xxxxx
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leary challenges 1937 tax stamp act and wins (?)
in 1969 timothy leary challenged the 1937 marijuana tax stamp act and won. it seems the act violated the fifth amendment by requiring the purchaser to
incriminate himself somehow or something. anyway in 1970 congress passes the controlled substances act which made penalties for drug possession far
more punitive. i recall reading a case from 1969 where some guy got busted with four ounces of meth and got two consecutive six month terms. the
reason it went to appeal was that he was arguing the terms should have been concurent (he lost). anyway if someone got busted with four ounces of meth
today you can be pretty certain he would get more than two six month sentences. so my question is should leary have challenged the law and why or why
not and what kind of penalty was he facing at that time.
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halogen
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"so my question is should leary have challenged the law and why or why not and what kind of penalty was he facing at that time."
His challenging of the law was well intentioned; and in his mind it constituted a noble purpose. Is fighting for what one believes is right the wrong
thing to do? It makes sense that with that act out of the way, this paved the way for new laws that restricted drug use and posession more harshly
blatantly and publicly. But if the act had remained, it may have been built on anyway. Remember, the people who ban these thing had and continue to
have a purpose. Whether you believe that there is a conspiracy to take power from the masses, or other things, people have gotten together to restrict
personal freedoms. The feds have no right to tell an individual what they can and cannot do with their own bodies.  Grr, I seem to have gone off on a tangent. My point is that if this attempt to restore personal freedom had not
occurred, imagine what else could have resulted.
As to the second portion of your question, to who do you <s>reefer</s> refer to? 
[Edit]
I can't get my strikethrough to work!
[Edited on 11-3-2007 by halogen]
F. de Lalande and M. Prud'homme showed that a mixture of boric oxide and sodium chloride is decomposed in a stream of dry air or oxygen at a red heat
with the evolution of chlorine.
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Sauron
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So Leary was a hero of yours?
The courts and the congress disagree with you about what rights the government has regarding what they deem to be dangerous drugs. As long as the
congress passes laws and the executive signs them and the courts uphold them, the govt will continue to have those rights regardless of what you
think. You and I may or may not like it but there it is. Try telling a federal judge he has no right to sentence you. After that you can tell it to
the felon in the next cell. You'll have time for a lengthy discussion about rights.
Now, if you had said, instead, "The government ought not to have the right to..." I very well might have agreed with you, though perhaps not for the
same reasons.
But that's not what you said. And what you said is simply not true. Wishing it were true does not make it so.
[Edited on 12-3-2007 by Sauron]
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halogen
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Does not the phrase "Human beings have the right to live" have any standing in a state of US which embraces the death penalty and is indeed fond of
it? Rights are rights. Perhaps there is a sad reality that these are not fully realised.
There is also the second possibility that I misphrased myself and I'm defending my self. But this is human nature and if it were the case, I might ask
forgiveness.
But I'm right and you're wrong.
[Edited on 18-3-2007 by halogen]
F. de Lalande and M. Prud'homme showed that a mixture of boric oxide and sodium chloride is decomposed in a stream of dry air or oxygen at a red heat
with the evolution of chlorine.
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Sauron
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Yeah, and let me know when Elvis gets here.
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indigofuzzy
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Well, if I may interject in halogen's defense: As I understand it, having the ability to do something (or take something away) is not the same as
having the right to. I have plenty of ability to do things I have no right to do, regardless of whether or not I'll be punished for it. I also have
encountered times where I have every right to do something but no ability. (For example, filing an appeal against some fraudulent claims my ex
landlord made. I had a right to an appeal, but did not have enough money to pay for one) Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, to believe that rights are
something intrinsic, which frequently fail to be protected, and to similarly believe that governments, militaries, and corporations have legal
protection to do things they have no right to do.
Sauron, I see where you're coming from - that is, a different definition of rights - more precisely, I perceive that what you call rights are "legally
protected rights." Under this definition, I'm sure that everyone has at least a few cases where they believe that some person or group "ought to have
more rights" or "ought not to have certain rights."
So maybe the two of you are arguing semantics, and using different definitions or what constitutes one's "rights."
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xxxxx
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one thing i wanted to mention about the 1970 controlled substances act is that it could be held responsible for the usurping of meth's place as the
primary stimulant drug by cocaine, which as we all know first became widely popular as an illicit drug in the 1970's. so by passing this legislation
congress replaced leary with pablo escobar, which may or may not be preferable depending on one's point of view.
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Sauron
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I am talking about legal rights under the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights and the Amendments, all of which are subject to
frequent interpretation by the judiciary.
So while we would like to think of these as absolutes, sorry, it isn't so.
If anyone wants to argue about natural rights they had best do so in philosphy class because these are meaningless elsewhere.
Even the Declaration of Independence talked about inalienable rights embued by the Creator. However, the legislature, the executive and the judiciary
have all been redefining "inalienable" for two and a half centuries to the point where such language has lost whatever epistomological value it once
had. Sad, really.
However, you either believe that the government is legitimate, and carries out the will of the people, in which case it follows that the rulke of law
is legitimate and needs to be respected; or, you believe that the government is tyrannical and no longer does the will of the people, in which case
you either submit to tyranny, or rise up against it.
I fall into the former group, even though for my own selfish reasons I prefer to reside away from their jurisdiction.
As to the proposition that Leary's lawsuit and/or CSA '70 caused a paradigm shift from amphetamines to cocaine I think that is arrant nonsense.
The rise of the cocaine traffic had to do with two factors:
1. The coincidence of Bobby Vesco and Norm LeBlanc linking up with Escobar and educating him about industrialization, finance, and business,
catalyzing the creation of the Medellin Cartel, and
2. The focus of the DEA at that time on Mexican brown heroin to the virtual exclusion of all other efforts at enforcement.
Then small timer Escobar learned his lessons well from fugitive financier Vesco and his accountant Leblanc, who were residing in Costa Rica at the
time. By the time the DEA took notice of the new cocaine economy it was well entrenched.
The meth business was never centralized, and never amounted to a wart on the fanny of the coke business in terms of popularity and money and sheer
pervasiveness. Not then and not now.
Two totally different matters: a natural product from semi-monopolistic well disciplined multinational cartels, cocaine.
Or, a simple easily prepared synthetic from hundreds, or thousands of clandestine labs, using a great variety of starting materials and methods,
generating product of greatly varying purity.
It's rather like comparing Scottish distilleries during Prohibition with bathtub gin makers and alkie cookers in the slums of Chicago and NYC.
[Edited on 19-3-2007 by Sauron]
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