Mississippi Legalizes Medical Marijuana, Will The Feds Finally Do So As Well?

Philip H

Philip H is an oceanographer who makes his way in the world trying to use more autonomy to sample and thus understand the world's ocean. He's a proud federal scientist, husband, father, woodworker and modelrailroader. The son of a historian and public-school teacher and the nephew and grandson of preachers, he believes one of his greatest marks on the world will be the words he leaves behind. To that end he writes here at OT and blogs very occasionally at District of Columbia Dispatches. Philip's views are definitely his own, and in no way reflect the official or unofficial position of any agency he works for now or has worked for in his career. If you disagree, take it up with him, not Congress.

Related Post Roulette

31 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    I think that there are two things holding up MMJ at the Federal Level.

    1. The Military.
    2. “But how will we tax it? No, not like that. No, not like that. No, not like that. No, not…”Report

    • Fish in reply to Jaybird says:

      Less “the military” and more “the military-industrial complex that continues to make drug use incompatible with holding a security clearance.”

      The military has an easy out: Add an article to the UCMJ. I suppose language could be added to the US Code to cover civilians but civilians have avenues for recourse (the courts, etc) that aren’t available to the uniformed services.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

      Nope, the military has no obligation to allow MJ usage just because it’s legal to civilians. The military could ban alcohol if it wanted to, they just know that doing so would be a bad idea.

      Banning MJ might also be a bad idea, but legalization is not dependent upon the military accepting it.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        I imagine that the military has the ear of a handful of very important advisors.

        I mean, if they don’t, then we’re stuck with just stuff like “they haven’t hammered down taxation”.

        If you add Biden’s approval rating to Congress’s approval rating, you don’t get to the approval rating for legalizing it and I am somewhat dumbfounded that it still hasn’t happened.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

          Sure, but again, the military doesn’t care if it’s legal or not, because it can be banned for members regardless. Even medical MJ (if you have a chronic condition that MedMJ would alleviate, chances are you won’t be eligible to serve or continue serving because of said condition). Honestly, the military would probably prefer it legal, because then it could stop losing members to civilian prosecution for use or possession, and deal with such cases internally through non-judicial punishments.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            Eh, in the 90’s, the top brass remembered the Vietnam protests. 30 years later, we’ve got a top brass that was just getting started when the whole Clinton thing happened and they came up under the top brass that had some very, very strong opinions.

            The lower ranks? I’m sure that they would prefer it legal for the reasons you’re talking about (hell, the Space Force would probably make it mandatory). But the guys who regularly eat lunch with Senators? I don’t know.

            But if you’re right, we’re stuck with the only opposition to legalization being the Prison Guard unions and the DEA (and adjacent) and, even as powerful as they are, I don’t see how their efforts are sufficient to be keeping us here.Report

    • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

      there are two things holding up MMJ at the Federal Level.

      How many Congressmen are serious (or even occasional) weed users?

      If they’re like me then all of the serious weed users they’ve known have been seriously dysfunctional and making it legal will encourage it’s use.

      Weed is less poisonous than cigarettes. That’s a terrible reason to make it legal since cigarettes is so bad.

      The big reason to make it legal is we’ve shown that we can’t really outlaw it, too much of society wants to use it.

      Getting Congress to admit there are limits to it’s power and limits to getting people to pass it’s laws is a lift.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Jaybird says:

      Colorado figured out to tax it pretty well. Seems we just follow that model.Report

    • John Puccio in reply to Jaybird says:

      My understanding is that the biggest challenge to federal legalization is how it would impact our international treaties around drug trafficking.Report

  2. Michael Cain says:

    IIRC, the Attorney General can initiate the review, but the actual decision falls solely to the head of the DEA. Who has numerous reasons associated with preserving her bureaucratic empire to not reclassify marijuana.Report

  3. Chip Daniels says:

    MJ reform is a lot like carceral reform or police reform in that some type of reform is broadly popular but the “Soft On Crime” demagoguery, and prison-industrial complex is still potent and punches way above its weight.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Likewise the DEA and various drug task forces.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      They are helped by counter-majoritarian political institutions and negative partisanship.Report

      • InMD in reply to LeeEsq says:

        I actually think state level loosening of the law has taken a lot of the gas out of it federally. The environment is already so different than it was even a decade ago.Report

        • Philip H in reply to InMD says:

          Not for the 2 million or so federal employees not most of the federal contract workforce. Even if I came down with a condition the MMJ could treat I’d be barred from using it if I wanted to keep my job.Report

          • InMD in reply to Philip H says:

            I don’t believe that inability to use for legitimate medicinal purposes has ever been the real driver of reform efforts. It was the hard criminalization of recreational use. Some people no doubt benefit from medicinal, and so they should be allowed to, but I think based on the way it has been handled by most states it’s just a pretext to soften prohibition without officially saying so.

            You can see the formula at work. Allow quack doctors to prescribe marijuana for a fuzzy set of conditions. Reign in the police from actively pursuing the lower level stuff. Treat simple possession as a civil offense or have mandatory diversion for small amounts. Suddenly the federal schedule becomes a lot more academic to most people.Report

            • Philip H in reply to InMD says:

              It’s still illegal for me to use in any form for any reason. Now granted the federal
              Civil service is only 2 million or so people but absent federal decriminalization we will be outside Star Buds looking in.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to InMD says:

          Leaving the laws on the table is basically a loaded gun for a pernicious federal prosecutor or tough on crime attorney general. Even if generally not enforced, the federal marijuana rules need change to prevent misuse.Report

          • InMD in reply to LeeEsq says:

            Oh I agree 100%. That’s also why I don’t really love the idea of ‘medical marijuana’ as a means of backdoor decriminalization. It leaves the door open for easy reversal, muddies the waters on what is and isn’t legitimate medicine, and lets legislators off the hook on an important issue.

            But all that said I’ll take it over the status quo ante. My suspicion is that the federal scheduling will be one of the very last things to go as a lagging indicator that society moved on years ago. What the states do is much more important.Report

  4. Dark Matter says:

    Given that the Constitution can be amended by 38 states ratifying an amendment (as is now being contemplated for the Equal Rights Amendment)

    One of the big purposes of the ERA is to “address the gender wage gap”.

    How is that going to happen? Will the free market be unconstitutional?Report

    • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter says:

      The wage gap persists in the free market as women still only make 82 cents on the dollar for the same job as a man.Report

      • Brandon Berg in reply to Philip H says:

        It’s not for the same job. It’s the median weekly earnings for female wage and salary workers working full time in any job compared to median weekly earnings for male wage and salary workers working full time in any job.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

        The wage gap persists in the free market as women still only make 82 cents on the dollar for the same job as a man.

        You have to use very large and “comparable” categories to find that. When we adjust for “the same job with the same experience”, within a rounding error they earn the same.

        There are multiple sources for the pay difference.

        Men tend to cluster around the higher paid degrees and women tend to cluster around the lower paid ones.
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/02/the-equal-pay-day-factoid-that-women-make-78-cents-for-every-dollar-earned-by-men/

        Women tend to take off years to go have kids.
        Men tend to be more willing to work overtime.

        So… do we pay women 20% more for the same work doing the same job? 40 hours a week for a woman is the same as 50 hours for a man? Do we insist that social workers be paid the same as electrical engineers? Totally ban overtime? Have quotas for majors? Force more men into social work?

        This is what I mean when I wonder if we’re going to say the free market is unconstitutional. The solutions are seriously ugly given the underlying nature of the problem.Report

        • Greg In Ak in reply to Dark Matter says:

          Men should be able to take as much time off as women often do. Women would be able to go back to work earlier. The birth/child care thing , as you note, actually has a big effect on earnings and career over a lifetime. Supporting women more and giving men more options would help.Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to Greg In Ak says:

            Supporting women more and giving men more options would help.

            Help society? Sure.

            Reduce the wage gap? Unlikely. Other countries have tried that.

            Given more choice, women choose to stay home with their babies and men choose to work. Let people do what they want and we should expect the wage gap to increase.

            Now there are things which might help somewhat. Stress that the degrees don’t all pay the same. The data on that is hard to find and certainly not advertised.

            This bleeds into the student loan problem but whatever. Some degrees (often dominated by women) offer bad returns on investment (gender studies (etc), on a previous discussion I looked it up).

            The real solution is to change the statistics so we compare apples to apples, i.e. same job to same job, same experience to same experience.Report

  5. I keep hearing about rescheduling marijuana, but there’s nothing wrong with two joints in the morning and two joints at night.Report