OCR Text |
Show ._______ nm ____UNIVE ____RS_rr_v_1o_u_RN_AL __•_s_o_UTHERN_ ............. UT .....A.H ..........UNIVBRS......_-..... ......1....n___ •w ____ m_NBS ___D __A_v_,n_E_c_EMB....___E.._R....",.....1..... " ...... 6......_..... .. "iL ." c::===O ~ P==·=IN ::~ I~O ~N ~=Jjl I WM. F. BUCKLEY, JR. f COMMENTARY i I Marijuana debates The vote in California (forgetting, for one moment, the startling vote in Arizona ) on the marijuana question mobilizes opponents on diverse grounds. Proposition 215, voted in by a heavy majority (56 percent), imposes new laws respecting marijuana. It is probably unsafe to say that the law was "designe d" t o make marijuana available to sick people whose doctors recommend it as a tranquilizer, s tomach settler, or wha tever. U nsafe because it is en tirely possible that the m edical use of marijuana was intended by the vo t ers, but also som ething else: namely, general judicia l reli ef. Prop os iti o n 21 5 is a inde fi nite in th e authority given to doctors to authorize marijuana as Roe v. Wade turned o ut to be to doctors who recommend abortion "for the safety of the 'It mother. " Dazed opponents of 2 15 are prepared to fight on several fronts. The ex citable in California attorney general, Dan Lungran, has sent out the word that 215 is to be int e rpr e t ed ve r y stric tl y as something a d o ctor ha s to recomm end on a caseby-case basis . Some opponents are c it in g fe de ra l laws . The re i s on e s uch agai n s t t h e use o f m ar i ju a na , a n d no dou bt t here will be a legal bat tle o ve r the q ue s tio n . If so, w e will h ear from the solicitor general that a ltho ugh it is th e right of individua l s t a t es t o d ecide w heth e r t he sa le of alcoh ol is legal, the federal government ex e rcises pre-emptive rights when marijuana is the question. The California Medical Association has rece ived 215 as a mandate to th e National Institute of Health (NIH ) to grow up. Many California voters were presumably soured into voting "yes" by the notorious decision of the N IH a year or so ago to refuse to conduct studies on the medical value of smoked marijuana on the ground that to do so would require experimentation with the drug on live people. Such was the reasoning, up unt i l n ot so long ago, of some theologians, who stood in the way of men seeking to ascertain whether they were fertil e on the grounds that to produce examinable semen would require mas turbation. In fact, likely fi_ndings from the NIH could hardly confute the direct evidence of hundreds of witness es t o th e effectiveness of marijuana in certain circumstances as a palliative. The Food and D rug Adminis tration approved the active ingredient (THC) in marij uana years ago, to counteract th e wasting effect of cancer. "But, " the Orange County Register reminds us, "it' s legally available only in pill form, which is criticized as expensive and of little help to patients too nauseated to swallow." It isn ' t likely that any judge in California will find means of freezing Proposition 215 until the NIH comes in with its finding. Mourners over the success of 215 point out that opponents were vastly outspent. Yes , but we are talking nickels and dimes. Supporters of the reform raised $1.8 million, which in California politics is barely enough to squeeze in your middle initial. Opponents spent $28,000. But, the p l ebisci t e was no t iced primarily by atten tio n given to it in editorial and news cov erage. Yo u don't need a lot of paid time to advertise a conclu sion that a)people w ho are sick a n d a re hel ped by marijuan a sh ould be free to take it and b) (if onl y indirectly) that it is time to say no to the narcs who want to arrest and imprison anyone who uses the stuff. It was so in Arizona. There, next door, Arizona's Proposition 200, the Drug Medicalization, Prevention and Control Act, won 65 percent of the vote. It says that Arizona's doctors can prescribe marijuana, heroin and LSD for patients when there is " medical value." The proposition goes further, giving grounds to free some 1,000 prisoners provided that their only crime was dmg po s session. It eliminates crim inal penalties fo r firs t -t im ers caught with small amounts of drugs, so long as they were not invo l ve d in viol ence (simultaneously, Proposit ion 200 stiffened penalties fo r vio lent crimes done under the influence of drugs). At moments like this, one r~ally has to cheer the federal system. Ten years from now, one s h ould h ave t he da t a with wh ich soberly to assess th e diffe ren ce between life an d health and justice in California under the new law and, say, New York under the old law. It is vital for those who welcome Proposition 215 to bear in mind that effectively eliminating the legal penalty against nonch alant pot is no reason to abandon educational warnings against its use and medical warning against its abuse. NAT HENTOFF j COMMENTARY ' ' Constitution Lost There have been American presidents to whom the Constitution has been a nuisance to be overruled by any means necessary . In 1798, only seven yea rs after the Bill of Rights was ratified , John A dams triumphantly led Congress in the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which imprisoned a number of journalists and other for bringing the president or Congress into "contempt or disrepute." So much for the First Amendment. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln actually suspended the writ of hab e as c orpu s. Alleg ed constitutional guarantees of peaceful dissent were swept away during the First World War- with the approval of Woodrow Wilson. For example, there were more than 1, 900 prosecutions for anti- wa r books , ne wspaper articles, pamphlets and speeches. And Richard Nixon seemed t o regard the Bill of Rights as primarily a devilish source of aid to his enemy. No American president, however, has done so much damage to constitutional lib e rtie s as Bill Clinton- often with the consent of Republicans in Congress. But it has been Clinton who had th e power and the will to serious l y w eaken our binding document in ways that were almost e ntirely ignored b y th e electorate and the press during the campaign. Unlike Lincoln , for e xampl e, C linto n did a lo t more th a n te mporarily suspend habeas corpus. One of his b ill s that h a s been enacted into law guts th e rights that Th o mas Jeffers on in sis ted be included in the Constitution. A state prisoner on death row now has on ly a year to petition a federal court to review the constitutionalit y of h is trial or sentence. In many previous cases of prisoners eventually freed aft er years of waiting to be executed, proof of t h eir innocence has been discovered long after the present one year limit. Moreover, the Clinton adminis tra t ion is- as the ACLU's Laura Murphy recently told the National Law fournal- " The most wiretap-friendly administration in history." And Clinton ordered th e Justice Departmen t to appeal a unanimous T hird Circuit Court of Appeals decision declaring unconstitutional the Communications Decency Act cen soring the Internet. There is a chilling insouciance in Clinton's elbowing the Constitution out of the way . He blithely, for instance, has stripped the courts of the ir power to h e ar William F. Buckley, fr. is a nationally certain kinds of cas es . As Anthony syndicated columnist, and author of On Lewis points out in the New York Time s, C linto n h as d en ied m'.l.ny The Rigpt. is vital for those who welcome Proposition 215 to , bear mind that effectively eliminating the legal penalty against nonchalant pot is no reason to abandon educational warnings against its use and medical warning against its abuse.' ~ .J people their day in court. For one example, says Lewis, " The new immigration law ... takes away the rights of thousands of aliens who may be entitled to legalize their situation under a 1986 statute giving amnesty to illegal aliens. " Cases involving as many as 300,000 people who may still qualify fo r amnesty have been waiting to be decided. All have now been thrown out of court by the new immigration law. There have been other C l into n revisions of the Constitution, but in s um- as David Boaz of the Cato Instituti on has accurately put itClinton has shown II a breathtaking v iew of the power of the federal government, a view directly opposite the meaning of ' civil libertarian." During the campaign, there was no mention at all of this breathtaking exercis e of federal powe r ov e r constitutional liberties. None by former Sen. Bob Dole, who has largely been in agreement with this big government approach t o constitutional guarantees. N or did the press ask the candidates about the Constitution. Laura Murphy concludes that "both Clinton and Dole are indicativ e o f how fa r t he American people h ave s lipped away from the n o ti ons embodied in the Bill of Rights. 11 She omitted the role of the press, which seems focused primarily on that part of the First Amendment that protects the press. Parti c ularl y re vealing we re the endorsements of Clinton by the New York Times, Th e Wa shington Pos t and the New Republic, a mong others. In none of them was the president's civil liberties record probed. (Th e Post did mention the FBI files at t he White House .) Other e thi cal problems were cited, but nothing was mentioned about habeas co rpus , court stripping, lowering the content of the Internet to material suitable for c h ildren, and the Clinton Administration's de cided lack of concern for privacy protections of the individual against increasingly advanced government technology. A revealing footnote tot he electorate's ignorance of t h i s subverting of the Constitution is a statement by N. Don Wycl i ff, editorial page editor of the Chicago Tribune. He tells Newsw eek t hat "people are not e nga ge d in the (political) process beca use there are no compelling issues driving them to participate. It would be differe nt if we didn't have peace a nd prosperity." What m ore could w e possib l y want? N a t Hentoff is a n a tion ally reno w ned_authori t y on the Fi rst Amendment. ······· ·· |