Why is it that Prohibition required an amendment to our constitution but the war on drugs doesn’t? I mean hemp was required to be grown in the colonies and isn’t the Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence written on hemp? Passing an amendment to ban something seems like the most time consuming and hardest way to enact a law.
It’s not so much that it required an amendment to The Constitution, as the temperance movement thought that would be the most forceful way to implement their goals.
You’d have thought we would have learned a lesson from that exercise, and skipped the prohibition on other substances.
They get around the laws currently at the federal level by implementing the “Regulation of Interstate Commerce” clause. Their logic goes something like “It may not be intended for interstate trade, but it could be, so we’ll regulate it ‘just in case’.”
I’m sure someone will be along with a cite soon enough.
The 21st Amendment not only repealed prohibition (18th Amendment) but the second section
TSCOTUS has interpreted this to mean states, not the federal government have near total control over alcohol within their state lines.
For instance the court ruled the 21st Amendment overrides the Commerce Clause of the constitution.
The court has ruled at various times the 21st Amendments trumps other areas and then they’ve reversed themselves and so forth.
So unlike all other “products,” the 21st Amendment gives special rules to alcohol.
Isn’t that a precedent then for applying that format to another ‘product’ now?
Why can’t the “U-turn” on Prohibition be used to make a case for the legislation of other drugs?
Is it just because those who had a finger in the pie of alcohol consumption back then, had more of an influence in politics than those advocating for marijuana legislation now?
I suppose, back then we didn’t have a massive media organisation being used to poison the well of discourse in the mainstream, like associating the use of cannabis with the greed and violence linked with crack dealing?
Gonzales v. Raich is the most relevant SCOTUS opinion on the subject.
Because the Commerce Clause, as interpreted in the early 1900’s, didn’t give Congress the power to ban manufacture and consumption of alcohol within a state. Since then, federal jurisprudence, especially in the case of Wickard v. Fulbin, has expanded the clause so that Congress can regulate virtually anything.
Others have pretty much said it. Basically, back then, the national government respected the fact that they were one of few, enumerated powers and that the bulk of other powers (like prohibiting alcohol) were strictly reserved to the states. In order to have a nationwide prohibition, an amendment was required.
Today the feds recognize almost no limits on their own power except what is expressly forbidden for them to do (sort of putting the 10th amendment on its head)