“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
(Yes, I know this is from 2015. Not changed since 1788 when the Constitution was ratified.)
Even though it is true that the government currently bans all kinds of things, I am asking a serious question. Let me expand and clarify it. Is the federal government authorized by the Constitution to make illegal the possession of any substance that it deems it to be harmful, hazardous, immoral, addictive, threatening, damaging, injurious, destructive, unsafe, or dangerous to an individual or to society?
I am not talking about state governments—that is a separate issue. I am talking about the U.S. national government that was set up by the Constitution in 1789. The Constitution that was amended in 1791, 1795, 1804, 1865, 1868, 1870, 1913, 1919, 1920, 1933, 1951, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1971, & 1992. The Constitution that is the supreme law of the land. The Constitution that all conservatives claim to revere. The Constitution that all conservatives say they expect the federal government to follow. The Constitution that conservatives drag out and dust off every time there is an election. The Constitution that the Republican Party says it is the party of. The Constitution that all members of Congress swear to support and defend. The Constitution that the president swears to preserve, protect, and defend. The Constitution by which the Supreme Court is expected to judge all laws.
I have several times brought up this question of the government having the authority to ban anything in the context of the federal government’s War on Drugs. In arguing that the Constitution nowhere authorizes the federal government to concern itself with the nature or quantity of any substance that any American wants to eat, drink, smoke, inject, absorb, snort, sniff, inhale, swallow, or otherwise ingest into his body, I have sometimes added that the federal government has no authority to ban drugs because it has no authority to ban anything. I have also occasionally pointed out that when the federal government sought to prohibit the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” after World War I, it realized that it could only do so by amending the Constitution, hence the Eighteenth Amendment. I have even written a whole article on this.
by Laurence M. Vance
