What personal freedom is next?

[russ]

It is clear that guns kill a lot more people than weed....so why this double moral?

It is also clear that a lot more people protect their lives with guns that with medical marijuana, otherwise 50-60% of the American population would currently be stoned off their ass, and close to 15% would have to have a condition treatable by medical marijuana. There is also constitutional protection of the right to bear arms, while the right to do drugs is a currently penumbral at best.

It has always seemed interesting to me that we needed a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol at the time. Yet, we no longer need such trivialities to ban substances any longer.

Actually, the constitutional amendment was largely there as a publicity stunt. The Volstead Act alone could have easily done the job. And the purpose of the Prohibition was mostly to serve as a publicity act, and to make more grain available for recovery after the war.

Prohibition was repealed for a very good reason: it was beyond counterproductive. You'd think someone would draw a few lessons from that episode.

Prohibition kept the nervous grannies happy for a while, assisted the recovery of western Europe, and It also served to reduce the consumption of alcoholic beverages by Americans by 50 percent, cirrhosis of the liver by 63 percent, mental hospital admissions for alcohol psychosis by 60 percent and arrests for drunk and disorderly behavior by 50 percent. As the intent of the law was not to reduce crime, that leaves it as moderately sucessful.
That still doesn't make it a good thing, but far from completely conterproductive.

To the OP:

Just look up the current interpretation of the Commerce Clause on wikipedia whenever that resource shows back up.

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.

So far, this has be taken to justify regulation of interstate travel, of local commerce that "had an important effect on the 'current of commerce'", a local business that served mostly interstate travelers, and even local businesses that served mostly local clients as long as their ingredients came from another state.

The result of this court case really isn't a surprise to anyone that's a fan of federalism.

Quote taken from "blueeyes", a rather strange person on a site I visit:

The truth is that the government has and does regularly take away freedoms assured by the Bill of Rights and Constitution.

We have the right to say what we want and meet where we want, but just say the wrong thing and you can lose your freedom 'til certain people feel better about you. Don't trust me? Go in the middle of your closest street and howl to the sky. I just warn you that the food at a mental asylum does indeed taste like crap.

The people may not have their arms taken away from them, but bring a handgun into D.C., or a long knife into MA, or an old rifle from one state to another, and you're facing the full penalty of the law.

No soldier may force you to let him or her into your home, but give the government enough time, and they can force you to sell your house for a tenth of the normal price and then nearly give it away to certain folks.

The right to property? If you own land in two different parts of Washington, 65% just got taken, no matter how long you owned it and no matter how much you pay in property taxes, to become a wild-life refuge. Many other states show hundreds of undesirable's land being rezoned from residential housing to habitat the very day the land was bought. If a police officer wants something you own, they can legally grab it and put it up for auction, and to get it back, you have to prove it was never used in a crime. Of course, if you decide not to spend thousands in court fees, the police get to auction it and keep the money.

The unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are all taken away from undesirables on a daily basis by a black robe.

The U.S. Bill of Rights is well on its way to following England's version, simply being ignored and rewritten by people who can't decide what 'the people' means, used only as an intellectual attempt at seeing what could be allowed.

The slow erosion of civil rights is a constant in any culture, assured by a government of not the true or the just but by the popular, chosen by a population easily swayed.