Challenges to NMSL?

[cpzilliacus]

I'm just thinking out loud here, but perhaps the Obama administration crackdown on marijuana could be removed for the most part with a one sentence law or state constitutional amendment:

"Cannabis grown in [state], sold in [state] to consumers legally residing in [state] with the intent of consumption in [state] is hereby not subject to federal intervention or regulation in [state] due to the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution."

Generally I don't favor state cartels, but if that's what it takes to shut the DEA down, so be it!

I am not especially enthused by the DEA, but I have much more dislike for the "businessmen" of Latin America (and recently, especially Mexico) who profit from mindless U.S. drug laws, so if we put the Mexican cartels out of business through legalization, that's fine with me.

[vdeane]

I'm just thinking out loud here, but perhaps the Obama administration crackdown on marijuana could be removed for the most part with a one sentence law or state constitutional amendment:

"Cannabis grown in [state], sold in [state] to consumers legally residing in [state] with the intent of consumption in [state] is hereby not subject to federal intervention or regulation in [state] due to the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution."

Generally I don't favor state cartels, but if that's what it takes to shut the DEA down, so be it!

Unfortunately, everything is so interconnected today, and with travel between states so easy (what are you going to do, have a police officer follow people around until the consume the drug to make sure they don't leave?), intrastate commerce is an oxymoron today.  I believe South Carolina tried and failed to do a similar thing with incandescent light bulbs.

That said, now is the most likely time for the war on drugs to end, for the same reason that prohibition ended - taxes.  Although the history books like to make it look like we learned something from the 20s, or because people were less in favor of prohibition (they weren't), the truth is the only reason prohibition was repealed is because the feds were broke without the tax money from alcohol during the Depression.

[kkt]

No, it was obvious to pretty much everybody after a couple of years that prohibition was counterproductive.  It didn't reduce alcohol  abuse, which was the prohibitionists' goal, or the many social problems that the prohibitionists attributed to alcohol.  It gave the mobs their start, made lots of ordinary people into criminals, put a huge load on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons.  The tax from alcohol was just a secondary reason for repeal.

[agentsteel53]

No, it was obvious to pretty much everybody after a couple of years that prohibition was counterproductive.  It didn't reduce alcohol  abuse, which was the prohibitionists' goal, or the many social problems that the prohibitionists attributed to alcohol.  It gave the mobs their start, made lots of ordinary people into criminals, put a huge load on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons.  The tax from alcohol was just a secondary reason for repeal.

meanwhile, the War on Drugs has been reliably causing unicorns to shit rainbows since 1973.

[kphoger]

meanwhile, the War on Drugs has been reliably causing unicorns to shit rainbows since 1973.

Will someone please post a picture of this?

[Alps]

meanwhile, the War on Drugs has been reliably causing unicorns to shit rainbows since 1973.

Will someone please post a picture of this?

Best I can do:

it by necessity is pink (this is not mine)

[kphoger]

Wow, a Google Images search for this is so much fun!

[NE2]

Daaaamn. Google ignores its autocomplete censoring for "unicorn shits rainbows".

[hbelkins]

The Supreme Court has taken the Interstate Commerce Clause a bit further in finding that a single-state action can unduly affect interstate commerce. Perhaps the best example is the Bibb case from 1959 where Illinois had a law, unique among all the states, requiring a specific type of truck mud flap. No other state required that type of mud flap and one state specifically banned that type. The Supreme Court ultimately found that Illinois's law must fall because it created an undue burden on interstate commerce due to the impossibility of complying with both states' laws unless truck drivers pulled off and changed their mud flaps every time. (Had it been a situation where 49 states allowed either type, and Illinois required the one, there would have been no problem because you could comply with both laws by using the Illinois flap. But that wasn't the situation.)

How about window tint laws? I don't think there's a uniformity among the Several States on it. What's legal in some states may not be legal in others.

And I don't have the documentation from one of them in front of me, but AAA Triptiks have this ominous warning about vehicle insurance requirements in New York. What I always took from that was that even if your vehicle is legally insured in your home state, you can't drive it in NY unless your coverage meets their more stringent requirements.

[1995hoo]

Yeah, Virginia has very restrictive tint rules. I believe they'd fall in the category where they'd be allowed because a driver can easily comply with every state's rules if he gets tiny that complies with the most restrictive law. I don't know how many challenges there have been to tint tickets.

I actually won a case for a client about 11 years ago involving a Commerce Clause violation, although the case was about bug spray labels.

[J N Winkler]

How about window tint laws? I don't think there's a uniformity among the Several States on it. What's legal in some states may not be legal in others.

I think the position is as follows:  OEM tint is not a barrier to travel or re-registration in any of the states, because no state has a window tint law that prohibits the darkest tint used by the OEM manufacturers.  On the other hand, very dark aftermarket tints are legal in some states but not in others.  It is safe to assume that dark aftermarket tint is a barrier to re-registration in a state where it is illegal.  However, I don't think a state can issue a legally valid citation for too-dark tint in respect of an out-of-state vehicle where the degree of tint is illegal in the state issuing the ticket but is legal in the state of registration.  The stereotypical example would be an Arizona car with aftermarket tint cited in Alaska for too-dark tint.

I am not sure such a ticket would hold up even if the degree of tint were illegal in both states, absent a compact allowing each state to enforce the other's vehicle equipment laws.

[1995hoo]

I know Virginia does ticket out-of-staters whose tint is darker than Virginia allows; they claim that it's a safety law and being from out-of-state doesn't change that it's unsafe.

I don't know how many people from out-of-state have fought the tickets.

[Scott5114]

I don't know how many people from out-of-state have fought the tickets.

They're probably counting on it being too far away for most people to bother coming back to contest it.

[1995hoo]

I don't know how many people from out-of-state have fought the tickets.

They're probably counting on it being too far away for most people to bother coming back to contest it.

In Virginia I think it's three-fold:

(1) As you say, most out-of-staters would just pay the ticket and not come back.

(2) In the Virginia court system there is generally no right to an automatic appeal in civil matters (and a tint ticket would almost certainly be classified as a "civil infraction" rather than a criminal offense). You have to petition the Virginia Supreme Court to hear your appeal. The odds of your average tint ticket being appealed are slim and the odds of the Virginia Supreme Court granting review are even slimmer.

(3) The slimmest odds of all are someone deciding to try to make a federal constitutional case out of it, simply because the cost of the ticket is so minuscule that it's economically impractical to make a federal case of it.


The way Virginia justifies the enforcement is that the statute regulating window tint (Va. Code 46.2-1052) provides that "No sun-shading or tinting films may be applied or affixed to [side or rear windows] of any motor vehicle operated on the highways of this Commonwealth" that reduce the light transmission to less than the specified percentages (50% front sides, 35% rear sides and rear; no aftermarket tint is allowed at all on the windshield without a medical waiver). The statute provides that if you "operate a motor vehicle on the highways of this Commonwealth" with darker tints than authorized, you get a ticket for an infraction but the ticket carries no points.

So the thing from the enforcement point of view is that it refers to operating any motor vehicle on Virginia's highways. That means any car regardless of where it's registered. In other words, it doesn't say you can't register the car in Virginia (in which case out-of-staters would be in the clear unless they moved here)–it says it's illegal to drive that car, period.

I tend to agree with the people who say it's a very dickish sort of enforcement, but on the other hand, I also wouldn't be surprised from a constitutional standpoint if the point the US Supreme Court made in the Bibb case were to prevail in the unlikely event someone tried to make a constitutional case of it–that is, the Commonwealth would argue, "Any motorist can comply with both this law and his home state's law by tinting in accordance with Virginia law if he expects to drive in Virginia." As I say, that's obnoxious and I don't like the idea of one state's legislature or courts trying to pass a law that forces other states' legislatures or courts to follow along even if they prefer a different law (e.g., Florida quite understandably allows darker tint for very good reasons). I could relate that argument to current events but I'm concerned it would derail the thread into politics, so I won't.

[vdeane]

No, it was obvious to pretty much everybody after a couple of years that prohibition was counterproductive.  It didn't reduce alcohol  abuse, which was the prohibitionists' goal, or the many social problems that the prohibitionists attributed to alcohol.  It gave the mobs their start, made lots of ordinary people into criminals, put a huge load on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons.  The tax from alcohol was just a secondary reason for repeal.

Then explain whey it took ten more years after that to finally be repealed.

Most history learned in school is an exaggeration or an outright lie.  My favorite example are the American Revolution (nobody can claim the moral high ground here, though both sides try), Honest Abe (he was actually more dishonest than modern politicians, the norm in the day, due to the non-existence of mass media; politicians would say one thing to one town and the opposite to the next, and nobody could check), and the perceived civility to politics of the early 1800s (they were actually dirtier than ours; we complain about recounts in Florida, they had to deal with Hamilton rigging presidential elections).

[kkt]

No, it was obvious to pretty much everybody after a couple of years that prohibition was counterproductive.  It didn't reduce alcohol  abuse, which was the prohibitionists' goal, or the many social problems that the prohibitionists attributed to alcohol.  It gave the mobs their start, made lots of ordinary people into criminals, put a huge load on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons.  The tax from alcohol was just a secondary reason for repeal.

Then explain whey it took ten more years after that to finally be repealed.

It's deliberately difficult to amend the constitution, and even after most people favored repeal there were still some vocal true believers who wanted to keep it.  It took a while to realize how bad prohibition was, then get a campaign together to draft a repeal and vote out the supporters of prohibition from Congress.

[agentsteel53]

ten years is nothing.  marijuana has been banned for nearly a century now, even as most people range from indifferent to supportive of its legalization.

[1995hoo]

No, it was obvious to pretty much everybody after a couple of years that prohibition was counterproductive.  It didn't reduce alcohol  abuse, which was the prohibitionists' goal, or the many social problems that the prohibitionists attributed to alcohol.  It gave the mobs their start, made lots of ordinary people into criminals, put a huge load on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons.  The tax from alcohol was just a secondary reason for repeal.

Then explain whey it took ten more years after that to finally be repealed.

It's deliberately difficult to amend the constitution, and even after most people favored repeal there were still some vocal true believers who wanted to keep it.  It took a while to realize how bad prohibition was, then get a campaign together to draft a repeal and vote out the supporters of prohibition from Congress.

In that particular instance, Congress also provided that the proposed amendment was to be ratified by conventions in the states, rather than the state legislatures. Only time the convention method has ever been used. Congress wanted to avoid the "dry" legislatures that would have refused to ratify it.

[vdeane]

No, it was obvious to pretty much everybody after a couple of years that prohibition was counterproductive.  It didn't reduce alcohol  abuse, which was the prohibitionists' goal, or the many social problems that the prohibitionists attributed to alcohol.  It gave the mobs their start, made lots of ordinary people into criminals, put a huge load on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons.  The tax from alcohol was just a secondary reason for repeal.

Then explain whey it took ten more years after that to finally be repealed.

It's deliberately difficult to amend the constitution, and even after most people favored repeal there were still some vocal true believers who wanted to keep it.  It took a while to realize how bad prohibition was, then get a campaign together to draft a repeal and vote out the supporters of prohibition from Congress.

I would find you the source, but I don't remember where I read it; it was within the past couple months, I do remember that.  I will repeat that textbook history is wrong 90% of the time.

[kphoger]

No, it was obvious to pretty much everybody after a couple of years that prohibition was counterproductive.  It didn't reduce alcohol  abuse, which was the prohibitionists' goal, or the many social problems that the prohibitionists attributed to alcohol.  It gave the mobs their start, made lots of ordinary people into criminals, put a huge load on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons.  The tax from alcohol was just a secondary reason for repeal.

Then explain whey it took ten more years after that to finally be repealed.

It's deliberately difficult to amend the constitution, and even after most people favored repeal there were still some vocal true believers who wanted to keep it.  It took a while to realize how bad prohibition was, then get a campaign together to draft a repeal and vote out the supporters of prohibition from Congress.

I would find you the source, but I don't remember where I read it; it was within the past couple months, I do remember that.  I will repeat that textbook history is wrong 90% of the time.

71% of all statistics are wrong.

[kkt]

No, it was obvious to pretty much everybody after a couple of years that prohibition was counterproductive.  It didn't reduce alcohol  abuse, which was the prohibitionists' goal, or the many social problems that the prohibitionists attributed to alcohol.  It gave the mobs their start, made lots of ordinary people into criminals, put a huge load on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons.  The tax from alcohol was just a secondary reason for repeal.

Then explain whey it took ten more years after that to finally be repealed.

It's deliberately difficult to amend the constitution, and even after most people favored repeal there were still some vocal true believers who wanted to keep it.  It took a while to realize how bad prohibition was, then get a campaign together to draft a repeal and vote out the supporters of prohibition from Congress.

I would find you the source, but I don't remember where I read it; it was within the past couple months, I do remember that.  I will repeat that textbook history is wrong 90% of the time.

Are you trying to say that if you took every fact in all history textbooks 90% of them are not true?  That's just ridiculous.  Of course there's some errors and some omissions, but you exaggerate wildly.

[Zmapper]

Textbooks can be very error prone, even those meant for a fourth-grade audience. http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-30/us/virginia.textbook.errors_1_ponds-press-panelists-textbook?_s=PM:US

[agentsteel53]

especially those meant for a fourth-grade audience.  history is all rah-rah-America-fuck-yeah; gotta indoctrinate those kiddos! 

[J N Winkler]

I am from Crete.  All Cretans lie.

[agentsteel53]

so, since you're in the US, you're an ex-Crete.  JNW, you're so full of shit.