Kinky Friedman's campaign promise

Independent candidate for Texas governor Kinky Friedman told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he favors legalizing marijuana. If elected, he said, he would try to get nonviolent drug offenders out of prison so violent criminals could occupy those cells instead.

Mr. Friedman made the point that after decades of the "war on drugs," drugs are more available and less expensive than ever before. "What we're doing is not working," he said.

The candidate's spokeswoman, Laura Stromberg, earlier told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the Friedman campaign aims to mobilize the eight million Texas voters who are registered to vote but aren't motivated to get off the couch and go to the polls.

Marijuana's not a bad guess, actually.

Has Kinky Friedman made a campaign promise that he can keep? Can the government of Texas legalize marijuana and release drug offenders from state prison?

Only if Governor Friedman's administration has the guts to unearth a copy of the U.S. Constitution and demand that the U.S. government respect the powers reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment.

The federal Controlled Substances Act is an unconstitutional usurpation of state authority, but no politician in America has been willing to say so. Instead, efforts to legalize marijuana have focused on fictitious exceptions to the Act for medical necessity. The Supreme Court has rejected the idea of an exception, but the justices have avoided the direct question: by what authority does Congress override a state's power to regulate marijuana within its own borders?

Did you know that Prohibition required a constitutional amendment?

Read more about it in "Marijuana, Prohibition and the Tenth Amendment" at www.SusanShelley.com.


Copyright 2006

.