Round 5—Aff vs MSU ST
1AC
SAME AS R4
2AC
NON ENFORCEMENT COUNTERPLAN
And, even if the FDA approves research, federal law requires researchers to get their cannabis from
the federal government—the agency responsible for distributing that is terrible
MPP 14 (Marijuana Policy Project. "Federal Obstruction of Medical Marijuana Research". 7/7/14.
www.mpp.org/assets/pdfs/library/Federal-Obstruction-of-MMJ-Research-1.pdf, TD)
Although 23 states and the District of Columbia have approved medical marijuana laws, the Institute of
Medicine’s ¶ call for expanded clinical trials on marijuana’s medical safety and efficacy remains largely unfulfilled.1 In 2008, the ¶ American
College of Physicians noted that “research expansion has been hindered by a complicated federal ¶
approval process [and] limited availability of research-grade marijuana ... .”¶ 2 In addition to the standard FDA and ¶ DEA
approvals needed for all research using Schedule I drugs, researchers conducting trials with marijuana
must ¶ receive approval through a National Institute on Drug Abuse/Public Health Service (NIDA/PHS)
protocol review¶ process that exists for no other drug.3¶ Over a dozen recent small-scale Phase 2 clinical trials have found
support for marijuana’s medical efficacy.4¶ However, NIDA’s monopoly on the federally approved marijuana supply,
federal obstruction of privately-funded¶ research, and a lack of public funding for research have created
a catch-22: While more than a million Americans ¶ find relief under state medical marijuana laws, they
often hear that there is not enough large-scale Phase 3 research ¶ to make marijuana available by prescription. Yet, the
deck is stacked against that research happening. ¶ NIDA’s institutional bias results in lengthy delays and
refusals to provide research material.¶ NIDA has a monopoly on the supply of marijuana that can be
legally used in federally approved research — unlike ¶ other Schedule I drugs. NIDA also has a bias against research intended to
evaluate marijuana’s medical efficacy. ¶ NIDA’s Stephen Gust testified “that it is not NIDA’s mission to study medicinal uses of marijuana ... .”¶ 5
Rather, the ¶ federal agency that has sole responsibility for supplying (or not supplying) marijuana for research is charged with ¶ “support[ing]
research on the causes, consequences, prevention, and treatment of drug abuse and drug addiction.”6¶ As the DEA’s chief administrative law
judge found, “NIDA’s
system for evaluating requests for marijuana research ¶ has resulted in some
researchers who hold DEA registrations and the requisite approval from the Department of ¶ Health and Human
Services being unable to conduct their research because NIDA has refused to provide them with ¶
marijuana."7 In 1995, Dr. Donald Abrams developed a research protocol to study marijuana’s potential benefits for ¶ HIV/AIDS wasting
syndrome patients. Dr. Abrams received the requisite approvals, but NIDA denied his ¶ application to obtain marijuana after first refusing to
respond for nine months. After Proposition 215 passed in ¶ California in 1996, NIDA asked Dr. Abrams to study the risks of marijuana use in
HIV/AIDS patients, but NIDA ¶ insisted that subjects with AIDS wasting syndrome be excluded from the study. When Dr. Abrams accepted, NIDA
¶ not only provided the marijuana, it paid one million dollars for the study.8 In 1999, NIDA refused to supply ¶ marijuana to Dr. Ethan Russo for
a marijuana/migraine study that had been approved by the FDA. ¶ In addition, the NIDA/PHS review has no deadlines and no formal appeals
process, in contrast to the FDA's 30-day ¶ deadline. The Institute of Medicine recommended the development of a smoke-free delivery system,
yet NIDA has ¶ obstructed research on such a device. NIDA took more than two years before it rejected a protocol requesting to ¶ buy 10 grams
of marijuana to study a smokeless vaporizer, without human subjects.9 MAPS director Rick Doblin ¶ testified that developing marijuana into a
prescription medicine “is MAPS’ explicit goal, so ... anything we do gets ¶ shut down.”10 In 2011, NIDA refused to supply MAPS with marijuana
for an FDA-approved PTSD study. MAPS¶ can apply again, but approval requires unanimous consent from a committee that gave contradictory
guidance.11¶ NIDA’s monopoly is a barrier to private research. ¶ In
addition to failing to provide marijuana to FDAapproved protocols, NIDA’s monopoly deters potential ¶ privately-funded researchers because financial
sponsors will not invest millions of dollars in clinical research until ¶ there is reliable access to a supply of
marijuana that can be used both in research and — if it resulted in FDA ¶ approval — as a prescription medicine. NIDA is not
authorized by Congress to sell marijuana for prescription use, ¶ yet the same strain would have to be used in research and as the approved
drug.12 Another
barrier is that ¶ pharmaceutical companies have a financial incentive to research isolated
compounds of marijuana — which they ¶ can patent — rather than the whole plant, which they cannot.
¶ NIDA’s marijuana has often been
freeze-dried for years. It has low concentrations of THC and includes virtually no¶ cannabidiol, which has
therapeutic value.13 Other producers could produce marijuana with a better safety profile.¶ Since 2001, Professor Lyle Craker, Ph.D., University
of Massachusetts-Amherst Medicinal Plant Program, has ¶ unsuccessfully attempted to acquire a license from the DEA to grow marijuana for
research.14 On February 12, ¶ 2007, DEA Administrative Law Judge Mary Ellen Bittner recommended granting Dr. Craker a license, finding that¶
it would be in the public interest for the DEA to issue Dr. Craker a license, and that the DEA’s refusal to grant ¶ additional licenses to grow
marijuana resulted in inadequate competition and a current supply that was inadequate ¶ for research needs.15 However, the DEA delayed
responding to Judge Bittner’s recommendation for almost two ¶ years, then rejected her recommendation on January 14, 2009, six days before
the inauguration of President Obama.¶ The federal government is not sufficiently funding research and only one state has recently funded
research. ¶ Despite the fact that about a third of Americans live in jurisdictions that allow the medical use of marijuana, the ¶ federal
government has provided almost no funding for clinical studies on marijuana’s efficacy since those state ¶ laws passed.¶ 16 The federal
government provided marijuana for free to more than a dozen patients for many years in ¶ its Investigational New Drug Program, but has failed
to conduct any research on marijuana’s efficacy in treating ¶ their conditions. Four patients in the program, who have received marijuana for 19
or more years, survive today. ¶ The only study of these patients was privately funded. It found, “Cannabis smoking, even of a crude, low-grade ¶
product, provides effective symptomatic relief of pain, muscle spasms, and intraocular pressure elevations ... .”¶ 17¶ The California Legislature
funded and created the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR) to study ¶ marijuana’s medical efficacy. In February 2010, the CMCR
released a report on its 15 completed or ongoing ¶ studies, finding support for marijuana’s efficacy at alleviating pain and reducing spasms.18
However, no further ¶ funding has been allocated, and, in this time of economic downturn, no other states are known to be funding similar ¶
studies. Due to the factors outlined in this memo, experts are aware of very few current clinical studies on the ¶ medical efficacy of smoked or
vaporized whole plant marijuana in the U.S. — only the ongoing CMCR studies and ¶ one additional study. Non-profit organizations
with private funding are ready and eager to fund full-scale FDA-approved drug development research
into a range of potential medical uses of marijuana once the DEA is forced to ¶ end the NIDA monopoly
on the supply of marijuana for research. Even then, the process to make marijuana ¶ available by prescription is expected to take
about 10 years, so state laws are needed to protect patients in the ¶ meantime.
a. empirically confusing
John Ingold 5-31-2014; Denver Post writer citing legal experts “Impact of U.S. House vote on medical marijuana enforcement
unclear” http://www.denverpost.com/marijuana/ci_25869675/impact-u-s-house-vote-medical-marijuana-enforcement
In a move that marijuana advocates hailed as a watershed in their fight against cannabis prohibition, the U.S. House voted late
Thursday to block the Department of Justice from interfering with state medical marijuana laws. But legal experts Friday said the
vote was more symbolic than practical. First there is the challenge still ahead: The appropriations amendment that
the House approved — which tells the Department of Justice it can't use any money in medical
marijuana states "to prevent such states from implementing their own state laws that authorize the use,
distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana" — must also receive support in the Senate. Even if it does,
Vanderbilt law professor Robert Mikos said the amendment's language makes it unclear how much the
Justice Department is actually limited. " It's just a can of worms ," said Mikos, who has written
frequently about the intersection of state and federal marijuana laws. "Even in the extremely unlikely event that this
would ever be litigated, it would be difficult to predict what this means."
b. it’s unconstitutional
Robert Reich 9-23-2013; Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, former Secretary of
Labor, smart dude, “Defunding laws you dislike is not constitutional”
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/23/de_funding_laws_you_dont_like_is_unconstitutional_partner/
The Constitution of the United States does not allow a majority of the House of Representatives to repeal the law
of the land by defunding it. If that were the case, no law is safe . A majority of the House could get rid of
unemployment insurance, federal aid to education, Social Security, Medicare, or any other law
they didn’t like merely by deciding not to fund them. I believe the Affordable Care Act will prove to be enormously popular with the
American public once it’s fully implemented — which is exactly why the Republicans are so intent on bulldozing it before then. If
they were sincere about their objections, they’d let Americans try it out — and then, if it didn’t work, decide to repeal it. The
constitutional process for repealing a law — such as Congress and President Clinton did with the old Glass-Steagall
Act — is for both houses to enact a new bill that repeals the old, which must then be signed by the
president. If the president vetoes it, then the repeal can only go into effect if the veto is overridden by two-thirds of the House
and the Senate.
c. doesn’t solve certainty
Kleiman, 13 – professor at UCLA (Mark, “MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION: ARE THERE ALTERNATIVES TO
STATE-FEDERAL CONFLICT?” 4/15, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2013/4/15marijuana/20130415_marijuana_federalism_transcript.pdf)
And it’s not fully clear to me that simply entering into a cooperative enforcement agreement is going to
solve the problem unless the states are prepared to do what their voters were promised they wouldn’t
have to do. One of the premises of these legalization issues was let’s take law enforcement resources
out of the cannabis sector and start enforcing the laws we really care about. But it seems to me, at least
in the first few years, it’s going to require more law enforcement to support a taxed and regulated
market in the face of untaxed and unregulated threats to it, then it’s taken up till now. And whether the
states will actually enter into that agreement seems to me an interesting question. Whether they have
the capacity to keep it given -- it’s true that most law enforcement is federal -- I’m sorry, state and local
rather than federal, but most state and local law enforcement is very distinctly local. It’s not obvious to
me that the Washington State Police, even if they wanted to, could shut down what goes on.
So if a cooperative enforcement agreement were entered into, and I think it’s a serious idea, it’d still be
somewhat unsatisfactory because it would leave people doing what’s legal under state law committing
felonies under federal law . And there could be a published policy that that particular federal felony is a
low enforcement priority, but that’s not a legal defense .
MR. RAUCH: Is there a better approach? What’s your first choice?
MR. KLEIMAN: Well, the first choice might be to legalize the substance nationally. I don’t think the
country’s ready for that, but if I had to guess, I’ve been predicting for a couple of years now that we’d
have full national cannabis legalization sometime in Hillary Clinton’s second term. (Laughter) And that
still seems to me like about the right guess. Not plausible now.
An alternative, again, I think not plausible now, but the right thing to do now, would be to have
statutory authority not merely to enter into a cooperative enforcement agreement, but to actually
legalize at the federal level what’s done under state law for a state which has presented to the federal
government a plan for how it’s going to keep its cannabis in state rather than becoming a national
supplier. So this would be the cannabis equivalent of the welfare reform waiver policy.
MR. RAUCH: And why is that better than doing it through a contract between the AG and the states?
MR. KLEIMAN: Because then the grower and the seller would be legal rather than merely hoping they
didn’t get busted.
MR. RAUCH: So you have a clear, safe harbor, which gives you a stronger incentive to stay in the legal
market and out of the gray market .
MR. KLEIMAN: And then the bank that you want to deposit your money in wouldn’t have to worry about
whether its teller was going to get a 20- year sentence for violating the money laundering laws.
key
Firestone 14—Correspondent for the New York Times (David, "Let States Decide on Marijuana".
7/26/14. New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/high-time-let-states-decideon-marijuana.html, TD)
Many states are unwilling to legalize marijuana as long as possessing or growing it remains a federal
crime. Colorado, for instance, allows its largest stores to cultivate up to 10,200 cannabis plants at a time. But the federal penalty for growing
more than 1,000 plants is a minimum of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10 million. That has created a state of confusion in which lawabiding growers in Colorado can face federal penalties.¶ Last August, the Justice
Department issued a memo saying it
would not interfere with the legalization plans of Colorado and Washington as long as they met several conditions: keeping
marijuana out of the hands of minors or criminal gangs; prohibiting its transport out of the state; and enforcing prohibitions against drugged
driving, violence and other illegal drugs. The government has also said banks can do business with marijuana sellers, easing a huge problem for
a growing industry. But
the Justice Department guidance is loose ; aggressive federal prosecutors can ignore
it “if state enforcement efforts are not sufficiently robust,” the memo says.¶ That’s a shaky foundation on which to build
confidence in a state’s legalization plan. More important, it applies only to this moment in this presidential
administration. President Obama’s Justice Department could change its policy at any time, and so of
course could the next administration.¶ How to End the Federal Ban¶ Allowing states to make their own
decisions on marijuana — just as they did with alcohol after the end of Prohibition in 1933 — requires unambiguous
federal action. The most comprehensive plan to do so is a bill introduced last year by Representative Jared Polis,
Democrat of Colorado, known as the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act. It would eliminate marijuana from the
Controlled Substances Act, require a federal permit for growing and distributing it, and have it regulated (just as alcohol is now) by
the Food and Drug Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. An alternative bill, which would not be as
effective, was introduced by Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, as the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act. It
would
enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act against
anyone acting in compliance with a state marijuana law.
not remove marijuana from Schedule I but would eliminate
Banking act plank doesn’t solve investment
Sullum, 14 - I am a senior editor at Reason magazine and a nationally syndicated columnist
(Jacob, “Marijuana Money Is Still A Pot Of Trouble For Banks” Forbes, 9/18,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/09/18/local-banks-terrified-by-friendlyneighborhood-marijuana-merchants/)
An obvious solution is to make those businesses legal by carving out an exception to the federal
ban on marijuana, as the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act, introduced last year by Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), would do. The Marijuana Business Access to Banking Act, introduced
last year by Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), takes a narrower approach, shielding banks that serve
state-legal marijuana businesses from criminal prosecution, regulatory penalties, and loss of
deposit insurance.
Even if Congress approves such legislation, Hill warns, regulators might still discourage banks
from serving cannabusinesses by imposing unreasonable “due diligence” standards aimed at
detecting activities, such as selling marijuana to minors or supplying the interstate market, that
remain illegal. “If the compliance bar is so high that any customer misstep can result in federal
criminal or civil liability for the financial institution, then marijuana banking will not occur,”
Hill writes. “If Congress opens the door for marijuana banking, federal financial regulators
should ensure their efforts do not practically prevent banks from servicing the marijuana
industry.”
total certainty key
Kamin, 12 [Sam, Professor of Law and Director of the Constitutional Rights & Remedies
Program, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, , 89 Denv. U.L. Rev. 977, “MARIJUANA
AT THE CROSSROADS”, p. lexis]
the biggest problem we have with the status quo is the Sword of Damocles hanging over the
industry: namely that the production and sale of marijuana remain a serious felony offense
under federal law. The volume of marijuana that is grown and sold in Colorado's larger dispensaries is the sort of drug manufacture and distribution that can earn
people something tantamount to a lifetime sentence under federal law. n24 And while it is unlikely that any marijuana dispensary
owner in compliance with state law is going to federal prison any time soon, the fact remains that medical
marijuana is an industry built entirely on conduct that the federal government continues
to prohibit. So on the one hand, things are perfectly sustainable. The industry is regulated, patients can get their medicines, the state gets its tax revenue and
But
counties that object strenuously to the presence of dispensaries can exclude them. Everything is ok except that every sale in every dispensary is a violation of federal law. For
those of you who remember the movie Pulp Fiction, it's as John Travolta said to Samuel L. Jackson when describing the hash bars in Amsterdam, "Well they're legal but they
aren't 100 percent legal."
"Not 100 percent legal" is a particularly uncertain base
on which to found a multi-million dollar industry. And it is important to remember in this
the vanishingly small risk of being sent to a federal penitentiary is not the only-or even
the principal-influence that continuing federal prohibition has on the nascent marijuana
industry. Given that every marijuana transaction in this industry is a federal crime, it is often hard for those in the industry to
convince banks to do business with them. It is hard to get investors to put their money into a
business that could be seized at any moment by the federal government. It is hard to get a lease
when your landlord can evict you at any time because your business is one that violates federal
law. It is hard to form any contractual relationship when any contract involving the sale of
marijuana is almost certainly void because it constitutes a violation of federal law. n25 Thus,
so much of predictability that we sought to achieve through our regulatory regime is lost
because of this strong disagreement between state and federal policy at this point. Continued [*986]
federal prohibition means that no state government has the power to create legal
certainty on its own. Furthermore, patients do not know where they stand either. We heard a heartbreaking story at the conference from a member of the
context that
audience who said that she was trying to convince her mother to get a marijuana patient card to help her ease the pain of a broken hip. She told us that her mother was in terrible
pain but that she was more afraid of going to prison. And the panel, to a person, said please tell your grandmother that no U.S. Attorney in the country wants to put her in
would-be patients are aware of the conflict between state and federal law and are
chilled by the prospect of federal law enforcement-however remote it may be. However, patients'
concerns, like those of dispensary owners, are not limited to the fear of going to prison. Many are concerned that they will lose their kids,
or their public housing, or other government benefits if they test positive for marijuana, or if they are found out as
marijuana users. And this fear may be much more realistic. Many jobs do prohibit you from taking a controlled substance,
or from violating any state or federal law. The provision of public housing is often premised on an agreement not to use drugs, or not to have them on the
prison, and that is almost certainly right. What it highlights, however, is that
premises. A patient shown to use marijuana or to have it in the home might be less likely to be awarded custody in a divorce proceeding. So even patients who are not worried
those providing
services to the industry, whether they're doctors, lawyers, bankers or landlords, do not know where they stand either. For example,
about going to prison have concerns that their other settled expectations will be lost if they use marijuana as medicine. Furthermore,
lawyers have a professional obligation not to knowingly encourage or knowingly assist in the commission of a crime. n26 Obviously, this does not prohibit an attorney from
informing her client about the interaction between state and federal law and the existence and substance of Colorado's regulatory regime. Beyond that, though-when we move
from informing to advising and assisting-what conduct is permitted and what is prohibited? Can an attorney incorporate a business whose primary-or sole-business is criminal?
Can she write an employment contract for an employee whose every act will be criminal? Can she help a businessperson do the compliance work that will result in the issuance
of a state license to sell marijuana? The current contradictory state of the law obviously makes these incredibly difficult questions for a lawyer to answer. On the one hand, if
Colorado has chosen to regulate and tax this industry, it seems obvious that those regulated by the state government should be allowed to seek [*987] legal advice in complying
with that regulation. On the other, if every sale by every dispensary is a federal crime, it seems hard to argue that the attorney-by writing a lease, by doing compliance work, by
incorporating a business-is not knowingly facilitating criminal conduct. What is more, there is the possibility, however remote, of criminal prosecution for attorneys who have
marijuana entrepreneurs as clients. A lawyer who intends to help and in fact does help her client engage in criminal conduct can be charged as an accomplice in that conduct;
n27 an attorney who joins an agreement to engage in criminal conduct can be charged with conspiring to commit that conduct. n28 The specter of criminal prosecution is
particularly disarming because, while attorneys are regulated at the state level, it is federal prosecutors who could charge an attorney with conspiring with or aiding and abetting
her dispensary owner clients. While it might be far-fetched to imagine the same state that enacted medical marijuana provisions punishing attorneys for participating in that
industry, it is less fantastical to imagine a federal prosecutor-who has sworn to uphold federal laws including the CSA-going after not only a dispensary, but its bank, its landlord,
and its attorney as well. So the fact that marijuana is legal but not 100 percent legal makes everybody in the industry-patients, practitioners, lawyers, doctors, landlordsuncertain with regard to exactly where they stand.
can't hold, where can we go from here?
Uncertainty by its very nature breeds instability. So if the status quo
BIZ CON
At will employment doctrine takes out the DA
Berg, 14 [ Drug-Free Workplaces In The Era Of Medical And/or Legal Marijuana Use By Alexander P. Berg
on August 4, 2014 in Employment Discrimination, Legislative Developments, Medical/Legal Marijuana,
http://kollmanlaw.com/employment-discrimination/drug-free-workplaces-era-medical-andor-legalmarijuana-use/]
What can an employer do under these circumstances? This post is designed to provide a basic snapshot of the current state of the law, and the prominent issues that employers face.
As detailed below,
employers are generally blanketed by the protections of the at-will
employment doctrine,
as the vast majority of state marijuana laws alter only the criminal sanctions facing those who legitimately use and possess medical marijuana. Marijuana Legislation
In recent years, there has been a considerable trend in favor of the legalization of marijuana. Twenty-three states (plus the District of
Columbia) now permit medical marijuana, and Washington and Colorado additionally allow the recreational use of marijuana. In addition, sixteen other states have marijuana legislation pending. Within the federal system, drugs
subject to regulation are grouped into one of five lists (labeled as Schedules I through V) under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), 21 U.S.C. §§ 801 et seq. The Attorney General retains authority over whether, and where, to list a
particular substance. Currently, both marijuana and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary mind-altering ingredient found naturally in marijuana, are classified as Schedule I drugs. As the Supreme Court has explained, “Schedule
I drugs are categorized as such because of their high potential for abuse, lack of any acceptable medical use, and absence of any accepted safety for use in medically supervised treatment.” Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 14 (2005).
There has been a recent movement to consider downgrading marijuana from Schedule I and, at the behest of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration is presently conducting an analysis on the
subject. There is not, however, any indication that marijuana or THC will be removed from the CSA schedules altogether. Therefore, marijuana is and will in all likelihood remain illegal under federal law, independent of state laws
to the contrary. Maryland and the District of Columbia, among others, have recently passed legislation that decriminalizes—but does not legalize—marijuana. Significantly, the efforts in the District of Columbia affect only the local
enforcement, without reaching federal law in any way. In these jurisdictions, a “qualifying patient” who has been diagnosed with certain medical conditions may legally receive marijuana from a licensed dispensary for medical use
in his or her home. The use and possession of marijuana in public remains illegal, although a person who can prove that he is a “qualifying patient” faces only civil penalties (i.e., fines) rather than incarceration. Drug Use And The
Workplace
There are well-documented workplace safety concerns related to marijuana. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA), employees who abuse drugs are more likely than those who do not to “change jobs frequently; be late to or absent from work; be less productive employees; be involved in a workplace accident; [and] file a workers’
compensation claim.” Marijuana, specifically, may cause safety concerns such as “include impairment of short-term memory; altered judgment and decisionmaking; and mood effects, including severe anxiety (paranoia) or even
psychosis (loss of touch with reality), especially following high-dose exposures.” NIDA, DrugFacts: Is Marijuana Medicine?. “Marijuana also significantly reduces motor coordination and slows reaction time, which makes it very
Employers may
protect workplace safety by prohibiting drug use in the workplace and require that employees “not
be…engaging in the illegal use of drugs in the workplace.” 42 U.S.C. §§ 12114(c)(1), (2); see 29 C.F.R. §
1630.3(c). In addition, according to NIDA, successful drug-free workplace programs may lead to “improvements in morale and productivity, and decreases in absenteeism, accidents, downtime, turnover, and theft.”
Medical Marijuana Use Is Not Covered By The ADA Although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
generally requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee whose medical conditions
require prescription drugs to take them while at work (if prescribed to do so), at least one federal court has concluded that “medical
marijuana use is not protected by the ADA.” An employee who is “currently engaging in the illegal use of drugs” is not
dangerous to use before driving a car.” Id. Studies have also shown that roughly 9% of marijuana users will become addicted, and THC can remain in a user’s body for up to three months.
considered a “qualified individual with a disability” under the ADA. 42 U.S.C. § 12114(a); see 29 C.F.R. § 1630.3(a). The ADA and its implementing regulations define “illegal use of drugs” as
the use of drugs the possession or distribution of which is unlawful under the [CSA]. Such term does not include the use of a drug taken under the supervision of a licensed health care professional, or other uses authorized by the
[CSA] or other provisions of Federal law. 42 U.S.C. § 12111(6); see 29 C.F.R. § 1630.3(a)(2). Because neither the CSA nor other federal law authorize it, on-site medical marijuana use is not covered under the “supervision of a
There is no requirement that employers accommodate off-site medical marijuana
use, either. Merely being licensed to use medical marijuana is an insufficient basis for employers to take disciplinary action, because the medication relates to the employee’s disability (e.g. cancer, osteoarthritis, or
severe pain). Where the employee tests positive for marijuana, however, even if licensed to use it for medical
purposes, employers have discretion to take such action as a neutral enforcement of policies against
employee misconduct. Employee Discipline Relating To Medical Marijuana State “compassionate use” laws that prohibit certain criminal penalties and adverse government licensing decisions for medical
licensed health care professional” exception.
marijuana do not affect the presumption of at-will employment or otherwise create a new right to sue for employees who face adverse employment actions stemming from their medical marijuana use (such as failing an
Courts interpreting these state laws in the context of employees who challenge employers’
decisions not to hire, to discipline, or to terminate them have consistently ruled in the employer’s
favor. These include courts in Colorado (Curry v. MillerCoors, Inc., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118730 (D. Colo. Aug. 21, 2013); Coats v. Dish Network, LLC, 303 P.3d 147 (Colo. App. 2013))
and Washington (Roe v. TeleTech Customer Care Mgmt., 216 P. 3d 1055 (Wash. 2009)), as well as courts in California (Ross v. Ragingwire Telecommuns., Inc., 174 P.3d 200 (Cal.
2008)); Maine (Savage v. Maine Pretrial Servs., 58 A.3d 1138 (Me. 2013)); Michigan (Casias v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 764 F. Supp. 2d 914 (W.D. Mich. 2011), aff’d, 695 F.3d 428 (6th Cir. 2012)); Montana
(Johnson v. Columbia Falls Aluminum Co., LLC, 350 Mont. 562, 2009 Mont. LEXIS 120, at *5 (Mont. Mar. 31, 2009)); and Oregon (Emerald Steel Fabricators, Inc. v. Bureau of Labor & Indus., 348 Ore. 159, 169 n.7
employer’s drug test).
(2010)). An employee who uses medical marijuana will also likely not be able to recover employment benefits. For example, an employee who brought in marijuana-laced candy (colloquially known as an “edible”) into her
workplace was denied unemployment benefits on the ground that she committed gross misconduct by violating the company’s stated drug-free policy. Canning v. Emp. Sec’y Dep’t., 2014 Wash. App. LEXIS 877 (Wash. Ct. App. Apr.
14, 2014). But see Vialpando v. Ben’s Auto. Servs., 2014 N.M. App. LEXIS 50 (N.M. Ct. App. May 19, 2014) (requiring employer to provide workers’ compensation benefits for employee who was certified for state’s medical
marijuana program). Conclusion An employer wishing to ensure that medical marijuana does not negatively affect the health and safety of its workplace should maintain and update its drug-free policies accordingly. Specifically,
If
the employer chooses to utilize drug testing of its employees, any such testing policy should similarly
make clear that positive tests for marijuana may result in discipline, up to and including termination. An
employee who complies with state law in using and possessing medical marijuana cannot be disciplined for that fact alone; if, however, he or she violates neutral company policy
employers should insert language clarifying that, unlike other prescription medications, there is a zero-tolerance policy toward medical marijuana, in order to alleviate confusion and provide clear advance notice to employees.
by using in the workplace or failing a drug test, the employer may legitimately take action without
facing the risk of future liability. Please let us know if you have questions about such policies, relevant state laws or other questions on this unique and evolving issue.
at-will employment doctrine means workers can even be fired for legal use
Mahany and Ertl, 2011 [Reefer Madness Comes to Wal-Mart by Brian
Mahany,http://www.wisconsindiscriminationlawyer.com/consequences/reefer-madness-comes-to-walmart/
Businesses have the right to insure that workers are sober while working. Smoking medical marijuana may
be legal in California, for example, but few people would board a plane if the pilot was stoned. Here, there is no
suggestion that Casais had a position where public safety was a factor or that he was ever impaired while working. Of the 15 states that permit
use of marijuana for medical reasons, very few have laws that address the effects of these laws in the workplace. Michigan
joins the
majority of states where the “at will” employment doctrine prevails. In other words, Wal-Mart can fire
someone even though they were legally using marijuana while not at home.
Laundry list of alt causes
Reuters 10/14/2014 (Shinichi Saoshiro, “GLOBAL MARKETS-Asia edgy on lingering growth
anxiety, China inflation slows”, http://www.cnbc.com/id/102088087#.)
"News of a very large drop in German business confidence reinforces concerns about the
European economy," Ric Spooner, chief market analysts at CMC Markets in Sydney, said in a
note to clients.
"Problems in Europe are an ongoing headwind for other major economies including the US, and
China is a negative for world growth."
Data showing China's consumer inflation slowing to a level not seen since 2010 did little to
improve the mood, with MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gaining a
modest 0.1 percent - still within reach of seven-month lows hit at the start of the week.
China's annual consumer inflation eased to 1.6 percent in September against expectations of 1.7
percent, adding to concerns the economy continues to lose momentum despite a raft of
stimulus measures.
Tokyo's Nikkei climbed 0.1 percent after touching a two-month trough on
Tuesday.
Concerns over faltering global growth triggered a bruising selloff in global equity markets in
the past week, and investors remain reluctant to buy into riskier assets as the drumbeat of weak
data showed no signs of abating.
Underscoring the worries over growth, South Korea's central bank cut its policy interest rate for
the second time in three months.
Overnight, a closely watched ZEW survey showed German analyst and investor morale fell
below zero for the first time in nearly two years in October.
Adding to the gloom, the German government cut its growth forecasts, euro zone industrial
production fell, British inflation slowed sharply in September and Fitch warned it may cut
France's credit rating.
"Risk-off tone continues to dominate the markets as US equities pared most of the gains
while Treasuries remain in demand," Credit Argricole said in a note to clients.
triggers their perception link
McIntyre, 10/20/14 (Douglas, “Another Sign Companies Expect Economic Slowdown” 24/7
Wallstreet, http://247wallst.com/economy/2014/10/20/another-sign-companies-expecteconomic-slowdown/)
A carefully followed report from the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) was
released for the current period, and the results were not good. The October 2014 NABE Business
Conditions Survey offers another sign that pessimism about the economy, now and in the nearterm future, has spread. That, in turn, may indicate that fourth quarter U.S. gross domestic
product will weaken.
In the latest version of the NABE Business Conditions Survey, those who were polled indicated:
Sales growth took a step backward during the third quarter of 2014, as a slightly smaller number
of panelists compared with that in July reported rising sales at their firms. The net rising index
(NRI) — the difference between the percentage of respondents who reported rising sales and the
percentage who report falling sales — declined to 42 in October, down from 45 in the previous
survey. Forty-nine percent of respondents reported rising sales at their firms from the second to
the third quarter of this year; 7% reported falling sales, and 44% reported sales that were
unchanged from the previous survey.
If sales growth is any sign of corporate spending, additions to employment and rising wages, the
analysis was also a cause for concern:
In the third quarter of 2014, 24% of respondents’ firms raised wages and salaries — almost half
the share that experienced wage and salary increases in the July 2014 survey. This signals a
slowdown in the trend toward wage and salary increases that began with the January 14 survey.
Wage improvement is one critical component of consumer spending, and the fourth quarter of
the year is particularly important for large industries, especially retail and the automotive ones.
Finally, concerns about the slowdown in Europe are beginning to rise, a trend that could
damage business confidence as revenue from the region begins to erode.
Internal link is empirically denied
Sirkin, 6/1/14 [Harold L. Sirkin is a senior partner of the Boston Consulting Group, where Justin Rose and Michael Zinser are partners.
They are the co-authors, most recently, of “The U.S. Manufacturing Renaissance: How Shifting Global Economics Are Creating an American
Comeback”, http://www.providencejournal.com/opinion/commentary/20140701-harold-l.-sirkin-michael-zinser-and-justin-rose-u.s.-manufacturingstarts-its-comeback.ece]
the most-important cost factors are considered — such as total labor costs, energy,
productivity growth and currency exchange rates — “low-cost” Brazil is now one of the highest-cost manufacturing nations in the
world, Mexico is cheaper than China, China is close to the U nited States (as are most of the traditionally “low-cost” countries of eastern Europe), and
the low-cost leader in western Europe is none other than the country that launched the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago: the United Kingdom. The country with the lowest
manufacturing costs, we found, was not China. It was Indonesia. Indonesia was followed by India, then Mexico and Thailand. China came next,
at No. 5, followed closely by Taiwan, and then the United States. Significantly, we found that the convergence in manufacturing costs between China and the United States was due
primarily to the combination of rising labor costs in China and higher productivity levels and lower energy costs in the United States. When transportation and other
factors — such as product quality, intellectual property rights and long-distance supply chain
issues — also are considered, for many companies and product lines the alleged savings achieved
by manufacturing in China hardly seem worth it anymore. For the record, the countries with the highest manufacturing costs of the 25 we
What we found was that when
studied were Australia, Switzerland, Brazil, France, Italy and Belgium, all of which have costs that are 20 percent to 30 percent higher than U.S. costs. The precise cost figures that we calculated provide just a
current snapshot. More important is the trend line. Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia all experienced significant increases in relative manufacturing costs since 2004. It was due to some
combination of sharp wage increases, lagging productivity growth, unfavorable currency swings and dramatic energy cost increases.Several countries that were relatively expensive a decade ago, mostly in western
Europe, fell even further behind. Relative to U.S. costs, average manufacturing costs in Belgium rose 6 percent from 2004 to 2013; in Sweden, 7 percent; in France, 9 percent; in Italy, 10 percent. Largely because
of gains in productivity, the U.K. held its own. And the two countries making the greatest gains in manufacturing competitiveness were the U.S. and Mexico. The key reasons were stable wage growth, sustained
productivity gains, steady exchange rates and the big energy cost advantage the United States now enjoys, due to the shale-gas boom. Our findings have important implications for both companies and
governments. Many companies continue to see the United States as a high cost manufacturer and Latin America, eastern Europe and Asia, especially China, as low cost. In fact, the new data show that what exists
today is a real competitive marketplace of manufacturing opportunities, with high-cost and low-cost countries virtually everywhere. This changes the decision-making process. It also impacts policymaking.
many factors affect manufacturing competitiveness, including worker
productivity, natural gas and electricity prices, exchange rates and infrastructure.
National leaders need to understand that
It’s not just labor costs. Only when they understand this can they formulate
effective policies.
Legalization creates new opportunities for innovation and spurs growth in other
industries which locks in resilience
Cassillas 14 (Cassandra, reporter, quoting Charles Arnold, business development and
investment consultant, 6-13-14, "Charles S. Arnold Claims Marijuana Could Save U.S. Economy"
Opposing Views) www.opposingviews.com/i/society/drug-law/charles-s-arnold-claimsmarijuana-could-save-us-economy
The United States economy has had a rough few years. Inequality has been rising. The
middle class is squeezed harder and harder with each passing year. Innovation is falling off.
Outsourcing has become a regular part of doing business for major corporations. A fresh
industry of some sort needed to come along and, fortunately for the economy, it has. Reports
from across the board suggest that the “green rush,” or legalization of recreational marijuana,
may be exactly what the doctor ordered. By now, everyone has heard about the
impressive $2 million in taxes Colorado collected within the first month of recreational
marijuana being legalized, but that is actually just the cherry on top. Tax revenue from
marijuana legalization is easy to compute, which is why it is such a popular talking point. The
real benefit of legalization is something else entirely: it opens the doors to a slew of ancillary
businesses, investment opportunities and even stock options. The weed market is relatively
untapped and provides entrepreneurs with nearly endless opportunities. Where there is
marijuana, there is also a simultaneous need for pipes, bongs, containers, growing apparatuses,
and everything in between. And this isn’t just the opinion of optimistic, pro-pot activists. The
business community agrees. Chuck S. Arnold, a long time business development and investment
consultant who has worked in a variety of industries, is constantly on the lookout for the most
innovative new areas to build businesses. Arnold believes the future is looking bright for
people who are willing to bet on legal marijuana. “Marijuana legalization is spurring growth
in other industries,” Chuck S. Arnold claims. “From industrial lights to smoking apparatus,
the legalization of marijuana is blazing a trail for future businesses to not only be see moderate
success, but thrive ostensibly well in an often turbulent contemporary fiscal environment.”
FLORIDA DA
Scott will win now despite medical marijuana being on the ballot and likely to pass
Adam C. Smith 9-20, Tampa Bay Times political reporter, “Florida Insider Poll: Scott to trump Crist;
medical marijuana will pass,” http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/florida-insiderpoll-scott-to-trump-crist-medical-marijuana-will-pass/2198702
The race between Rick Scott and Charlie Crist for Florida governor has long been seen as a toss-up, and recent polls
bolster the perception of a campaign that could go either way.
But conventional wisdom among Florida's political elite has shifted decidedly in Gov. Scott's favor , the
latest Tampa Bay Times Florida Insider Poll shows.
When we surveyed more than 130 of Florida's savviest political hands seven weeks ago, a slight majority predicted that Scott would beat Crist.
This week, two-thirds
of our Florida Insiders — including 38 percent of the Democrats — said they expect Scott
to beat former Gov. Crist .
"With (absentee ballots) dropping in about two weeks, Crist's opportunities to change the dynamics of the race are
limited. The clock is ticking and unfortunately that does not bode well for Crist," said one Democrat.
The Florida Insider Poll is an entirely unscientific survey of people closely involved in the political process, including campaign consultants,
fundraisers, lobbyists, academics and activists. This Insider Poll included 77 Republicans, 53 Democrats, and 10 men and women registered to
neither major party.
"The governor's race will be closer than some might predict, but the
GOP off-year turnout advantage will be difficult to
overcome ," another Democrat said. "Up until the last 45 days there has been little effort to create the ground game
needed to turn out a base vote. Had the (state Democratic Party) and/or Crist started four months ago, things may have looked
more promising."
Said a Republican: "The Scott team spent too much time congratulating themselves on being political geniuses to realize this one will close late,
close ugly, and they'd better be right that the Dem voter and field operation isn't real. Too much 'we're winning!' talk risks the GOP base not
staying alert to the danger of Charlie, and that borders on political malpractice."
The last four public polls point to a neck-and-neck race. Other Insider Poll findings:
• 59
percent predicted that the medical marijuana initiative will garner the 60 percent voter approval it
needs to pass. But one experienced Republican politico had his doubts: "Going to be close, but I would call for the upset here and say it
just barely goes down."
Initiatives won’t help Crist
Betsy Woodruff 14, Political Writer for the Washington Examiner, “Medical marijuana initiative could
liven up Florida governor race,” 6/27/14, http://washingtonexaminer.com/medical-marijuana-initiativecould-liven-up-florida-governor-race/article/2550283
But medical marijuana legalization isn't a clear-cut partisan issue splitting both Democrats and
Republicans .¶ According to Reuters, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, currently the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, lost
Morgan's support for questioning the initiative and voting against pro-medical marijuana legislation in Congress.¶ Scott opposes Amendment 2, but he
recently signed legislation that legalized the prescription of a strain of non-euphoric marijuana that can help treat epilepsy, Lou
Gehrig's disease, and other ailments. The strain is low in THC and the bill only allows marijuana consumption through oil or vapors, but not by smoking, according to
the Tampa Bay Times.¶ That sets up an interesting political dynamic for the November elections, and state political observers say it makes things particularly
Conventional wisdom is that pro-marijuana legalization ballot initiatives increase
Democratic turnout, as they can do more to energize young voters than individual politicians can. It remains to be seen just how
much effect it will have in Florida , but it looks like the GOP has more to lose than Sunshine State Democrats.¶ “ They’re only
surefire voter-turnout mechanisms for Democrats if Republicans are dumb asses,” said Rick Wilson, a long-time
complicated for Republicans.¶
Republican consultant in the state, of pro-pot ballot initiatives. “That’s the word you should actually use, because that’s the word I use in a briefing that I give. This is
a classic case of, 'Don’t give your enemy a sword to cut off your head.' ” ¶ If the amendment proves a helpful way for Democrats to paint Republicans as
compassionless and pro-suffering, Wilson continued, then it could make things tough for Scott. ¶ “Republicans should understand that society has changed on this
question,” he said.¶ But pot
problems for the governor aren't necessarily preordained . Mac Stipanovich, a long-time Republican
strategist and lobbyist, said Republicans fall into two categories on the issue. ¶ “The first one being, people who smoke marijuana aren’t
going to vote ,” he said, “and the second one being, well, we all smoke marijuana so it doesn’t make a difference!”¶ He added that the Republicancontrolled legislature’s passage of the narrow medical marijuana law may have “sufficiently clouded
the issue.” ¶ “ Nobody’s going to get a clear shot at anybody ,” he said.
Biodiversity claims are exaggerated – there is no risk of extinction from deforestation
Rothbard and Rucker, 97 (David Rothbard and Craig Rucker, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow,
“The rainforest issue: Myths and facts” CFACT Briefing Paper #102.
http://www.cfact.org/site/view_article.asp?idCategory=5&idarticle=214)
Another important fact, according to Sedjo and Clawson, relates to a study done by the Food and Agriculture Organization and U.N. Environmental Programme by
J.P. Lanly. Lanly is Forest Coordinator for the UNEP/FAO Tropical Resources Assessment Project and his study "indicates that [of
the roughly 7 million
acres worldwide per year] the undisturbed or "virgin" broadleaved closed forests have a far lower rate
of deforestation than the total, being only 0.27 percent annually as compared with 2.06 percent annually for logged over
secondary forest. This figure indicates that deforestation pressure on the more pristine and generally more genetically
diverse tropical forests is quite low." Further, "these findings are in sharp contrast to the conventional view
that the tropical forests are `disappearing at an alarming rate' and suggest that concerns over the
imminent loss of some of the most important residences of the world's diverse genetic base, based on
rates of tropical deforestation, are probably grossly exaggerated." (Simon, Rational Readings, p.746) Sedjo and Clawson also
said "While the local effects of rapid deforestation may be severe, the evidence does not support the view that either the world or the tropics are experiencing
rapid aggregate deforestation. Furthermore,
the evidence shows that current rates of deforestation are quite
modest in much of the world's virgin tropical forests, for example those of the Amazon; and therefore
they are probably in little danger of wholesale destruction in the foreseeable future." (Eco-Sanity, p.90) Sandra
Brown, professor of forestry at U. of Illinois and Ariel Lugo, project leader at the U.S. Forest Service's Institute of Tropical Forestry in Puerto Rico also studied
available data and "concluded the `dangerous' misinterpretation and exaggeration of the rate of deforestation has become common." As for the amount of
deforestation in relation to total forest area, Thomas Lovejoy, then of the World Wildlife Fund, offered a low projection of 50% deforestation between 1980 and
2000 in Latin America and a high of 67%. The source for this was a set of satellite photos taken in 1978 and reported in the Washington Post to show that "as much
as one-tenth of the Brazilian Amazon has been razed." But according
to Fulbright scholar and ecologist Robert Buschbacher
working in Brazil, the Landsat photos "concluded that 1.55 percent of the Brazilian portion of the Amazon has been
deforested." "On the basis of this and other evidence, Buschbacher says, `Because of a relatively low
percentage of forest clearing and the remarkable capacity of the forest to recover its structure...the
threat of turning the Amazon into a wasteland is exaggerated.'
Peer reviewed evidence indicates ecosystems are resilient
McDermott 9 (“Good news: most ecosystems can recover in one lifetime from human induced or
natural disturbance”, May 2009, http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/most-ecosystems-canrecover-from-disturbance-in-one-lifetime.php)
There's a reason the phrase "let nature take its course" exists: New research done at the Yale University
School of Forestry & Environmental Science reinforces the idea that ecosystems are quiet resilient and
can rebound from pollution and environmental degradation. Published in the journal PLoS ONE, the
study shows that most damaged ecosystems worldwide can recover within a single lifetime, if the
source of pollution is removed and restoration work done: Forests Take Longest of Ecosystems Studied
The analysis found that on average forest ecosystems can recover in 42 years, while in takes only about
10 years for the ocean bottom to recover. If an area has seen multiple, interactive disturbances, it can
take on average 56 years for recovery. In general, most ecosystems take longer to recover from humaninduced disturbances than from natural events, such as hurricanes. To reach these recovery averages,
the researchers looked at data from peer-reviewed studies over the past 100 years on the rate of
ecosystem recovery once the source of pollution was removed. Interestingly, the researchers found that
it appears that the rate at which an ecosystem recovers may be independent of its degraded condition:
Aquatic systems may recover more quickly than, say, a forest, because the species and organisms that
live in that ecosystem turn over more rapidly than in the forest.
Natural upwelling causes phytoplankton blooms but they self-regulate
Grimm 97 (Kurt, Assistant Prof. Earth and Ocean Sciences @ U. British Columbia, Palaios,
Biogenic Sediments, Geophysiology and Earth's Environmental History, 12:4,
http://www.eos.ubc.ca/personal/grimm/geophysiology.html)
The intimate interplay of chemical, physical and biological processes are well-represented by actualistic study of coastal upwelling systems. Sediments
influenced by coastal upwelling are commonly organic-rich and finely laminated, are richly micro-fossiliferous and are deposited at high sedimentation
rates. As
components of Earth's climate system, upwelling systems contribute large volumes of
organic carbon - and thus atmospheric CO2 - into hemipelagic sedimentary sinks (the "biological pump") , and they commonly yield a thinlylaminated, high-resolution record of oceanic, biological, and sedimentary processes. In addition, the organic-richness of upwelling deposits is
responsible for their economic prominence as hydrocarbon source rocks and as the birthplace for many sedimentary phosphorites. Biologist Alice
Alldredge and her colleagues have recently demonstrated that some marine phytoplankton actively govern their own sedimentation by the formation of
sticky transparent gels that facilitate rapid aggregation, accelerated sinking and efficient export flux. We
find that these "selfsedimenting" phytoplankton blooms are well-preserved as monospecific flocs and laminae in
laminated diatomaceous sediments, suggesting that the life history strategy of algal individuals
and populations governs accelerated organic carbon and opal burial and the development of
many distinct sedimentary laminae. Presently, my students and I are quantifying the changes in export efficiency of organic carbon,
biosilica and other biophile elements that result from the self-sedimentation phenomenon. We speculate that some short-duration variations in organic
carbon burial rates in the coastal ocean - and thus some abrupt atmospheric CO2 variations - may be governed by the ecology of phytoplankton
populations, rather than exclusively by nutrient-dependent changes in primary production. Testing these unconventional hypotheses will require a
geophysiological approach and furtherance of projects like the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS). Phosphatic sediments are a characteristic yet
poorly understood aspect of coastal upwelling deposits. Most phosphatic grains are the microbially-mediated product of diagenesis in organic-rich ,
suboxic sediments; their formation accompanies the transfer of nutrient phosphate from the oceanic pool into the sediment reservoir. The residence
time of nutrient P in the ocean is only about 70,000 years; consequently, changes in P burial rates can profoundly influence oceanic primary production
and thus atmospheric CO2. John Compton and colleagues are employing stable isotopic approaches (?13C, ?180 and ?87Sr) to co-occuring Tertiary
calcites and phosphates, linking episodes of phosphogenesis and reworking to changes in global carbon burial. The enigma of "phosphorite giants" such
as the Permian Phosphoria Complex remains a puzzling fascination, perhaps more so since Gabe Filipelli and Peggy Delaney estimated that P burial
rates in the Phosphoria are comparable to those seen in the modern Peru Margin. We've learned a great deal about phosphatic sediments in recent
years, but "the phosphorite problem" is alive and well ! As a final illustration, Rick Behl and Jim Kennett recently presented an astounding correlation
between isotopic proxies of North Atlantic climate in Greenland ice cores and sediment fabric and microfossil records of seafloor oxygenation in
diatomaceous hemipelagites of the Santa Barbara Basin, coastal California, USA. Conceptually, their ongoing, high-resolution studies complement the
astonishing zig-zag of Charles Keeling's 40 year time series of atmospheric CO2 from Mauna Loa (and son Ralph Keeling's confirmation of reciprocal
changes in atmospheric O2 !). Climate modulation operates via tight mutualistic coupling and planetary teleconnections amongst the geosphere,
hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere. Many readers will agree that the single most important challenge facing the Earth sciences is forecasting the
rate and trajectory of human-induced regional and global climatic change. In the sediments we possess the incomplete, imperfect and only "control
experiment" of Earth unperturbed by anthropogenic factors. The value of our contributions to global change science will be measured by their accuracy,
insight, and timeliness. In my opinion, Life cannot be reduced to mathemetics, chemistry and physics, because Life at cellular, ecosystem, and
planetary scales envelops and transcends these disciplines. As Ken Wilber admonishes, a "heap" of interdisciplinary science is an improvement over
outdated atomistic approaches, but it is not holism. A truly holistic - vitalistic - approach fully embraces the intutition of a seasoned naturalist, in
particular, the breed of scientists that study and contribute to this fine journal. Simply stated, geophysiology provides a template for innovative
In sum, Planet Earth has evolved and continues to function as a selfregulating environmental system. Homeostasis of an organism, ecosystem, or planet, is an
emergent property of integrated subsystems. Biogeochemical transfer of matter and energy amongst the geosphere,
hydrosphere , atmosphere, and biosphere constitutes a readily measurable aspect of Earth's self-regulatory processes. Internally and
externally rooted perturbations to biogeochemical cycling have cascaded into a 4 billion year
evolutionary history of distinct environmental modes. Sediments and sedimentary rocks are sensitive and interactive
thinking and communication.
recorders of environmental homeostasis and change. Biogenic sediments record the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of biologically mediated
sedimentary processes; in turn, they govern the coevolution of Life and Environment, as interactive repositories for the nutrient elements that fuel
biogeochemical cycles.
Dead zones are inevitable and natural
Lewis, 07 – senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (Marlo, “XII. Algae, Ticks,
Mosquitoes, and Germs,” http://cei.org/pdf/ait/chXII.pdf)
Comment: A global warming link to toxic algae blooms is plausible, because algae- forming
bacteria only produce blooms in warm water. But global warming is at most an aggravating
factor. Mass fish kills associated with red tide algae blooms have been reported in Florida for
hundreds of years. Indeed, reports the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission,
“There is evidence that red tides have always existed in Florida’s waters. Scientists who study
red tides globally consider Florida red tides to be unique because they are natural events which
existed long before Florida was settled.”1 Similarly, dead zones are naturally occurring
phenomena in the Baltic Sea, which has had algae blooms since the last ice age, as shown by
sediment cores.2 In both the Baltic Sea and the Florida coast, sea surface temperatures in late
summer are naturally high enough to support algae blooms, with or without global warming.
Prohibition results in cartel grow ops that destroys biodiversity -- legalization solves
Merchant 09 (Brian is a freelance writer and editor that covers politics with a focus on climate and
energy issues, http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/drug-cartels-turning-us-forestsinto-marijuana-plantations-toxic-messes.html, “Drug Cartels Turning US Forests into Marijuana
Plantations, Toxic Messes”)
When I argued a few months back that legalizing marijuana would be good for the environment, my main point was that illegal marijuana
plantations endanger forests by operating under the radar--and unregulated--in some of our most pristine
natural areas . They contaminate water supplies , result in deforestation, and threaten indigenous
species . But I had no idea how widespread the destruction really was--just recently, the "Save our Sierras"
campaign uncovered 69 marijuana plantations run by Mexican drug cartels and seized over a billion dollars worth of
plants in California national forests. According to a report in Greenwire, "Mexican drug trafficking organizations have been
operating on public lands to cultivate marijuana, with serious consequences for the environment and
public safety," said Gil Kerlikowske, chief of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. In creating, and eventually
abandoning, vast marijuana plantations the cartels are leaving heaps of trash , slaughtered animals ,
copious amounts of pesticides , and dangerous spilled fuels in their wake. Essentially, each plantation results in an
environmental disaster . But the campaign to stop them is vigorous, and is already seeing encouraging results: The massive operation
that began in February has already seized about 318,000 marijuana plants worth an estimated $1.1 billion, officials announced last week. In
addition to 82 arrests, the multi-jurisdictional federal, state and local operation netted 42 pounds of processed marijuana, more than $40,000
in cash, 25 weapons and three vehicles. But there
are still believed to be many plantations still in operation, and the
cartels aren't slowing down . They've realized that it's cheaper and easier to fund the plantations from
below the border and grow the marijuana closer to prime US markets--eliminating the need to smuggle
the drugs across the border. Instead, US forests are suffering . The pesticides are perhaps the worst byproduct
of the operations: Growers in Fresno County used a cocktail of pesticides and fertilizers many times stronger than
what is used on residential lawns to cultivate their crop . . . While the chemical pesticides kill insects and other
organisms directly, fertilizer runoff contaminates local waterways and aids in the growth of algae and
weeds. The vegetation in turn impedes water flows that are critical to frogs, toads and salamanders in the
Kings and San Joaquin rivers. As a response to the issue, California is hiring more forest service law enforcement, and expanding their efforts.
But it seems to me that the surest way to prevent such destruction in the forests is to legalize the growing of
marijuana , and thus removing the incentives to operate recklessly and clandestinely--and allowing for
regulation of pesticide and fertilizer use. For now, however, I wish the Save our Sierras program continued luck in their good
work.
WAIVERS
The CP doesn’t solve legal certainty – maintains problems of illegality
Erwin Chemerinsky 14, Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law at Cal-Irvine, Jolene
Forman, ACLU Criminal Justice and Drug Policy Fellow, Allen Hopper, ACLU Criminal Justice
and Drug Policy Director and Sam Kamin, University of Denver Sturm College of Law Professor,
"Cooperative Federalism and Marijuana Regulation", SSRN
Revocable waivers could be a good first step toward permitting states to experiment with novel
approaches to legalizing and regulating marijuana. Marijuana policy expert Mark Kleiman has proposed a revocable waiver
approach under which an administrative agency could grant state-level waivers of the CSA marijuana provisions based on specified criteria. 149 In
effect, the revocable waiver would provide a more reliable “non-enforcement” of federal law
guarantee that the Cole Memo II implies. But as long as the federal government is merely agreeing
not to enforce federal law in opt out states, so long, in other words, as that conduct is
illegal but not prosecuted, most if not all of the ancillary problems flowing from the continued
illegality under federal law are likely to remain .
Permutation do the counterplan – the main advocate of the CP says this is an
example of ‘to make legal’
Mark Kleiman 14, Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and
editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis, March/April/May 2014, “How Not to Make a Hash
Out of Cannabis Legalization,” The Washington Monthly,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/how_not_t
o_make_a_hash_out_of049291.php?page=all
How could the federal government get the states to structure their pot markets in ways like
these? By giving a new twist to a tried-and-true tool that the Obama administration has wielded particularly
effectively: the policy waiver. The federal government would recognize the legal status of
cannabis under a state system—making the activities permitted under that system actually
legal, not merely tolerated, under federal law
—only if the state system contained adequate
controls to protect public health and safety, as determined by the attorney general and the secretary of the department of health and human services.
That would change the politics of legalization at the state level, with legalization advocates and the cannabis industry supporting tight controls in order
to get, and keep, the all-important waiver. Then we would see the laboratories of democracy doing some serious experimentation.
Non-unique—states are legalizing now but there’s no federal regulation, which makes the impact
worse. federal government set up will lead to small stores so no link
Kleiman 2014 (Mark [prof of public policy @ UCLA]; How not to make a hash out of cannabis
legalization;
www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/how_not_to_make_a_hash
_out_of049291.php?page=all; kdf)
A majority of Americans, and an overwhelming majority of those under thirty, now support the legalization of
marijuana. This change in public opinion, which has been building for years but has accelerated of late, is now
generating policy changes. In 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington State endorsed initiatives legalizing not just the
use of cannabis but also its commercial production and sale to anyone over the age of twenty-one. That goes further than the
“medical marijuana” provisions that are now the law in twenty states. Nonmedical retail sales started on January 1 in Colorado and
will begin in early summer in Washington. Similar propositions are likely to be on the ballot in 2014 and 2016
in as many as a dozen other states, including Alaska, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Oregon, and a legalization bill just
narrowly passed in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, the first time either chamber of any state legislature has voted for
such a bill. Unless something happens to reverse the trend in public opinion, it seems more likely
than not that the federal law will change to make cannabis legally available at some point in the
next two decades. The state-by-state approach has generated some happy talk from both advocates and some neutral
observers; Justice Louis Brandeis’s praise for states as the “laboratories of democracy” has been widely quoted. Given how much we
don’t know about the consequences of legalization, there’s a reasonable case for starting somewhere, rather than everywhere. Even
some who oppose legalization are moderately comforted by the fact that the federal government isn’t driving the process. “It’s best
that this be done state by state,” said Pat Buchanan recently on The McLaughlin Group, “so you can have a national backlash if it
doesn’t work out.” But letting legalization unfold state by state, with the federal government a mostly
helpless bystander, risks creating a monstrosity; Dr. Frankenstein also had a laboratory. Right now, officials in
Washington and Colorado are busy issuing state licenses to cannabis growers and retailers to do things
that remain drug-dealing felonies under federal law. The Justice Department could have shut down
the process by going after all the license applicants. But doing so would have run the risk of having the two
states drop their own enforcement efforts and challenge the feds to do the job alone, something
the DEA simply doesn’t have the bodies to handle: Washington and Colorado alone have about four times as
many state and local police as there are DEA agents worldwide. Faced with that risk, and with its statutory obligation to cooperate
with the states on drug enforcement, Justice chose accommodation. In August, the deputy U.S. attorney general issued a formal—
though nonbinding—assurance that the feds would take a mostly hands-off approach. The memo says that as long as state
governments pursue “strong and effective” regulation to prevent activities such as distribution to minors, dealing by gangs and
cartels, dealing other drugs, selling across state lines, possession of weapons and use of violence, and drugged driving, and as long as
marijuana growing and selling doesn’t take place on public lands or federal property, enforcement against state-licensed cannabis
activity will rank low on the federal priority list. Justice has even announced that it is working with the Treasury Department to
reinterpret the banking laws to allow state-licensed cannabis businesses to have checking accounts and take credit cards, avoiding
the robbery risks incident to all-cash businesses. That leaves the brand-new cannabis businesses in Colorado
and Washington in statutory limbo. They’re quasi-pseudo-hemi-demi-legal: permitted under
state law, but forbidden under a federal law that might not be enforced—until, say, the
inauguration of President Huckabee, at which point growers and vendors, as well as their
lawyers, accountants, and bankers, could go to prison for the things they’re doing openly today.
But even if the federal-state legal issues get resolved, the state-level tax and regulation systems
likely to emerge will be far from ideal. While they will probably do a good job of eliminating the
illicit cannabis markets in those states, they’ll be mediocre to lousy at preventing an upsurge of
drug abuse as cheap, quality-tested, easily available legal pot replaces the more expensive, unreliable, and harder-to-find
material the black market offers. The systems being put into place in Washington and Colorado roughly resemble those
imposed on alcohol after Prohibition ended in 1933. A set of competitive commercial enterprises produce the pot, and a set of
competitive commercial enterprises sell it, under modest regulations: a limited number of licenses, no direct sales to minors, no
marketing obviously directed at minors, purity/potency testing and labeling, security rules. The post-Prohibition restrictions on
alcohol worked reasonably well for a while, but have been substantially undermined over the years as the beer and liquor industries
consolidated and used their economies of scale to lower production costs and their lobbying muscle to loosen regulations and keep
taxes low (see Tim Heffernan, “Last Call”). The same will likely happen with cannabis. As more and more states begin to
legalize marijuana over the next few years, the cannabis industry will begin to get richer—and that
means it will start to wield considerably more political power, not only over the states but over national policy,
too. That’s how we could get locked into a bad system in which the primary downside of legalizing
pot—increased drug abuse, especially by minors—will be greater than it needs to be, and the benefits, including
tax revenues, smaller than they could be. It’s easy to imagine the cannabis equivalent of an Anheuser-Busch
InBev peddling low-cost, high-octane cannabis in Super Bowl commercials. We can do better
than that, but only if Congress takes action—and soon.
1AR
FEDERALISM
Fettweis wrong
Beede, 11 [BENJAMIN R. BEEDE Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyFettweis,
Christopher J. 2008. Losing Hurts Twice as Bad: The Four States to Moving Beyond Iraq. New
York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. 270 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0393067613, $25.95 hardcover,
p. internet]
Fettweis’ book might easily be dismissed as an intriguing analysis, but one that has been superseded by the advent of the Obama Administration, and the changes in direction that the Obama team has advocated
and that it may implement.
Fettweis made a number of assumptions that have now been invalidated ,
moreover, including a continuation of prosperity. Despite its flaws, however, the book is a provocative contribution to the literature that criticizes the forcefulness of the U.S. foreign and military policy. Fettweis
states that his objective is to analyze the “likely consequences of disaster in Iraq” (16), but he really has two purposes. One is to explain to people in the United States how they can adjust to the loss of the Iraq war.
The second is to persuade readers that the United States can safely reduce its activity in international affairs. Although the author’s discussion of Iraq must be addressed, this review emphasizes Fettweis’
contention that the United States can safely be less assertive in world affairs because the world is not as dangerous a place as often claimed, and his closely related point that the public needs to develop a more
discriminating approach to assessing threats from abroad, thereby enabling it to hold its government to higher levels of competency and accountability. Fettweis’ book title comes from a remark by sports figure
Sparky Anderson that “losing hurts twice as bad as winning feels good” (13). He believes that this observation is valid, and he comes back to those words repeatedly. To support his contention concerning the
significance of Anderson’s statement, Fettweis borrows from the literature of psychology to explain how people experience losses, ranging from having relatives or friends taken from them by death to having their
favorite sports teams lose games. In competitive situations, the harmful psychological effects of losing are said to be intensified significantly when one adversary or opponent was “supposed” to win because of its
strength. The number of instances where large countries have lost to guerrilla movements demonstrates that perceptions of the military advantages that the seemingly stronger side enjoys may well be outweighed
by other factors, however (see Arreguin-Toft 2005; Record 2007).
Fettweis recommends a rapid withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Iraq. He believes that
the Iraq war has “been the worst kind of defeat for the United States: an unnecessary one, in a war that should never have been fought” (16, emphasis in the original). Not only was the war a huge error, Iraq is in
such bad OCTOBER BOOK REVIEWS | 865 shape that the United States cannot do much to assist its reconstruction. A long-term occupation might eliminate many problems in Iraq, but he doubts the United
States will stay long enough to affect major changes in that country. Little harm will come from the withdrawal, despite predictions by many that there would be civil war in Iraq and a security breakdown in the
entire region. Fettweis is not a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs, and his interest is in the effects the Iraq war is having and will have on the United States, not so much in the Iraq situation. Thus, his book is not
comparable to studies like that by O’Leary (2009).
There are at least two schools of thought about the Iraq war, but Fettweis
ignores this division of opinion. One school, which includes Fettweis, criticizes the Bush Administration for having rashly invaded Iraq and for having failed to plan and
execute the operation properly. Fettweis writes that “[w]e were led into the Iraq morass not by evil people lying on behalf of oil companies but by poor strategists with a shallow, naive understanding of
international politics” (29). Another school of interpretation views the Iraq (and Afghanistan) commitments simply as steps in a campaign undertaken to give the United States a lasting hegemony in the world.
From the Bush Administration’s perspective, Iraq might even be considered a success. The executive branch demonstrated once again that it can wage war with few checks on its actions, and gave the United States
a greater presence in the Middle East. The
Obama Administration has altered Bush’s course
to some extent, but so far, there has not been a radical shift.
Indeed, there has been and remains the possibility of a greater commitment in the region, especially into Pakistan. Iraq and the United States have agreed to the removal of coalition forces by 2011, but the
continued violence in Iraq and the construction of substantial military bases suggest that a U.S. military presence might continue past 2011. In February 2009, Secretary of Defense Gates reiterated the Obama
Administration’s commitment to 2011, but in late May 2009, the army chief of staff, George Casey, declared that his service branch, at least, is planning for U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for another decade. In any
event, there is little prospect for a full disengagement from southwest Asia any time soon. Given one of the purposes of his book, it is hardly surprising that Fettweis focuses almost entirely on Iraq. He ignores
Afghanistan, except for repeatedly citing the Soviet persistence in trying to hold that country as an example of a great power making the error of invading a small country in the face of deep nationalism in the
latter. He might have been well advised to view the entire area of southwestern Asia. Ahmed Rashid (2008) has described the U.S. involvement in the region that has extended well beyond Iraq and Afghanistan,
and that suffers from the same kinds of misjudgments made in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially an overreliance on military measures and a reluctance to commit substantial resources to economic development.
Fettweis uses Iraq to argue for a strategy of restraint based on his sanguine view that “we [the United States and, indeed, the entire world] are living in a
golden age” (31, emphasis in the original), and that “[g]reat power conflict today is all but unthinkable; therefore, calculations surrounding the dangers posed by a united Eurasia should change, since the threats it
once posed no longer exist” (208). With the end of the Cold War, the ability of the enemies of the United States to harm this country is quite limited. Hostile acts can be perpetrated, but such attacks cannot
overthrow the United States (31). This strategy is hardly new. Years ago, it was summarized in these words, “Instead of preserving obsolete Cold War alliances and embarking on an expensive and dangerous
Despite the
optimistic picture painted by some national security theorists, the world does contain some
dangerous elements . David E. Sanger (2009), for example, presents a chilling picture of nuclear
weapons in very possibly unsteady hands. Much is said in the book concerning national “credibility,” that is, the ability of a country to maintain
campaign for global stability, the United States should view the collapse of Soviet power as an opportunity to adopt a less interventionist policy” (Carpenter 1992, 167).
its prestige and its reputation for decisive action based on its past performance. Fettweis argues that many governmental leaders, academic commentators, and journalists have been obsessed with this element of
Fettweis states that “[f]or some reason, U.S.
policymakers seem to be especially prone to overestimate the threats they face” (116). There is no
explanation of why this should be the case, nor is there any comparison with the propensity
of leaders in other countries to make similar inaccurate projections. Numerous instances can be cited where governmental leaders
national power and have wanted the United States to deal with virtually any political crisis that occurs (161-75).
and commentators have argued heatedly for “action” on the ground that “inaction” will damage the reputation of the United States. Early in the Carter Administration, for example, National Security Advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski dedicated himself for some time to instigating the dispatch of navy task force to the Horn of Africa during a period of tension between Ethiopia and Somalia. After failing to persuade the
secretaries of state and defense that such action was necessary, Brzezinski waged a covert effort through the media to bring a decision in favor of his policy (Gardner 2008, 40-2). Two case histories cited in the
book as examples of a disastrous insistence on maintaining credibility are the Spanish and British efforts to hold the Netherlands and the British colonies that became the United States, respectively. More recent
instances that could have been cited are the controversies in the United States concerning the “loss” of China in the late 1940s and the establishment of a communist regime in Cuba in the late 1950s. Sensitivity
concerning Cuba led in part to the intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and other episodes where the United States committed itself to fighting insurgencies in Latin America. OCTOBER BOOK
REVIEWS | 867 Concerns about the political impact of the “loss” of Vietnam played a significant role in decisions to support the Republic of Vietnam. These episodes are largely omitted, though. Fear is a potent
political weapon, and foreign threats, whether real or imaginary, are highly useful within the domestic political arena. Claims of a “missile gap” helped John F. Kennedy win the presidency, for example. The armed
services and the various intelligence agencies are rewarded because of fears of foreign threats. Although the armed forces may be cautious about entering a given conflict or making other violent moves, they are
unlikely to stress the peaceful nature of the world if they want to retain their budgets and their prestige. Another element in strategy formulation in the United States has been its experience with long-term threats.
White (1997) asserts that the long conflict with the Soviet Union fundamentally structured the discussion and resolution of public policy issues in the United States, and greatly strengthened the presidency at the
expense of Congress and the political parties. Although his book was written before 9/11, his observation that political activists and the public have become accustomed to protracted battles with foreign enemies
makes it easy to understand why they could readily accept a “long war” against terrorism. Somewhat along the same line, Sherry (1995) maintains that this country has been under emergency conditions from the
Great Depression onward, perhaps even before, permeating the United States with “militarism” in its broadest sense. Going back even further, some writers have argued that United States’ assertiveness may be
traced to the late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth century. Lears (2009) points critically to Theodore Roosevelt as a key player in this development, and Ninkovich (1999) offers a more favorable view
Fettweis touches on this history, but he underestimates the extent to which the United
States has been conditioned to react vigorously to a range of foreign policy issues, and
overestimates the differences in foreign and military policy brought about by changes from one
administration to another. Given this conditioning, changing the mind-sets of both elites and the public may be an extremely difficult task. To a degree,
Fettweis’ arguments resemble those of the “American empire” theorists, such as Bacevich (2008), Johnson (2006), and
Gardner and Young (2005). Critics of the “American empire” believe that the United States produces much of
the unrest and the tension in the world through its unilateral actions and its emphasis on military power. Fettweis does not go that far, but his advocacy of “strategic
restraint” is certainly compatible with such views. He agrees that the United States’ involvements—especially military commitments—abroad may
of the “crisis internationalism” of Woodrow Wilson.
unsettle conditions in countries as much as they may stabilize them, but his purpose is primarily to reassure the people of the United States that less assertive activity by their country will not result in world chaos.
Thus he does not have much to say about the motivations of elite figures 868 | POLITICS & POLICY / October 2011 who advocate an active foreign policy. His argument seems to be that the United States is vastly
overextended in its commitments as a result of a number of individual mistakes stemming from an overconcern with credibility rather than a flawed strategy. Despite his disclaimers,
Fettweis’
words sometimes resemble the arguments of pre-World War II isolationists. Indeed, throughout the book, the word
“internationalists,” which properly describes those concerned with international cooperation, is used to refer to those who should be termed “interventionists,” whether their motivations are power political,
Fettweis believes that there was little that the United States could have
done to prevent the outbreak of World War II in Europe, moreover. On the contrary, firmer U.S.
support of France and Great Britain might have encouraged those countries to force Germany
to evacuate the newly reoccupied Rhineland and to render it much more cautious in its later
actions. After he successfully implemented his plan to put troops into the Rhineland in 1936, Hitler told his confidants that a French demand for a withdrawal would have been successful owing to
Germany’s military weakness. Fettweis even praises the United States because it “had the wisdom to remain
neutral for more than two years” and thus “escaped the worst of the suffering” (206). This is surely wrong. An earlier
involvement in the war would doubtless have reduced U.S. casualties and other costs because invasions of Europe would have
economic, or humanitarian, or a mixture of the three.
been unnecessary if the French and British had held at least part of the continent, and because Germany might not have developed a cushion of occupied territories to protect it from land attacks and from air
assaults for a time. Whether a public educated by books like this one would be able to make suitable threat assessments, and thereby be better able to exercise control over governmental actions abroad is another
Fettweis’ work may be quite persuasive because he expresses his views clearly and avoids
highly charged language. However, if elites agree about dangers from abroad, then popular opinion may have little effect on policy making and policy implementation.
Fettweis’ thinking is significantly flawed by his assumption that “politics is, and always will
be, the enemy of strategy,” and reiterates his point (26, 157). Fettweis adds that “it would be naive to suggest that it is possible to keep politics completely separate from strategy, nor
question.
would it be fully desirable to do so in a democracy” (26-7), but “for the sake of this book, we will attempt to clarify the national interest by keeping the two realms separate, to the extent possible” (27). Determining
national strategy is necessarily a highly political act, and it cannot be established without considering the demands of major internal stakeholders. What he terms “politics” may often be differing opinions based on
different data or interpretations of the same data. Political survival is critical for a political leader, and such leaders can understandably be hesitant in exercising restraint if they believe their opponents will attack
them, perhaps decisively, for being “soft” on the enemies of the day. Fettweis is fond of the term “realist” to OCTOBER BOOK REVIEWS | 869 refer to some defense and foreign policy analysts, but describing
someone as a “realist” may simply mean that the person agrees with the views of the individual applying that description. In certain instances, “realism” can mean being restrained, and, in other instances, being
Appropriate policy decisions are likely to be made on the basis of accurate intelligence
and careful assessments rather than adherence to a general outlook.
highly assertive.
CP
illegalization means no one buys
Mikos, 12 [On the Limits of Federal Supremacy When States Relax (or Abandon) Marijuana
Bans by Robert A. Mikos,Robert A. Mikos is professor of law and director of the Program in Law
and Government at Vanderbilt University Law School.]
De Facto State Power Congress cannot force states to abandon their medical marijuana exemptions, nor arethe states likely to abandon those exemptions voluntarily. Even so,
state exemptions would amount to little more than symbolic gestures if the intended
beneficiaries were unwilling to disobey the federal ban. Though states may eliminate state-imposed sanctions for
marijuana use and cultivation, they may not bar the federal government from levying its own.140 In other words, the discovery that states have more
de jure power than previously recognized would constitute a somewhat hollow victory for state lawmakers and medical marijuana
proponents, unless that de jure power also carries practical ramifications. At bottom, the question is which law has more sway over private conduct: a state law legalizing that
conduct or a federal law banning it? Enforcement of Legal Sanctions According to neoclassical economic theory, laws need the backing of incentives (carrots or sticks) to change
human behavior. If the government wants to promote a certain type of behavior, it must reward that behavior (such as with a subsidy). Conversely, if the government wants to
curtail the behavior, it must punish the behavior (with fines or jail time). Viewed from this perspective, the federal ban on medical marijuana likely does little to deter possession
or cultivation/distribution of the drug. Though the CSA certainly threatens harsh sanctions, the federal government does not have the resources to impose them frequently
enough to make a meaningful impact on proscribed behavior.141 To begin, the federal law enforcement apparatus is small. The federal government employs 105,000 law
enforcement agents, only about 4,400 of whom work for the DEA, the lead federal agency on drug crimes. The remainder work for dozens of departments— Federal Bureau of
Investiagtion (FBI); Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); and so on—and spend only a fraction of their
time handling drug crimes.142 All told, federal agents made 154,000 arrests in 2007—30,000 for all drug offenses, including 7,276 for marijuana.143 These figures amount to
only 1 percent of all criminal arrests, 1.6 percent of all drug arrests, and less than 1 percent of all marijuana arrests made in the United States that year.144 Compared to the
number of federal law enforcement agents, the number of potential targets in the war on marijuana is enormous. More than 14.4 million people regularly use marijuana in the
United States every year, including near 5 million who live in states that legalize medical use.145 While only a small portion of these users, perhaps 1.4 million or so, does so
legally under state law pursuant to medical exemptions, there is no easy way for the federal government to focus its scarce resources on them alone.146 After all, it is not as if
these medicinal users wear a sign identifying themselves as such. Assuming it must select marijuana cases at random, the federal government, on average, would need to pursue
roughly 4 marijuana possession cases in the medical exemption states before coming across just one case that a state would dismiss pursuant to a medical exemption. Given
limited resources and a huge number of targets, the current expected sanction for medical marijuana users is quite low. Suppose that only 5 percent of all marijuana offenders
are currently discovered by law enforcement (state and federal combined).147 Of that figure, only one percent of offenders are handled by federal law enforcement. Assuming no
cooperation between the sovereigns, only 0.05 percent—or roughly 1 in 2,000—of medical marijuana users would be uncovered by federal authorities following current
practices. Hence, even if nominal federal sanctions are set very high (as they currently are), the expected legal sanction remains quite low. For example, a fine of $100,000
results in an expected sanction of only $50 ($100,000 × .0005), a price many people would be willing to pay for access to marijuana—especially considering that many deem it a
life-changing medicine. Not surprisingly, federal authorities have largely forsaken criminal prosecutions of medical marijuana users and have instead sought to curb medical use
of marijuana by focusing on two potential chokepoints: physicians who recommend marijuana and growers who supply it.148 Immediately following passage of the 1996
California Compassionate Use Act, federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey issued a strongly worded statement outlining the federal government’s strategy to thwart the initiative.149
One part of that strategy was to revoke the DEA registration of any physician who recommended marijuana to a patient, on the grounds that recommendation of an illegal drug
is against the public interest.150 Such registration is necessary to legally prescribe, dispense, or possess any controlled substance, including medications; without it, most
physicians cannot practice medicine. 151 Not surprisingly, many physicians would be unwilling to prescribe marijuana (or any other Schedule I substance) if doing so
jeopardized their DEA registration and exposed them to criminal sanctions for aiding and abetting CSA violations. The states, however, seemingly anticipated this roadblock. All
medical marijuana states require only a physician’s recommendation, and not a prescription, to use marijuana legally under state law. To the DEA, this distinction was of no
moment; it viewed both prescribing and recommending proscribed drugs as violations of federal law. A federal appellate court, however, disagreed. The court found that the
DEA policy violated physicians’ First Amendment rights to speak to their patients about the pros and cons of possible treatments.152 The DEA policy was constitutionally
problematic because it explicitly discriminated on the basis of both the content (marijuana) and viewpoint (pro-marijuana) of physician speech.153 The court found there was no
adequate justification for the DEA policy. According to the court, a recommendation, unlike a prescription, entails no more than simply discussing the pros and cons of
marijuana use; it does not necessarily encourage or aid and abet marijuana use.154 The court thus issued an injunction blocking the DEA from denying or rescinding the DEA
registration of physicians who merely recommend marijuana. Though the court’s reasoning may not be unassailable, its decision has been followed nationally, and the DEA no
longer threatens to sanction physicians for merely recommending marijuana. Thus, by carefully circumscribing the task that physicians must perform, the states have prevented
the federal government from squeezing one of the most important chokepoints in state medical marijuana programs. A second federal strategy—and one not constrained by the
First Amendment—has been to target marijuana growers and suppliers, a second potential bottleneck in state programs. As mentioned previously, the DEA has raided nearly
160 medical marijuana dispensaries since 2009. It has also commenced forfeiture proceedings against landlords who knowingly rent property to marijuana growers. Targeting
suppliers as opposed to users has two obvious advantages. First, there are far fewer of them. Some large-scale marijuana cooperatives in California purport to serve thousands of
patients, so shutting down even one of them should, in theory, impact thousands of users. Second, the penalties for cultivation and distribution of marijuana are significantly
higher than for simple possession, the charge most users would face. The biggest marijuana suppliers face possible life imprisonment and a $20 million fine under the CSA,
meaning that expected legal sanctions will be high even if the probability of being detected by federal law enforcement is not. Nonetheless, efforts to take down large marijuana
suppliers have probably had only a limited impact on the supply or use of marijuana.155 One of the main reasons these efforts have failed is because there are few barriers to
entry in the marijuana market.156 Marijuana can be produced in almost any climate. Unlike other drugs, no special skills, technologies, or special inputs are needed to cultivate
the plant. Indeed, one can easily obtain advice on how to grow the drug at bookstores and via various websites.157 This lack of barriers implies that if the federal government
shuts down one large mari juana supplier, another one could fairly easily take its place. Shut down all of the large growers, and smaller operators could step in to satisfy demand.
Shut them all down—an expensive and unlikely endeavor—and many marijuana users would simply grow the stuff themselves. To be sure, campaigns against large suppliers
could dent the supply of marijuana and perhaps its use in the short-run. However, as long as demand for the drug remains high, federal eradication campaigns may simply push
marijuana production into smaller operations that are harder to detect; more costly to prosecute, given their sheer numbers; and subject to lower sanctions under the CSA.158
Simply put, without a substantial increase in federal law enforcement resources, the campaign against marijuana growers would likely be futile. Moreover, such a campaign may
have an unintended and deleterious consequence: to the extent users turn to smaller (and more numerous) suppliers or simply grow the drug themselves, the federal campaign
would frustrate state efforts to supervise the supply of marijuana.159 Apart from dramatically increasing the federal law enforcement budget, Congress has few options for giving
the CSA some bite. It could, in theory, empower private citizens to enforce the ban the way it now authorizes private plaintiffs to enforce Title VII bans on employment
discrimination, but such a proposal seems unlikely to succeed.160 Likewise, states probably have enough law enforcement resources to deter medical marijuana— they already
handle one hundred times as many marijuana cases as the federal government— but state law enforcement agents are under no obligation to help Congress enforce its laws. Just
as Congress may not commandeer state legislatures to ban medical marijuana, it may not compel state officers to help Congress enforce its own ban either.161 Hence, deterring
the use or supply of marijuana through legal sanctions, even in just 18 states, would require a dramatic increase in the federal criminal caseload and a corresponding increase in
federal law enforcement staffing levels. This is a highly unlikely scenario— even more so once one considers that the surge would need to be maintained for the long haul.162
Beyond Legal Sanctions—Why People Obey Law At this point, a neoclassical economist would probably surmise that the federal ban does
not significantly reduce the use or supply of marijuana because the expected legal sanctions for disobeying the ban are, for many people, outweighed by the expected benefits of
people often do obey the law, even when they do not expect to be
punished by the government for non-compliance—that is, even when they lack strong legal
incentives to obey. This paradox suggests that law can affect behavior without granting
formal legal rewards or imposing formal legal sanctions. Of course, these incentives help, but lawmakers do not necessarily need them to
disobedience. Contrary to this prediction, however,
secure compliance with their edicts. The realization that people obey laws even when they do not face high expected legal sanctions suggests that the categorical congressional
ban on marijuana could curb marijuana use even if it is seldom enforced; in other words, the states’ de facto power may depend on more than just the federal government’s
enforcement resources. Apart from imposing legal sanctions, there are three means by which lawmakers can curtail proscribed behaviors: reshaping internal preferences,
invoking moral obligations, and publicizing social norms. To the extent Congress is able to wield these behavior-shaping forces, it may have more de facto power than previously
suggested. Conversely, to the extent the states are able to wield these forces and thereby foster—or at least enable—behavior that contravenes federal bans, they may have even
Some people refrain from
proscribed behavior not because they fear being punished, but because they simply do not want
to engage in it. Marijuana use is an obvious example. Some people may refrain from using marijuana because they deem it ineffectual, dangerous, or depraved.
more de facto power than a narrow focus on law enforcement resources alone would suggest. Internal Preferences.
Though they have not actually been deterred by legal sanctions, these people act as though they had. Though it is commonly assumed that our preferences to engage in or refrain
from a given behavior are exogenous to law, lawmakers arguably can change people’s views of a given behavior, and thus their inclination to engage in that behavior.163 One way
The theory is that the behavior—like the use of
marijuana—will seem more dangerous or depraved if the law formally condemns it. A
lawmakers can do this is by passing laws that ban, and therefore condemn, the behavior.
second way lawmakers can shape preferences is by educating (or more pejoratively, indoctrinating) the public. The federal government has, in fact, employed this strategy in its
war on marijuana. Since 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has spent more than $1.5 billion on an aggressive ad campaign designed to discourage
marijuana use—medical or otherwise—particularly among youth, largely by portraying the drug as dangerous, wicked, and uncool. 164 To the extent lawmakers can shape
preferences and redefine self-interest, they can diminish citizens’ desire to engage in prohibited activity without having to impose costly legal sanctions.
FLORIDA
No risk of oxygen fluctuations
Spencer 8 (Dr. Roy, University of Alabama, Huntsville, “Oxygen Scarcity Threatens
Humankind”, Climate Change Fraud, 8-18,
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2010/240/)
The scare: As the peer-reviewed literature is filled with a growing proportion of learned papers
demolishing the imagined "consensus" that anthropogenic "global warming" will prove
"catastrophic", the less serious newspapers are looking for new scares to peddle to the feebleminded. In mid-August 2008, The Guardian, Britain’s silliest newspaper, printed an article by
Peter Tatchell suggesting that the world’s oxygen is running out because of humankind’s use of
fossil fuels. Atmospheric oxygen trend from Cape Grim, Tasmania. Tatchell says: “Little or no
attention is being paid to the long-term fall in oxygen concentrations and its knock-on effects.
Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere has declined by
over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%. … Much of this recent,
accelerated change is down to human activity, notably the industrial revolution and the burning
of fossil fuels. … This change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious
implications for our health. Indeed, it could ultimately threaten the survival of human life on
earth. …” The truth: Dr. Roy Spencer, of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, says: “The O2
concentration of the atmosphere has been measured off and on for about 100 years now, and the
concentration, at 20.95%, has not varied within the accuracy of the measurements. Only in
recent years have more precise measurement techniques been developed, and the tiny decrease
in O2 with increasing CO2 has been actually measured. But I believe the O2 concentration is still
close to 20.95%. There is so much O2 in the atmosphere, it is believed not to be substantially
affected by vegetation, but it is the result of geochemistry in deep-ocean sediments. No one
really knows for sure. Since too much O2 is not good for humans, the human body keeps O2
concentrations down to around 5% in our major organs. Extra O2 can give you a burst of energy,
but it will harm you (or kill you) if the exposure is too long. It has been estimated that global
wildfire risk would increase greatly if O2 concentrations were much more than they are now. To
say that there is an impending ‘oxygen crisis’ on Earth is the epitome of fear- mongering.”
Oceans are resilient
ITOPF, 10 (International Tanker Owners Federation Ltd., February 2010, “Recovery,”
http://www.itopf.com/marine-spills/effects/recovery/)
Marine organisms have varying degrees of natural resilience to changes in their habitats. The
natural adaptations of populations of animals and plants to cope with environmental stress, combined
with their breeding strategies, provide important mechanisms for coping with the daily and seasonal
fluctuations in their habitats and for recovering from predation and other stochastic events.
Some natural phenomena can be highly destructive. The short-term power of hurricanes and tsunamis can easily be appreciated, as
can the damage they cause. The cyclical El Niño phenomenon has major long-term consequences for marine organisms, seabirds
and marine mammals throughout the entire Pacific Ocean. Organisms suffer under such onslaughts, but after what is
often severe disruption and widespread mortality, the
marine populations re-establish themselves over a
period of time and this process constitutes natural recovery. An important reproductive strategy
for many marine organisms is the production of vast numbers of eggs and larvae which are
released into the plankton and are widely distributed by currents. This mechanism has evolved
to take maximum advantage of available space and resources in marine habitats and to deal with
e.g. predation. In some cases, only one or two individuals in a million actually survive through to adulthood. A less common
reproductive strategy that is generally restricted to long-lived species that do not reach sexual maturity for many years is to produce
relatively few, well-developed, offspring. These species are better adapted to stable habitats and environments and as a result, their
populations are likely to take much longer to recover from the pressures of localised mortality e.g. the effects of an oil spill. Whilst
there may be considerable debate over what constitutes recovery, there
is a widespread acceptance that natural
variability in systems makes getting back to the exact pre-spill condition unlikely, and most
current definitions of recovery focus on the re-establishment of a community of plants and
animals which are characteristic of the habitat and are functioning normally in terms of
biodiversity and productivity.
ecosystems are resilient
McDermott 9 (“Good news: most ecosystems can recover in one lifetime from human induced or
natural disturbance”, May 2009, http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/most-ecosystems-canrecover-from-disturbance-in-one-lifetime.php)
There's a reason the phrase "let nature take its course" exists: New research done at the Yale University
School of Forestry & Environmental Science reinforces the idea that ecosystems are quiet resilient and
can rebound from pollution and environmental degradation. Published in the journal PLoS ONE, the
study shows that most damaged ecosystems worldwide can recover within a single lifetime, if the
source of pollution is removed and restoration work done: Forests Take Longest of Ecosystems Studied
The analysis found that on average forest ecosystems can recover in 42 years, while in takes only about
10 years for the ocean bottom to recover. If an area has seen multiple, interactive disturbances, it can
take on average 56 years for recovery. In general, most ecosystems take longer to recover from humaninduced disturbances than from natural events, such as hurricanes. To reach these recovery averages,
the researchers looked at data from peer-reviewed studies over the past 100 years on the rate of
ecosystem recovery once the source of pollution was removed. Interestingly, the researchers found that
it appears that the rate at which an ecosystem recovers may be independent of its degraded condition:
Aquatic systems may recover more quickly than, say, a forest, because the species and organisms that
live in that ecosystem turn over more rapidly than in the forest.
species resilient
Sagoff 8 (Mark, Senior Research Scholar @ Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy @
School of Public Policy @ U. Maryland, Environmental Values, “On the Economic Value of
Ecosystem Services”, 17:2, 239-257, EBSCO)
Biodiversity represents nature's greatest
excess
What about the economic value of biodiversity?
largess or
since species appear
nearly as numerous as the stars the Drifters admired, except that "scientists have a better understanding of how many stars there are in the galaxy than how many species
Worldwide the variety of biodiversity is effectively infinite ; the myriad species of plants
exceed our ability to count or identify them. The
"next" or "incremental" thousand species taken at random would not fetch a market price
there arc on Earth."70
and animals, not to mention microbes that arc probably more important, apparently
because another thousand are immediately available, and another thousand after that. No one has suggested an economic application, moreover, for any of the thousand
species listed as threatened in the United States.77 To defend these species - or the next thousand or the thousand after that - on economic grounds is to trade convincing
We do not know
how many [plant] species are needed to keep the planet green and healthy, but it seems very
unlikely to be anywhere near the more than quarter of a million we have now. Even a mighty dominant like
spiritual, aesthetic, and ethical arguments for bogus, pretextual, and disingenuous economic ones.78 As David Ehrenfeld has written,
the American chestnut, extending over half a continent, all but disappeared without bring¬ing the eastern deciduous forest down with it. And if we turn to the
invertebrates, the source of nearly all biological diversity, what biologist is willing to find a value - conventional or ecological - for all 600,000-plus species of beetles?7*
The disappearance in the wild even of agriculturally useful species appears to have no effect
on production. The last wild aurochs, the progenitor of dairy and beef cattle, went extinct in Poland in 1742, yet no one believes the beef industry is threatened.
The genetic material of crop species is contained in tens of thousands of landraces and cultivars in use - rice is an
example - and does not depend on the persistence of wild ancestral types. Genetic engineering can
introduce DNA from virtually any species into virtually any other - which allows for the
unlimited creation of biodiversity. A neighbor of mine has collected about 4,000 different species of insects on his two-acre
property in Silver Spring, Maryland. These include 500 kinds of Lepidoptera (mostly moths) - half the number another entomologist found at his residence.80 When you
factor in plants and animals, the amount of "backyard biodiversity" in suburbs is astounding and far greater than you can imagine.8'
Biodiversity has no
value "at the margin" because nature provides far more of it than anyone could possibly
administer. If one kind of moth flies off, you can easily attract hundreds of others.