed its prohibition laws in 1926 notwithstanding the reference in the 18th Amendment to concurrent enforcement. The fact that Colorado burdens marijuana sales through regulation and taxation instead of simply repealing its laws scarcely creates a greater conflict with federal policy, let alone one about which other states can complain. The Controlled Substances Act does not permanently "oelist marijuana as a Schedule I drug, and thus illegal." The Schedule is required to be updated annually and in its present form is the work of President Obama's administrators, not of Congress. Rationally, marijuana should be classified like Valium; its users would then receive the cautionary advice of doctors, standardization and quality control, and liberation from the underworld. In his lectures on the Supreme Court published in 1955, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson observed: "oeI cannot say that our country could have no central police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police. . . . All that is necessary is to have a centralized national police competent to investigate all manner of offenses and then, in the parlance of the street, it will have enough on enough people, even if it does not elect to prosecute them, so that it will find no opposition to its policies. Even those who are supposed to supervise it are likely to fear it. I believe that the safeguard of our liberty lies in limiting any policing or investigative organization, first of all to a small number of strictly federal offenses and secondly to nonpolitical ones." George W. Liebmann Baltimore - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D