Another State Legalizes Medical Marijuana

Rhode Island is about to legalize Medical Marijuana with the State licensing dispensaries.

PROVIDENCE — Nearly a decade after patient advocates first pressed for full-scale legalization of marijuana for medical use, Rhode Island on Tuesday became only the second state to establish state-licensed dispensaries to sell the drug to the critically ill.

Senate lawmakers gave final approval to the House and Senate versions of the legislation, sending it to the governor’s desk with enough votes to override a veto, if necessary.

Governor Carcieri, a longtime critic of medical marijuana, confirmed in a brief interview Tuesday that he will “do the same thing I’ve done with it in the past.” A year ago he vetoed a compromise plan to study the concept, saying it would “move Rhode Island further down the path of weakening the laws governing — and public perception of — illicit drugs.”

But Senate lawmakers approved the legislation in an easy 31-2 vote Tuesday, days after the House approved the same plans in a 63-5 vote. Both tallies are well beyond the three-fifths majority needed to override a veto.

Senate sponsor Rhoda Perry, D-Providence, predicts that if required, the Assembly will override a gubernatorial veto before the session ends later this month.

“That’s one of the reasons that we [passed] it as fast as we did it,” Perry said. “We still have a few weeks left here … I just can’t imagine the leadership wouldn’t have the will to override a veto.”

So how many States would that be total?

Fourteen since California started the ball rolling in Nov. of 1996. A bit more than one a year. Not too bad.

States Rights

This will have a lot of ramifications if Wickard vs. Filburn is overturned. Justice Thomas in his dissent in Raich took the stance that Wickard was wrongly decided. So there is one Justice on board. The States only need four more.

Here is my favorite part of Thomas' Raich dissent.

Monson and Raich neither buy nor sell the marijuana that they consume. They cultivate their cannabis entirely in the State of California–it never crosses state lines, much less as part of a commercial transaction. Certainly no evidence from the founding suggests that “commerce” included the mere possession of a good or some purely personal activity that did not involve trade or exchange for value. In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana.

This current dust up is about the law recently passed in Montana.

The state of Montana has signed into power a revolutionary gun law. The State of Montana has defied the federal government and their gun laws. This will prompt a showdown between the federal government and the State of Montana. The federal government fears citizens owning guns. They try to curtail what types of guns they can own. The gun control laws all have one common goal, confiscation of privately owned firearms.

Montana has gone beyond drawing a line in the sand. They have challenged the Federal Government. The fed now either takes them on and risks them saying the federal agents have no right to violate their state gun laws and arrest the federal agents that try to enforce the federal firearms acts. This will be a world-class event to watch. Montana could go to voting for secession from the union, which is really throwing the gauntlet in Obama’s face. If the federal government does nothing they lose face.

We certainly do live in interesting times.

Cross Posted at Classical Values