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by is_this_valid2 2919 days ago
> The Controlled Substances Act is flawed because of the locked and immutable nature of it, besides the fact that the drug wars are a failure and it is a health issue not a criminal one.

The Controlled Substances Act has multiple flaws. For one, the CSA explicitly grants different rights to different people on the basis of disability; which is not equal. "Equal Justice Under Law" is etched across the US Federal Supreme Court Building. The US (and now Vietnam) Declarations of Independence read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

The Controlled Substances Act is predicated upon flawed logic: in order to prove a universal quantification ("it doesn't help anyone") one must show that for person in all_people: for condition in all_conditions: doesnt_help_with(x, person, condition; which is impossible when you're not an agency that funds drug research on all people with all conditions.

A single counterexample (an existential quantification) disproves a universal quantification.

Maybe computers and radar required logic skills that would've gone into law.

Furthermore, (1) write a function to determine whether a given Person has a (natural inalienable) right: what information may you require? (2) write a function to determine whether any two Persons have equal rights.

Furthermore, does the Constitution grant legislators the right to grant right-granting privileges to non-legislators?

> Any drug on the CSA should have to be re-proven every 1-3 years to be medically dangerous to be kept on the list.

One epidemiological statistic which could be used as a threshold is called "Margin of Exposure" (MOE). If alcohol sets that standard for legal dangerousness, most other substances are not too dangerous for persons with rights to Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.

> We need a Right to Body amendment at some point to get the state out of it and make drugs a health related matter not a criminal one.

Alcohol Prohibition required a Constitutional Amendment; the Commerce Clause was already in place at the time and yet they felt that the Constitution did not enumerate the power to ban alcohol.

Regarding a person's liberty over their own body and mind: liberty is a natural inalienable right. As is pursuit of happiness.

A person can go buy, say, a chainsaw, and on their own property intentionally remove a limb while holding an apple in their mouth to be shot with flaming arrows on live television, and the government claims no loss; indeed the government has no right to claim loss due to dangerous acts entered into by citizens which do not infringe the rights of others.

More notes on the substance abuse problem and the other problems (e.g. human trafficking) it's complicitly creating:

https://is-this-valid.github.io/liberty

It's good to see that the FDA recognized the medical utility of CBD. Rescheduling or descheduling would be great for research.

3 comments

While largely pedantic, and I mostly agree with you in principle, the hypothetical example is perhaps not the greatest.

A 19-year-old woman[0] is going to be serving 1 month of jail each year, for the next 6 years, due to circumstances quite similar to the example provided; perhaps rightfully so.

I do generally agree with you though -- the drug problem in the US is a health issue and (in the vast majority of situations) should not be a criminal matter. I can't fathom how we can have an AG that wants to use resources to "crack down" on marijuana when that same approach fails to curtail our opioid problems, an unquestionably more serious problem right now.

The disconnect from leadership versus on the ground 'real life' is completely unfathomable. I'm really not sure what a solution would look like when political campaigns are thriving at the extreme ends of the spectrum however.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/2...

A stunt person rides a motorcycle over a canyon; resulting in severe/fatal injury.

A stunt person's assistant materially assists a stunt person in riding a motorcycle over a canyon; resulting in severe/fatal injury.

In which case have whose rights been violated? Who is liable for the loss?

Should the eulogy for a stunt fatality be fundamentally different than for a person who accidentally caused self-harm through risky substance use?

Speaking of liberty to take risk and live TV, the film "Hot Rod" (2007) may provide some insight into what's going on in the mind of a person who is taking unnecessary risks for: acceptance (oxytocin) and excitement (adrenaline); though it doesn't provide any guidance as to how to avoid counterproductively reinforcing risky behaviors.

Keep in mind that these are all paid actors just following orders.

Is substance abuse intentional self-harm (suicide is legal) or a maybe-misguided attempt to pursue Happiness and end suffering?

How would you help Rod make better decisions? If Rod is not infringing rights, is Rod committing a crime by performing dangerous stunts?

Stunting is generally not medically useful.

The government has no obligation to protect people from themselves; only to resolve disputes and determine whether a party actually violated the rights of another or the state.

Public health is a worthwhile expenditure intended to help people make good decisions about their health and safety

As a community, we require standards with which to resolve disputes brought before the court: trade disputes, liability disputes; disputes over loss and infringed rights. In the status quo, such disputes involving illicit substances are resolved by the parties themselves: in the streets. Consumers are very unlikely to implicate themselves or their suppliers in order to bring safety to the market: child-safe packaging and labelling, liability insurance.

Should we require (1) legislation-justifying research to be held and made available for further review; (2) bills which intend to achieve a particular objective to be achieving that objective within a predefined amount of time according to an agreed-upon set of criteria before we continue to throw money at a failing approach?

Does Strict Scrutiny - developed to resolve 14th Amendment Equal Protection cases - implicitly require a bill which is transgressing literally our highest law ("Equal Justice Under Law") to be achieving the public safety interest it intended to solve?

For precedent, In Korematsu (1944) the court ruled that Equal Protection could be set aside in order to send Japanese-looking people to internment camps.

The age-old claim that CBD is not medically useful for any person with any condition is now disproven by the FDA's clearance to market Epidiolex; we should be asking how such an invalid assertion remained on the books; and whether it's ever been legal to differentially prosecute on the basis of disability.

THC is already recognized as on-label medically useful for AIDS and Cancer wasting. THC and other cannabinoids and terpenes may counteract some of the side-effects of just CBD.

well. that conflated a whole lot of separate issues.

you primarily went on a quest to find contradictions while completely ignoring how law actually works in this land

thoughtful though!

We tend to have issues with Equal rights/protections: slavery, voting rights, [school] segregation. Please help us understand how to do this Equally:

> Furthermore, (1) write a function to determine whether a given Person has a (natural inalienable) right: what information may you require? (2) write a function to determine whether any two Persons have equal rights.