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Editorial: Outdated pot law again stirs costly trouble

Tue., Jan. 6, 2015

The outdated Controlled Substances Act of 1970 continues to act as a gateway to lunacy, with the latest example being a lawsuit filed by the states of Oklahoma and Nebraska against neighboring Colorado over the legalization of recreational marijuana.

The offended attorneys general fought hard for federalism in warding off the Affordable Care Act’s bid to widen Medicaid eligibility in the two states. Butt out, said Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, and the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately agreed. Now, they want the same court to intervene in Colorado and throttle its legal pot industry.

They filed suit last month, claiming the spillover from Colorado’s legal market is causing the cops in their states to go to great time and expense (both unspecified) to bust people in possession of pot purchased across their borders.

Of course, they have the option of not chasing down pot tourists, but they’ve bought into the notion that marijuana is a serious threat. Oklahoma is also considering a ban on hooded sweatshirts, which offers a glimpse into how fraught with fear and casual with liberty the state has become.

Allaying fears – real or imagined – can be expensive, and the two states say Colorado’s legal market is “draining their treasuries.” But even if Pruitt and Bruning got their way, the black market would remain. The two states would prefer the feds crack down on Colorado, but the Justice Department, in a nod to the 23 states that have legalized marijuana in some form, has backed off.

Washington has been granted the same leeway as Colorado, but we’ve been spared the paranoid neighbors. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson says his office will support Colorado, if necessary.

The problem, as we have stated many times, is that the federal law that Oklahoma and Nebraska cite is ridiculous. It suggests marijuana is as dangerous as heroin, more dangerous than cocaine and meth, and has no medicinal value. In the five decades since its passage, we’ve learned that these judgments are false.

In fact, research published in the August edition of the journal JAMA Internal Medicine shows that the occurrence of fatal opiate overdoses declined in 13 states after they legalized medical marijuana. It appears that marijuana enhances the effects of painkillers, which means lower doses may be prescribed.

Science, not fear, ought to drive this debate.

If marijuana were rescheduled as equivalent to prescription drugs, banks could begin accepting pot proceeds. That would be safer than cash-and-carry commerce. More states would legalize or decriminalize the drug, and law enforcement could redirect their energies to more important matters. And purported federalists could drop their nuisance lawsuits and return to backing states’ rights.

Constitutional scholar Randy Barnett, a foe of federal overreach, has called Pruitt and Bruning “fair weather federalists,” but hypocrisy is the least of it. The federal law continues to enable costly and counterproductive activity.