Hee, hee

Topic: Drugs Health

The SCOTUS has ruled that growing pot in your own home, for your own use, with no intent to sell, let alone transport across state lines, is covered somehow under the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution. On the face of it, this seems a reach.

I think it's a bad decision mostly because I think US drug policy is insane. The major beneficiaries of that policy are the drug dealers, whose profits are massively inflated as a result, and law enforcement, whose drug budget is truly enormous. The policy has resulted in more, higher-quality drugs, available more and more readily. It has clearly failed. The reason it continues is that both the cops and the criminals want it to, and when their interests are aligned it's very hard to move against them.

The ever-cogent John Cole doesn't like the Supreme Court's ruling either, but he bases his objection on state's rights grounds.

In other news (and this is where the title of this entry comes in) the Dutch Government may be stopping its medical marijuana program (that link is to Salon, so you'll have to be a member or watch a short commercial). Not for any medical reason, mind you, but because even when selling drugs, the government couldn't make a profit. Seems that the regulated medical-grade stuff was too expensive, and wasn't promoted. It's almost as if they wanted it to fail. If I were a little more of a conspiracy theorist, I'd suspect the heavy hand of the US drug monolith.