Becasue at the time, Congress thought they didn’t have the power to outright ban it. It wasn’t till the New Deal that they pushed through outright criminalization of drugs.
Are you looking for an answer to the question?
Because you basically already answered it. At least the part about them being unsure if they had power under the Commerce Clause to ban alcohol.
OP’s question has been answered…I guess a mod can close this thread?
Criminalization of drugs is largely a state-level affair. Only a small minority of drug prosecutions are federal cases. The FBI doesn’t bust you for having a dimebag in your backpack.
Congress required a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol because they had no authority to ban the sale of alcohol within the states. The amendment gave them that power, and they exercised it by passing the Volstead Act.
I guess my real question is where did Congress get the power to ban marijuana when it had no power to ban alcohol.
The Supreme Court’s interpretation of Congress’ regulatory power under the Commerce Clause has broadened significantly since Prohibition.
If Congress wanted to ban the sale, and even most possession, of alcohol today, there’s no question that almost every federal court in the country would find that it has the power to do so, assuming it follows the last 80 years of precedent.
I think the kicker was when the SCOTUS ruled a farmer growing his own wheat to feed his own livestock affected interstate commerce because had he not grown his own wheat (but he did!), he might have bought wheat from another state (or not!).
Stupidest logic EVAR!
But Marijuana was made illegal at the federal level in 1937. The biggie for the expansion of the use of the commerce clause was Wickard, in 1942. What happened between 1920 and 1937?
The bans are different. During Prohibition, Congress banned all production and sale of alcoholic beverages (with a few exceptions for scientific purposes), irrespective of its effect upon interstate commerce.
Even today, with the courts’ much more expansive interpretations of the interstate commerce clause, such a statute would be completely impossible and unenforceable without the 18th amendment in place.
At the federal level, a large mish-mash of laws and regulations (like the Marijuana Tax Act) were mostly reformed by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. That set the legal framework which regulates drugs at the federal level and bans the importation and interstate sale, transportation, distribution, etc. of illegal drugs. It’s in the definition of “distribution” that things get a little dubious with regards to interstate commerce jurisdiction, but the courts have granted the federal government much leeway in that respect.
It may also interest you to know that federal prohibition of narcotics predates alcohol prohibition. The Harrison Act was passed in 1914.
The Harrison act didn’t outright ban narcotics; it was an end around because they could not do that. And the part about prosecuting doctors who prescribed it for addicts was thrown out in 1925.
The did a similar thing with pornography – the banned sending it through the US mail, the main way it was distributed because most localities banned it, but it did not outright ban porn at the federal level.
The law making it illegal was couched as a tax, precisely because the Commerce Clause was not yet elastic enough to allow outright prohibition.
The marijuana was a tax law as pointed out, but 1937 was big year for expansion of the commerce clause. In the early years of the new deal, Roosevelt was getting most of his ambitions legislative accomplishments struck down on 5-4 votes. The Court then was very much like today, 4 liberals for expanding the ICC, the “four horseman” conservatives who didn’t like any federal power, and one justice who was the Anthony Kennedy of his day.
In 1937, he voted to uphold the Social Security Act in the “switch in time that saved nine”. Shortly after that the conservatives started get old and retiring and Roosevelt replaced them with liberals. By Wickard in 1942, a unanimous court ruled for an expanded ICC.