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Drug Policy

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RainDog

(28,784 posts)
Wed Feb 15, 2012, 01:06 AM Feb 2012

Did Congress legalize cannabis in the U.S? [View all]

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/02/congress_oks_medical_marijuana_everywhere_with_dc.php

That would be a great way to find a "face-saving" -sort of - strategy out of this current mess. Anyone here have a take on this claim?

If one prominent attorney is right about the legal ramifications of the District of Columbia's marijuana law -- specifically, that it was approved by the U.S. Congress -- then it could be a game-changer nationwide.

D.C.'s medical marijuana law was the first time that the United States Congress had ever given its explicit assent to any state or local law that permits the medicinal use of marijuana -- and, according to a California attorney who specializes in health care compliance, that is enormously significant under the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

​In 2009, noting that it was "allowing" the voters of Washington, D.C., to vote on and implement that city's Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment law, Congress approved medicinal cannabis in the federal District of Columbia, over which it has all governmental power.


That moment is discussed here: http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2009/12/congress_ends_ban_on_medical_marijuana_in_dc.php

"States with medical marijuana programs should now be free from federal interference since Congress has allowed local control," attorney Matthew Pappas at Pappas Law Group, based in Long Beach, California, told Toke of the Town Monday afternoon. "Congress being the legislative branch of the federal sovereign and the only body that can change these laws has now done so by recognizing the voting rights of Washington, D.C., citizens."


via wiki- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause

Equal Protection Clause

The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."[1] The Equal Protection Clause can be seen as an attempt to secure the promise of the United States' professed commitment to the proposition that "all men are created equal"[2] by empowering the judiciary to enforce that principle against the states.[3] The Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause applies only to state governments, but the requirement of equal protection has been read to apply to the federal government as a component of Fifth Amendment due process.

More concretely, the Equal Protection Clause, along with the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment, marked a great shift in American constitutionalism. Before the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights protected individual rights only from invasion by the federal government. After the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted, the Constitution also protected rights from abridgment by state leaders and governments, even including some rights that arguably were not protected from abridgment by the federal government. In the wake of the Fourteenth Amendment, the states could not, among other things, deprive people of the equal protection of the laws.
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