Feds Have No Power Over Medicine: Marijuana Speech #18

18 ^th speech in this series to the Josephine County Commissioners, October 14, 2009.    

Another reason that you should ask the legislature to pass the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act is: “WHEREAS federal laws regarding marijuana and other drugs violate the 10^th Amendment, usurping powers reserved to the states and the people;”

The 10^th Amendment of the United States Constitution states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

The first thing it says is, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution…”  This tells us first that powers are delegated to the United States by the people.  These powers do not come from the States, because the Constitution begins, “We the People of the United States…”  It is the people who established this Constitution because, as the Declaration of Independence tells us, governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” 

Oregon’s Constitution enshrines this principle in Article 1, section 1: “We declare that all men, when they form a social compact are equal in right: that all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority…” 

The gist of the Tenth amendment is that the Federal government has no powers that are not listed in the Constitution; any powers not listed belong to the states, or to the people from whom all power flows. 

There is nothing in the United States Constitution that gives the federal government any power over the practice of medicine.  It can be argued that the First Amendment’s religious freedom clauses forbid any such role.  Yet Congress and federal regulatory agencies have presumed to tell the people what we can or can’t use for medicine! 

It’s gotten to the point that Congress is about to complete the federal government’s takeover of the practice of medicine in this country.  They want to tell health insurance companies who to cover and what to cover, which is to say, everyone and everything.  In return, they want to force every one of us to buy those overpriced, unsustainable insurance policies.  And some want to include a government insurance option, to use tax subsidies to unfairly compete with the insurance companies in their forced coverage by armed robbery. 

In the end, we will all be paying for each other’s poor health, and telling each other what to eat and not to eat and how to exercise and sleep.  We’ll be putting people in jail for not taking good enough care of themselves, or for refusing to pay for the poor choices of others.  This is what comes of letting governments tell people what they can or can’t take as medicine.

We all have power; we delegate some of it to governments.  I reserve all my power over my body and what I put in it to me.  That is part of my freedom of religion.  The Legislature of the State of Oregon should be as jealous of its power as I am, and stop the United States from usurping powers that it has not been delegated, by passing the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act in defiance of the federal ban on cannabis.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener         541-955-9040         rycke@gardener.com