HEy dgodlewski

Dude being an officer of the law and shit (pig ha), just playing, I was wondering something about states rights and federal law. okay I know your not a civics teacher but in November 2006 the state of Nevada is going vote on legalizing and putting tax on marijuana. and I was wonder since that is tampering with federal, you know that whole thing about how possesion of Ganja is a federal offense, how is Nevada going to get anywhere if that law is passed?

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federal law surpasses it, it would still a step closer to legalization. which I whole heartedly support.

As I have said before....I am not a lawyer only a police officer. Thus I really only am well versed in what laws I can arrest you for violating, not how the laws came to be and such.

With that said I have never dealt with a federal crime in relation to drugs so from my understanding from college it comes down to power of the individual states to govern themselves. Possession of illicit drugs is not a federal offence, but drug trafficking and production in and out of the nation are, and the only real reason those are federal offences is that the DEA (a federal agency) is in charge if investigation and charges related to them. The catch with the DEA is that they can only control what is coming into the nation as a whole or going out of the nation as a whole, but not between states. That power is left to state and local law enforcement. The powers the DEA has is VERY limited in a local law enforcement perspective, and usually require a local agency to ask for its help, and then the DEA can only act in the bounds of that case to offer its support and resources that many local agencys dont have. If a single state decides to make it legal, in that state its no longer illegal to have drugs and such and the federal government cannot press charges for a law that no longer applies to that single state. This all comes from our forefathers who did not want the national government to get too much power. This is an example: the federal government cannot outlaw the consumption and retail of alcohol, but in some counties in the united states it is illegal to sell it and consume it to this day.

But I doubt this will pass, as the federal government can put amazing pressure on a state to do what the federal government wants, and being we are a very conservative nation politically at this time, I don’t see this liberal law passing. There are 10's of Millions in Drug Enforcement grants and such that would be cut to that state that made it legal without a national law. A prime example of this is the current national legal blood alcohol level to drive a car. Just a few years ago the level was .10, and many states began lowering it to .08 as the national government wanted. Finally, Minnesota was one of the very last to pass the law lowering it to .10 to .08 and we finally did because the federal government told us that if we didn’t, they would cut all of our federal grants for highway maintenance, which was a big chunk of change.

This is really much more complicated than this, but it is the best that I can explain it while keeping it simple, I could get into inter-state commerce laws and such, and how the federal laws can trump local and state laws in specific circumstances with exclusion clauses's but that would be too in depth for the purpose of these boards and to be honest beyond the scope of my knowledge at this time. I just know how to enforce the laws that are here now.

I also fully support the legalization for personal use of pot. Pot is much less destructive then alcohol. Case in point: I have never ever been to a domestic (husband beating wife or kids) in which pot influence the aggressors behavior, I have never been to a fatal accident that pot was the main contributing cause of the accident, and I have never been to a fight where someone was seriously wounded because of pot. I cant say the same for booze, not a week goes by where I don’t deal with all of the above and that specific incident never would have happened if the person had not been drinking.