It’s now 35 years after Dick Nixon started this “war” -  and we now have over 1 million – yes, 1 MILLION – non-violent people sitting behind bars.  People who are in jail not for harming other people, but for making a personal choice that the politicians in government don’t want them to make.

And you – yes, you – are paying for their room and board.

How much more can we accept invasions of our privacy, monitoring of our bank accounts, the shackling and imprisoning of everyday people? How much more can we spend?  How much more can this country endure?

These are some of the questions that Texas filmmaker Kevin Booth has set out to answer in his explosive new documentary, American Drug War:

Three and a half years in the making the film follows gang members, former DEA agents, CIA officers, narcotics officers, judges, politicians, prisoners and celebrities. Most notably the film befriends Freeway Ricky Ross; the man many accuse for starting the Crack epidemic, who after being arrested realized his cocaine source was working for the CIA.

American Drug War “the last white hope” shows how money, power and greed have corrupted not just dope fiends but an entire government. More importantly, it shows what can be done about it. This is not some ‘pro-drug’ stoner film, but a collection of expert testimonials from the ground troops on the front lines of the drug war, the ones who are fighting it and the ones who are living it.

According to Booth, “This is not some ‘pro-drug’ stoner film, but a collection of expert testimonials from the ground troops on the front lines of the drug war, the ones who are fighting it and the ones who are living it.”

Keep in mind that every single action of the DEA (and the entire federal government) in support of the federal war on drugs is a direct violation of the Constitution.

The Constitution was written under a principle called “positive grant.”  This means that the federal government is allowed to exercise only those powers which are specifically given to it in the Constitution.

If the power is positively listed, then the feds are granted the authority to do it.

Pretty easy, right?

Not in practice, and the founders knew how tyrants would want to abuse their power.  They felt that limiting the government through positive grant was so important that they codified this principle in law as the 10th Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

A simple reading of the Constitution would make it quite clear that there’s nothing that empowers the federal government to engage in the criminalization of drugs – in fact, it says nothing about drugs at all.

In fact, the only crimes that are considered federal crimes by the Constitution are – treason, piracy, and counterfeiting.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

Thus, the government has gone WAY outside their purview of power to engage in this increasingly costly and destructive war – this insanity needs to end.
It’s my hope that “American Drug War” will bring this to light to at least a few more people.

It’s definitely on my “must-see” list as soon as it’s released.

Read more on the war on drugs here, here, and here.

States rights have no bearing when thugs shut down businesses, destroy families, and throw people in jail.

From the MSNBC report:

Federal authorities contend that marijuana is an illegal drug, no matter how it used or who uses it, and they don’t honor the state laws.

It’s quite simple.  Federal “authorities” don’t care what your local laws are, don’t care what your personal choices are and don’t care what reason you have for your choices.

All they care about is their own power.  Period.

But, there’s nothing, whatsoever, in the US Constitution which permits the federal government to wage a “drug war.”

The Constitution was written under the principle of “positive grant,” which means that the federal government is authorized to exercise only those powers which are specifically listed in the Constitution.  The rest, as the 10th Amendment states, are to be “reserved to the States, respectively, or to the People.”

A simple reading of the Constitution would make it quite clear to anyone, that there’s nothing mentioned about drug wars, drugs, marijuana, plants, or anything of the like.

Thus, it’s not only the federal marijuana laws that are unconstitutional, but the entire federal “war on drugs.”

It’s time to bring this multi-billion dollar attack on your liberty to an end.

We’d like to think that FDA officials have only our health and safety in mind when they decide on what food or medicines they’ll allow us to buy. But, sadly enough, they’re as politically motivated as any politician in Washington.

Certain industries and corporations are rewarded, while many others are restricted, punished, or prevented from entering the marketplace. There is no such thing as a regulatory agency that is free from politics, which is all the more reason to keep the FDA out of our personal health care decisions.

FDA regulations have often prevented Americans from gaining access to new life-saving drugs. Examples of this include major delays in the marketing of drugs used to treat cancer, blood pressure, heart attacks, cholesterol, and strokes

People have suffered unnecessarily — or even died — with such problems as heart disease, depression, schizophrenia, kidney cancer, and epilepsy, just because FDA officials were afraid of the political consequences they would face if they made even a minor mistake.

What might be considered even worse than the intrusion on personal choice, the FDA, by its very existence, gives people a false sense of security. It cultivates a lazy and complacent population; people assume that a government stamp of approval means that drugs must be safe, and they don’t need to study them at all before consuming them.

But the track record for FDA-approved products hardly inspires confidence. In fact, far more Americans have died using approved pharmaceuticals than others, such as nutritional supplements. Not every product on the market will perform as claimed, and that holds true for the drugs approved by the FDA too.

For many years, the FDA wouldn’t allow aspirin makers to state on their product labels that aspirin thinned blood and could therefore save a person from dying if taken during a heart attack. They threatened them with fines or imprisonment if they published this important information on their products.

Also, natural health solutions are available for many diseases today but are not accepted by the FDA and in many cases prohibited by them. And this is not to mention the fact that under FDA supervision, an estimated one million Americans were never told they were given Hepatitis C-infected blood.

Another good example of the evils of the FDA was the Imclone scandal (yes, it’s the same Imclone that landed Martha Stewart in jail!). At first, the FDA rejected its drug for cancer treatment on the grounds that some of its research and testing procedures weren’t followed to the letter. A year later, after adjusting some procedures and getting their paperwork straightened out, the FDA approved the drug – the exact same drug they rejected previously.

What happened? It turned out that the drug was safe, and was safe right from the beginning, just like Imclone stated. But, did anyone at the FDA ever think of the number of people who may have suffered or died because they weren’t allowed access to this drug which had already undergone extensive testing? This is a drug that works like chemo-therapy, but with much less side effects. During that additional year of delay, countless people could’ve benefited from its use while the FDA was supposedly protecting them.

The problem, then, is clear. If the FDA keeps both bad information and bad drugs off the market, it also keeps both good information and good drugs off the market. The approval process has become so horrendously expensive that new life-saving drugs are either not brought to market or experience lengthy delays.

Because of this extensive process, the FDA is also directly responsible for high drug costs. Pharmaceutical companies often spend in the hundreds of millions of dollars to get a single drug to the market. Why? FDA rules make it that expensive. But, unfortunately, many drugs never get FDA approval, and drug companies naturally have to charge extremely high prices for their approved drugs to make up for these great losses. On top of it, big pharma companies end up spending massive amounts of time and money on lobbying so as to ensure that friendly “regulators” are hired, and that drug patent periods are as long as possible.

Much worse, the FDA does not permit U.S. citizens to reimport drugs that sell for anywhere from 30 to 300 percent less outside this nation’s borders. Such limitations keep prices high, and should be considered nothing short of scandalous. Pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to profit from this government-enforced price fixing, but they do.

Why should you be forced to pay an artificially-inflated price for drugs, when the identical drug is available in Canada, Mexico, or Europe for just a fraction of the cost? To protect people from their own choices, the politicians prevent us from reimporting drugs at huge savings.

The mandate of the FDA is to protect American consumers, but this is based on the assumption that bureaucrats know what’s best for you. It’s based on the assumption that you are an idiot, and that you are unable to research what’s good and bad for you. It’s based on the assumption that you aren’t capable of making responsible choices for yourself. It’s also based on the assumption that all drug-makers and physicians are either unethical or criminal.

The answer is simple even if the solution is not. Get rid of this beast. There’s nothing in the Constitution which authorizes its existence anyway. It’s time to abolish the FDA.

Its current incarnation began just over a century ago, in 1906. Logically, that means that people in this country were able to survive without the FDA for much longer than it’s existed. We, like our ancestors, don’t need a centralized agency giving us rules, guidelines, and orders. We’re able to decide for ourselves what’s best for us. How? By word-of-mouth, doctor recommendations, third-party certifying organizations, by reading, or anything else that the FDA claims to be the sole provider of.

The real issue, though, is much deeper. It’s not just whether the FDA does a good job or not. It’s not just whether the FDA is politically motivated or not. It’s not just whether there’s a better system or not. The real issue is this; who makes the decisions for you – you or the government?

The politicians want us to believe that for every situation there is a government solution. But, in a free society, you get to decide what medical treatments or health supplements are right for you.

In abiding by the Tenth Amendment’s mandate for strictly limited government, all agencies not authorized by the Constitution must be abolished. Eliminating the FDA is not only legally required, it’s morally sound.

Getting rid of the FDA would allow you to make important choices according to your own beliefs and values. For the sickest of people, the opportunity to live in a free society such as this would not only be beneficial and just; it may be a matter of life itself.

Federal agents raided two south Modesto homes Wednesday, uncovering an indoor marijuana farm that may be linked to an Asian crime syndicate operating out of the Bay Area.

Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents, Internal Revenue Service officers and Galt police served a search warrant at a two-story house in the 1700 block of Rancho Encantado Lane at 10:30 a.m. The house was next door to a day-care center.

That brings to 50 the number of houses that have been raided from Modesto to Sacramento that are believed to be connected to the crime ring, Taylor said.

The fact of the matter here is that people have an inalienable right to do what they want with their own bodies. And, more importantly, since the Constitution does not specifically authorize the federal government to prohibit drugs, actions such as these are in clear violation of the Tenth Amendment.

Federal drug laws (the Controlled Substance Act) ban the possession of marijuana as well as a number of other drugs, while the FDA continues to legalize other drugs made by corporations that have enormous political influence.

But, the essential question is this: If a simple federal law is all that was needed to ban marijuana, why did Alcohol Prohibition in the 1920’s require a constitutional amendment?

James Madison made it quite clear that the federal government would only be able to exercise the powers that were specifically delegated to it in the Constitution. In Federalist #45 he wrote:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negociation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The Tenth Amendment gave Madison’s opinion the force of law, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

When the United States imposed a nationwide ban on the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol in 1919, a Constitutional Amendment was required. This is because the Constitution did not, and still does not today, give the federal government the power to prohibit alcohol. (or any other substance, for that matter) As we all know, this was eventually repealed. In 1933 another Constitutional Amendment was required to repeal the previous prohibition.

The federal government now argues that it is allowed to prohibit the possession of marijuana and other drugs, because they fall within the realm of interstate commerce. Obviously, this wasn’t the case back in 1919. So what changed? How could the Commerce Clause of the Constitution morph into something that would apply today?

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that the “Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce among the several states…” This “commerce clause” is the legal bedrock for all federal regulation of business activity that crosses state lines.

We must take note, the Commerce Clause itself was never meant by the Founders to be some sort of blank check for absolute control over anything and everything we do that might have some sort of influence on some sort of commercial activity. But, that distorted view is just what all three branches force us to accept today.

In reality, though, the economic purpose of Article I, Section 8 was almost exactly the opposite of what the government has been telling us since the FDR years.

The original meaning and intent of the Commerce Clause was to make “normal” or “regular” commerce between the states. It was written to ensure that States wouldn’t prohibit the free-flow of commerce from state to state through tariffs, taxes, quotas, and the like. The idea was to ensure that trade was made “regular.” Thus, it was designed to promote trade and not to restrict it.

Since the explicit language used in the Controlled Substances Act, just like economic regulation in most every other realm, prohibits the free flow of goods, it is therefore completely repugnant to the meaning and intent of the Commerce Clause.

Even the great centralizer Alexander Hamilton specifically noted in Federalist #17 that the Commerce Clause would have no effect on such matters:

The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction.

James Madison concurred in Federalist #42 that the commerce clause would “provide for the harmony and proper intercourse among the States.”

Thus, the Commerce Clause has been converted from a power to eliminate prohibitive trade barriers put up by states into all-encompassing police power over anything that the government tells us is “related” to commerce. Therefore, we vehemently reject this distorted use of the commerce clause to interfere with the right of the States and People to determine the legality of marijuana.

Since the commerce clause is not a valid argument for the increase of federal power, we must, then, ask that essential question once again. If all that was needed to ban alcohol was some legislation from Congress that would list it as a banned substance, then why did the government go through so much trouble with the Constitutional Amendments? Why is marijuana different in 2007 than alcohol was in 1919?

The answer is quite simple. It isn’t. Setting constitutional arguments against prohibition aside, the fact remains. To do something of this magnitude – something that the Constitution doesn’t authorize – would require a constitutional amendment. But, as per the norm, our politicians refuse to follow the rules that govern them. With the flick of a pen, they dictate what is good and what is bad. What is allowed and what is not.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (2006), American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its own citizens for marijuana “violations.”

Sooner or later a new question will have to be asked amongst “We the People”: Does the federal government have the power under the Constitution to stop cities and states from legalizing marijuana?

The answer must be a resounding no!