Pubdate: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 Source: Los Angeles City Beat (CA) Copyright: 2005 Southland Publishing Contact: http://www.lacitybeat.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2972 Note: Also prints Los Angeles Valley Beat, often with similar content, and the same contact information. Author: Ivan Smason Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California) CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS I was horrified to read Dean Kuipers' poignantly-titled piece "Why Is This Happening?" ["Street," March 24] which detailed an incident in which about 30 LAPD officers abrogated California law by raiding the dispensary offices of the United Medical Caregivers Clinic. If local police openly choose to annul the controlling state law that they are sworn to uphold, and have the ample time and manpower to do so, then it appears that the incessant requests for more police officers (perversely endorsed by all of the major mayoral candidates) are based upon a false premise that more of them are necessary. The federal government's unconstitutional prohibition on cannabis use directly violates the 9th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. According to this sacrosanct amendment, the citizenry is apportioned the incalculable powers and unalienable rights necessary to 1.) constitute life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and 2.) "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," as ordained in the Constitution's Preamble. The 10th Amendment certainly apportions non-enumerated powers to individual States to prohibit the rights of their citizens, but nothing anywhere in the Constitution apportions similar powers to the federal government to prohibit the rights and powers of the nation's citizens, unless enough of the people in enough of the States amend the Constitution to do so per Article V. Given these facts, each and every cannabis-related arrest, imprisonment, fine, or toxin-adulteration that has followed from these unconscionable injustices have violated the Constitution and undermined the noble American mission and purpose of the Constitution cited in the Preamble. The Supreme Court has capriciously interpreted the Constitution's commerce clause so as to disturb the supreme law of the land's balance of powers and rights and has unconstitutionally grown the powers of the federal government at the expense of the people and the States. It appears that the federal government, now with the aid and abetment of ever growing local police forces, intends to expand this tyrannical onslaught into citizens' private lives. Ivan Smason, Ph.D., J.D., Santa Monica - --- MAP posted-by: Beth