Federal legislation was introduced this week to withhold highway funding from state legislatures that do not pass laws enacting mandatory minimum penalties for anyone convicted of driving under the influence of illegal drugs. The bill, H.R. 3907, comes two weeks after panelists at a conference co-sponsored by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) called on federal officials to develop "uniform standards" and "model legislation" to encourage states to enact and/or modify their DUID (driving under the influence of drugs) laws.

Ten states (Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, and Wisconsin) have enacted so-called "zero tolerance" per se laws which make it a criminal offense to operate a motor vehicle while having a drug or drug metabolite in one's body or bodily fluids - even if the driver's ability to drive is not impaired. Under such statutes, individuals can be found guilty of violating the law if the driver is found to have been operating a motor vehicle with any amount of a prohibited substance present in their bodily fluids, including urine - where metabolites may remain detectable for days after past use. For marijuana, inactive metabolites are identifiable in the urine for several days and sometimes weeks after its use.

NORML Executive Director Keith Stroup worries that such a mandate will be used to coerce state legislatures to universally adopt "zero tolerance" per se laws, which he called unfair and bad public policy. "While driving impaired by marijuana or other illicit and licit drugs is never acceptable, neither is it acceptable to treat sober drivers as if they are impaired simply because low levels of inactive marijuana metabolites may be detectable in their bodily fluids," he said. "These 'zero tolerance' laws are neither a safe nor sensible way to identify impaired drivers; they are an attempt to misuse the traffic safety laws to identify and prosecute marijuana smokers per se."

The only person who still gets excited over marijuana these days seems to be U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. He's clearly solved the terrorism problem, so he has the spare time and resources to go after patients and priests who grow pot — and regular guys who grow pot in their backyards, like Travis Paulson of Lebanon, Ore.

Finally, a few nice words for states' rights. Every state is allowed to monitor and tax the sale of alcoholic beverages. The same should apply to marijuana, argues the Marijuana Policy Project. This group wants pot regulated like alcohol — which means it would not be plopped on the candy counter next to the Snickers bars. If the people in Washington state want marijuana legalized and the people in Mississippi don't, then fine. Let each state plot its own course.

Where, oh where, in this story, are we going to find an expert witness? Here it comes -- sure enough -- the guy from Temple University -- the guy with the dogs. I promise you, you are not going to believe this.

In the most famous of these trials, what happened was two women jumped on a Newark, New Jersey bus and shot and killed and robbed the bus driver. They put on the marijuana insanity defense. The defense called the pharmacologist, and of course, you know how to do this now, you put the expert on, you say "Doctor, did you do all of this experimentation and so on?" You qualify your expert. "Did you write all about it?" "Yes, and I did the dogs" and now he is an expert. Now you ask him what? You ask the doctor "What have you done with the drug?" And he said, and I quote, "I've experimented with the dogs, I have written something about it and" -- are you ready -- "I have used the drug myself."

What do you ask him next? "Doctor, when you used the drug, what happened?"

With all the press present at this flamboyant murder trial in Newark New Jersey, in 1938, the pharmacologist said, and I quote, in response to the question "When you used the drug, what happened?", his exact response was: "After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat."

As of today, Russian drug users and people in possession of small amounts of illegal drugs no longer face any jail time.

The radical change in Russian drug policy came as part of sweeping reforms of the criminal code, which also include the strengthening of citizens' protections when facing criminal charges. But the real impetus for the change probably lies in the country's festering, overcrowded, and disease-filled prison system. With some 850,000 prisoners, Russia is second only to the United States in the number and percentage of its people it imprisons, and an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 of them are incarcerated on drug charges.

For the past month, drug users and former drug users have been giving Hungarian police fits as they march up to police stations and turn themselves in, demanding to be charged as violators of the country's repressive -- by European standards -- drug laws, according to reports from participants and organizers. The campaign has managed to put drug reform in the media spotlight just as a Hungarian parliamentary committee examining the subject is getting underway.

Drug users just want to be respected and left alone, said Juhasz. "We don't believe in forced treatment and medicalization," he said. "We would like to show that we want to live as law-abiding citizens."

On a sunny mid-semester day, Kevin's parents pulled up in front of the small New Brunswick house that he shares with five other University students. As his parents got out of the car, Kevin ran downstairs to greet them each with a hug. His parents followed him upstairs to his room, saying hello to his friends sitting in the living room. They engaged in family chit chat as Kevin, who asked for his real name to be withheld, slowly closed the door to his room. His parents paid no attention as he took out a small digital scale to weigh about a gram of dry marijuana leaves and placed it in a small plastic bag. He handed it to his parents without a second thought. He usually charges other students for the illegal plant but not his parents. This is not an unusual event for Kevin's family. For the past couple years, every member of his family uses marijuana frequently, and it's often an activity that brings them closer together.

Justice Scalia concurred, offering a somewhat more textual grounding for the same result. According to Justice Scalia, the key was that Congress's ban on even intrastate possession was "necessary" and "proper" as a way to regulate interstate commerce:

[T]he authority to enact laws necessary and proper for the regulation of interstate commerce is not limited to laws governing intrastate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce.

Scalia continued:

That simple possession is a noneconomic activity is immaterial to whether it can be prohibited as a necessary part of a larger regulation. Rather, CongressÂ’s authority to enact all of these prohibitions of intrastate controlled-substance activities depends only upon whether they are appropriate means of achieving the legitimate end of eradicating Schedule I substances from interstate commerce.
By this measure, I think the regulation must be sustained. Not only is it impossible to distinguish “controlled substances manufactured and distributed intrastate” from controlled substances manufactured and distributed interstate,” but it hardly makes sense to speak in such terms. Drugs like marijuana are fungible commodities. As the Court explains, marijuana that is grown at home and possessed for personal use is never more than an instant from the interstate market— . . . .

JUSTICE THOMAS, dissenting.
Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use mari-
juana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anythingŠand the Federal Government
is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

I
Respondents™ local cultivation and consumption of mari-juana is not ioCommerce . . . among the several States.lc U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 3. By holding that Congress may regulate activity that is neither interstate nor com-merce under the Interstate Commerce Clause, the Court
abandons any attempt to enforce the Constitution™s limits on federal power.

(4) There are essentially two strategies for those who are concerned with civil liberties for limiting the government's ability to abuse the rights of the public. One is the standard ACLU strategy of being a liberal supporter of broad government power, and then insisting that the government respect individual rights, especially constitutional rights, when using that power. The other strategy, followed by libertarians, is to try to limit the government's general power to begin with because the government cannot abuse power it does not have. The drug war provides a least one example of the superiority of the libertarian strategy. The drug war has run roughshod over the civil libertarian accomplishments of the Warren Court, leading to a weakening to various degrees of the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth amendments, not to mention a huge increase in the prison population, and the denial of the basic right to use relatively innocuous recreational drugs, even for medicinal or health purposes. Far better to have denied the federal government the power to regulate intrastate use of and sale of drugs to begin with, as, I recall, Justice Van Devanter advocated on Commerce Clause grounds way back in the "dark ages" of the 1920's.

(5) I was both amused and angered by Justice Stevens's paean to the democratic process as the appropriate avenue of relief for advocates of medical marijuana at the end of his opinion. Every Justice who joined Stevens's opinion voted to prohibit states from regulating homosexual sex in Lawrence and [if they were on the Court at the time] voted to limit the government's power to regulate abortion in Casey. Why was the democratic process not the appropriate avenue of relief for the victims of overzealous government regulation in those cases? It seems we do to some extent live under a system where the personal preferences of the Justices, having nothing to do with the history, text, or logic of the Constitution, dictate when the Supreme Court will or will not intervene to overturn particular regulations.

Ric Smith rolled into Seattle's Hempfest for the first time in a wheelchair in 1996. He weighed 97 pounds and was dying of AIDS. When a medical marijuana advocate at the annual cannabis celebration offered him a joint, Smith was skeptical. "I had no faith whatsoever in the fact that it was medical. I just figured I'd at least be happy. It's OK to just be happy," said Smith, his voice cracking with emotion during a telephone interview yesterday. "And then I got really hungry. I hadn't been hungry in months."

COMMERCE IN THE WILD!

Be very very quiet... we are commerce-watching. To your left is the beautiful red-crested commerce with its unusual nesting activity and its colorful plumage. Up ahead is the Australian striped mock commerce, which is not commerce but uses its natural camouflage to imitate the markings of commerce and confuse predators. To your right is a big moose! You can shoot em all if you wanna. They're pretty much the same.

Extra Credit Nature Koan: If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, and Antonin Scalia doesn't like it, can we ban it? Yes.

At 11:30 PM on August 20, police officers and SWAT team members stormed Versus II, a legal party being held on private land in Utah County. The county sheriff's office made clear that it was targeting this event because it was a rave. In order to protect citizens from these alleged grave dangers, the county sent in 90 officers from local and state SWAT teams, along with dogs and at least one helicopter. Attendees were intimidated by heavily armed officers in fatigues, and several eyewitness reports describe people being tackled and kicked, though they did not resist arrest. Story.

For the past twenty years, this systematic use of militarized force has been directed against electronic dance music cultures, not only in the United States but throughout the world, and often under the supposed reasoning of the War on Drugs, as well as due to mostly inaccurate perceptions of electronic dance music culture as violent, drug-ridden, and sexually irresponsible.

As educators, academics, artists and researchers of electronic dance music culture, we wish to dispel these all-too prevalent myths that raves--a primary form of experience and expression of this multifaceted, global and diverse culture--are the dens of illegality they are made out to be. Raves and other electronic dance culture events are, on the whole, a far safer and more affirmative experience than most bars, hockey rinks and football games; certainly they warrant no special attention among the fundamental rights of humans to appreciate, gather and express their freedoms. At their best, raves exhibit the positive characteristics that electronic dance music culture cherishes and cultivates: a sense of peace and respect shared through the common love of dance, art and music. They are today's carnivals and fairs, the folk gatherings that humanity has enjoyed for millenia.