Lies the government told you by Andrew Napolitano (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

commerce under the [Interstate] Commerce Clause, the Court abandons any attempts to enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power.14 (emphases added)

Beyond Justice Thomas’s eloquent defense of the Constitution, there is the Natural Law argument that if Diane Monson and Angel Raich thought using marijuana would help their chronic pain, who is the government to stop them? Even if there may be certain personal health risks involved in smoking marijuana, there are certain pain-relief benefits that Monson and Raich value over any possible risks. These are decisions for individuals and not the federal government to make. Just as the right to privacy lets a farmer grow as much wheat and bake and consume as much bread as he wishes, it also keeps the federal government out of the decision-making process for physicians and their patients.

Here is what the Court has done: It has prohibited the government from intruding upon the patient-physician relationship if the government wants to save the life of a baby in a mother’s womb, but has permitted the government to intrude on the marital relationship between a farmer and wife and the patient-physician relationship if they are growing too much wheat or using any marijuana.

Moreover, the revived use of the Commerce Clause power for everything under the sun is a particularly scary exercise of government power because it seems the Clause can be stretched to cover basically any activity, commercial or noncommercial, interstate or intrastate.

The Raich case also unearths a battle between the states and the federal government regarding the use of medical marijuana. In 1996, voters in California voted for Proposition 215 (the Compassionate Use Act), which authorized use of medical marijuana. But, the high and mighty feds did not seem to take this vote into consideration. Raich proves that the state’s rights don’t matter, that the people’s rights to make personal decisions don’t matter; we all need to bow at the throne of federal authority, apparently. Here, the government’s falsehood is once again, we can choose what to do with our own bodies. In truth, the government does not even allow individuals to make choices regarding their bodies when their home state and their physicians expressly permit them to make those choices.

The problematic nature of this clash between the state and federal governments is well illustrated by a June 2009 medical marijuana case. Charles Lynch operated a medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay, California, where people would bring medical marijuana prescriptions from California physicians. Lynch’s business was run like any other pharmacy, not some type of covert drug operation. He held a grand opening in 2006, used signs to advertise, obtained a business license from the City of Morro Bay, and ran surveillance cameras for security. Yet, his business was raided by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents eleven months after opening. Lynch was sentenced to a year and a day in prison by a federal judge, even though he could have been sentenced to up to twenty years in federal prison based on the large amount of marijuana involved.

Although the sentence was considered quite short in light of federal standards, it is a long time to spend in prison for doing something that was perfectly legal within his state. This state vs. federal government battle is bound to become more of an issue as several States are pushing for legislation similar to California’s. In the meantime, the only thing going up in smoke is the fundamental right to control what goes into our own bodies.

The Right to Life

If you were diagnosed with a rare disease and had only a few months to live, would you try an experimental drug that may save your life? Would you like the choice to do so? Too bad; your government won’t let you.

In addition to prohibiting people from easing their pain with medical marijuana and growing wheat for their own consumption, the federal government’s red tape often makes it difficult for people who are dying to access potentially lifesaving drugs. The FDA’s approval process is painfully long (the average time from lab to shelf is about twelve years),15 and in the meantime people are dying.

Under the current system, a medication must pass three stages of clinical tests before it gets FDA approval. In each phase, the drug is taken by a limited number of people so as to ascertain its effects. Yet, it is often difficult for sick people to gain access to these trials, and only a restricted number of people are allowed to try the drugs. If the drug passes all three phases of testing, the pharmaceutical company marketing it must file an application formally asking for the FDA’s approval to promote the drug. You can imagine how frustrating this process must be for those who have only a limited amount of time to live. One article asks, “If they are on the verge of dying, terminally [ill] patients argue, how is it ethical to deny them the only remaining chance they may have to recover or, at the very least, suffer less or live just a bit longer?”16

Although a limited number of people are able to use experimental drugs through clinical trials, it seems as though getting into these trials is a matter of luck more than anything else: “Many people with life-threatening diseases cannot find appropriate clinical trials, live far from research centers or do not meet eligibility criteria to participate in the trials. Additionally, doctors are ‘lost in the bureaucratic mess of paperwork’ when they attempt to access the FDA’s programs designed to widen opportunities for the severely ill.”17 Clearly, this is another instance of government paternalism. As long as patients understand that there are risks involved in taking experimental treatments, they should be able to make their own life or death decisions.

John Gotschall, a municipal worker in Baltimore, Maryland, discovered he had brain cancer after suffering a seizure at the wheel of his car, which caused him to drive into a snowbank. At forty-four years old, after being diagnosed and told that he