Gonzales v. Raich (formerly Ashcroft v. Raich ), 545 US 1 (2005), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court that under the US Constitutional Trade Clause, Congress may criminalize the production and use of homegrown marijuana even if state law permits its use for medicinal purposes.
Video Gonzales v. Raich
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California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, legalizing the use of medical marijuana. The Federal Government of the United States has restricted the use of marijuana since the 1937 Ganja Tax Law came into force.
Defendant Angel Raich uses a homemade medical marijuana, which is legal under California law but is illegal under federal law. On August 15, 2002, Butte County Sheriff's Department officers and agents from the Federal Agency for Drug Enforcement destroyed all six of Diane Monson's marijuana plants in California, which faced mild resistance. The cannabis plant is an illegal Schedule I drug under the Federal Controlled Control Act (CSA), which is the Title II of the Prevention of Abuse and Control of Drug Abuse in 1970. Monson and Raich are suing, claiming that Federal law enforcement against them would violate Trafficking Clause, Fifth Amendment Process Clause, Ninth Amendment, Tenth Amendment, and doctrine of medical needs.
Doctor Raich states that without marijuana, Raich is threatened by extreme pain. California is one of 14 states (now 29) that allows the use of cannabis drugs. California's Compassionate Use Act allows the use of limited marijuana for medicinal purposes.
Maps Gonzales v. Raich
Raich and Monson Cases
Raich of Oakland, California, Monson of Oroville, California, and two anonymous caregivers sued the government for redress and a declaration on October 9, 2002, to stop governments from harassing their right to produce and use medical marijuana that claims that CSA is unconstitutional, as applied to their behavior. Raich and Monson are represented by Randy Barnett.
Raich claims he uses marijuana to keep him alive. He and his doctor claimed to have tried dozens of prescription drugs because of his numerous medical conditions and that he was allergic to most of them. His doctor declared under oath that Raich's life was at stake if he could not continue using marijuana. Monson suffered chronic pain from a car accident a decade before the case. She uses marijuana to relieve the pain and muscle spasms around her spine.
Government case
The Controlled Substances Act does not recognize the medical use of marijuana. Agents from the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration were assigned to break up California medical marijuana cooperatives and to confiscate their assets. That is the result of the belief that federal law has preceded, under Supremacy Clause, California law. The Government is of the opinion that if one exception is made to the Controlled Substance Act, it will become invalid in practice. The government also believes that consuming localized marijuana grown for medical purposes affects the marijuana market and the federal government can regulate and ban such consumption.
The argument comes from the historic New Deal case
Litigation
On December 16, 2003, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals gave a preliminary injunction to prevent the federal government from interfering in Raich and Monson: "We find that the applicants have demonstrated a strong possibility of succeeding on their claim that, as applied to them, the Controlled Substance Act is unconstitutional exercise of the authority of the Congressional Trade Authority. "
Organization involved
The partnership for drug-free Americans, several other antidrug organizations, an alliance of seven Representatives, including Mark Souder and Katherine Harris, all filed amicus briefs for the federal government. An environmental group, the Council on Community Rights, also filed a brief report for the government for fear that restrictions on federal power would undermine its agenda.
Cato Institute, Institute for Justice, many libertarian organizations, and the National Organization for Marijuana Law Reform, along with other groups opposing the War on Drugs, filed briefings for Raich and Monson. The governments of California, Maryland, and Washington also filed a report supporting Raich. Attorney General Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, three highly conservative Southern anti-government states, filed Raich's short support, on the basis of state rights.
Decision
The decision was 6-3 with Judge Stevens writing court opinions, joining Judges Kennedy, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer. Concurring opinion submitted by Justice Scalia.
Opinions begin by showing that respondents do not argue that Congress has the power to control or ban marijuana for non-medical use:
The respondents in this case do not question that the CSA section, as part of the Prevention of Abuse and Control of the Comprehensive Act, is in the trading power of the Congress. Nor do they argue that any provision or part of the CSA is an unconstitutional exercise of congressional authority. Conversely, the challenges of the respondents are actually very limited; they argue that the CSA categorical ban on the manufacture and possession of marijuana as applied to the manufacture and possession of marijuana is intrastate for medical purposes in accordance with the laws of California exceeds the authority of Congress under the Trade Clause.
Prohibiting the growth of cannabis for medical purposes, the Court reasoned, is a permissible way to prevent or restrict access to cannabis for other uses:
Even respondents acknowledge the existence of a black market in marijuana; indeed, Raich personally participated in the market, and Monson expressed his willingness to do so in the future. More concretely, one concern for encouraging the inclusion of wheat grown for home consumption under the 1938 Act is that rising market prices can pull the wheat into interstate markets, resulting in lower market prices. Wickard, 317 AS, at 128. The parallel concern that makes it right to include marijuana grown for home consumption in CSA is the possibility that high demand in interstate markets will attract marijuana to that market. While home-wheat switching tends to override federal interests in stabilizing prices by regulating the volume of commercial transactions in interstate markets, homegrown marijuana diversions tend to thwart federal interests in eliminating commercial transactions in interstate markets as a whole. In either case, the regulation is in fact in the power of the Congress trade because the production of commodities intended for home consumption, whether grain or marijuana, has a substantial influence on supply and demand in the national market for the commodity.
The majority opinion does not address the contradiction that the production of cannabis by respondents for personal use actually helps Congress's interest in reducing interstate marijuana trade rather than disrupting the rule.
The relevant precedent for Court analysis is Wickard v. Filburn (1942), United States v. Lopez (1995), and United States v. Morrison (2000).
Scalia's Opinion
Judge Scalia wrote a separate agreement that had the effect of distinguishing decisions from previous results United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison . In his departure from his textual interpretation of the Constitution (he selects the limit on the Trade Clause in Lopez's and Morrison's decisions), Scalia says his understanding of the Necessary and Appropriate Clause causes him to choose a Trade Clause with Raich for the following reasons:
Unlike the power to regulate activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, the power to enact legislation enabling effective cross-border trade regulation can only be carried out in conjunction with the congressional rules of the interstate market, steps needed to create effective intergovernmental regulation. As Lopez himself stated, and the Court affirms today, Congress may regulate non-economic intrastation activities only if failure to do so "can... undermine" the regulation of interstate commerce.... This is not a threatening force to abolish the line between "what's really national and what's really local."
Disagreements
Justice O'Connor did not agree to join Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote majority opinion in the United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison . O'Connor started his opinion by quoting Lopez, whom he followed with reference to the opinion of Judge Louis Brandeis who disagreed at the New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann :
We uphold the "external borders" of the Congressional Trade Congress authorities not for their own benefit, but to protect the historic territory of the state's sovereignty from excessive federal encroachment and thereby maintain a fundamental distribution of power for our federalist government system. United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 557 (1995); NLRB v. Jones & amp; Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, 37 (1937). One of the major virtues of federalism, of course, is that it promotes innovation by allowing the possibility that "a single brave State, if its citizens choose, functions as a laboratory, and tries new social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U. S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., disagree).
Dia menyimpulkan:
Relying on the abstract statement of the Congress, the Court has ratified making it a federal crime to plant small amounts of cannabis in their own homes for self-medication use. These advantages inhibit the firm choice by some countries, who care about the lives and freedoms of their people, to organize medical marijuana differently. If I was a California citizen, I would not vote for a medical marijuana ballot initiative; if I am a California legislator, I will not support the Compassionate Use Act. But regardless of California's experimental policy with medical marijuana, the principle of federalism that has encouraged our Clause of Commerce case requires room for experimentation to be protected in this case.
Justice Thomas also wrote disagreements separately, stating in part:
Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich used unposted or sold marijuana, which never crossed state borders, and it had no demonstrable effect on the national market for cannabis. If Congress can regulate this under the Trade Clause, then it can manage virtually anything - and the Federal Government is no longer a limited force and is mentioned.
The local cultivation of the respondents and consumption of marijuana is not "Trade... among some Countries."
[...]
There is, of course, no evidence from the standpoint that shows that "trade" includes the possession of good goods or private activities that do not involve trade or value exchange. In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could ban local cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana.
[...]
If the Federal Government can regulate the growth of half a dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption (not because it is an interstate trade, but because it is closely tied to interstate commerce), then the power of Article I Congress' - expanded by Necessary and Correct Clauses - has no means. Whether or not Congress aims to have drugs, weapons, or some other item, it can continue to "take over the power of the state police under the guise of regulating trade."
[...]
If the majority must be taken seriously, the Federal Government can now regulate quilting bees, clothing drives, and pickup dinners in all 50 countries. This makes a mockery of Madison's belief to the New Yorkers that the "delegated powers" to the Federal Government are "few and definable", while the states are "numerous and unlimited."
Next event
Both Raich and Monson have indicated their intention to continue to use marijuana for medical purposes, irrespective of the ruling and federal laws on the subject.
Two days after the ruling, the International Narcotics Supervisory Board issued a statement indicating that the Council "welcomes the decision of the United States Supreme Court, made on June 6, reaffirming that the planting and use of marijuana, even if it is for 'medical' use, should be banned. "
His president, Hamid Ghodse, noted, "Marijuana is classified under international conventions as a drug with a number of personal and public health issues" and refers to the status of Schedule I of drugs, under the Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs.
Immediately after the decision at Raich, the Supreme Court vacated a lower court's decision in the United States v. Stewart and return it to the appeals court for review in relation to Raich . At Remand, the Ninth Circuit states that Congress has the Clause Trade power to criminalize the possession of homemade machine guns, as does having the power to criminalize homegrown marijuana.
In 2007, the Ninth Circuit decided against Raich, as he renewed his litigence on the basis of substantive legal processes. Judge Harry Pregerson, the author of the opinion, noted that the state minority has legalized medical marijuana but under federal law, it does not recognize "fundamental rights" under the clauses of the legal process:
For now, federal law is blind to future wisdom when the right to use medical marijuana to reduce extreme pain may be considered fundamental. Although the day has not yet arrived, given that for the last ten years eleven countries have legalized the use of medical marijuana, the day may be faster than expected. Until the day comes, federal law does not recognize the basic right to use medical marijuana prescribed by licensed physicians to alleviate the tremendous pain and human suffering.
In 2009, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder issued new guidelines that made it possible to no longer enforce a federal ban in some situations:
It would not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illness or their caregivers who comply with state laws on medical marijuana, but we would not tolerate drug traffickers hiding behind compliance claims against state law to cover activities which is obviously illegal.
When C-SPAN Brian Lamb interviewed former Judge John Paul Stevens about Stevens' book, Five Heads, Stevens quoted Gonzales as a case in which he upheld the law even though he deplored the policy.
In Congress, to counter the effects of this verdict, Representatives Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) annually introduce laws to stop the Justice Department from arrest and prosecution of medical marijuana patients. This effort succeeds for the first time as a Rohrabacher-Farr amendment to the federal omnibus expenditure bill for fiscal year 2015 (section 538), which was ratified on December 16, 2014.
See also
- Wickard v. Filburn (1942)
- South Dakota v. Dole (1987)
- Marijuan legal history in the United States
- List of US Supreme Court cases, volume 545
- Cannabis Control, Regulations, and Education Act
- List of US Supreme Court cases
References
External links
- Text Gonzales v. Raich , 545 US 1 (2005) is available from: Ã, Cornell Ã, Ã, CourtListener Ã, Findlaw Google Scholar Ã, Justia Ã, OpenJurist Oyez
- Legal & amp; Historical Analysis of the Separation of Federal and State Sovereignty at NolanChart.com
- Against government:
- David Morris, AlterNet , June 15, 2005, The Sainted Clause
- Pot Shots at Counterpunch.org Journalism articles on arguments, cases.
- The Angel Raich website in this case. Includes all legal summary
- raich-v-ashcroft.com. Site Older Angel Raich.
- The Drug Policy Alliance article on the case
- Short Amicus from Cato Institute
- Supporting government:
- Amicus brief from Drug Free America Foundation and others (submitted to Supreme Court) (from Angel website)
- INCB: US Supreme Court ruling on Cannabis uphold International Law, International Narcotics Control Board, June 8, 2005.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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