DrugPolicyCases.com | |||
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Drug Policy Opinion Statements found in Court opinions regarding illicit substances. Public policy considerations, individual predilections of the Justice writing the opinion, the objective and subjective views on the the drugs, the drug use and the drug war... All of these can be found in this section. Pages: ‹1› ‹2› ‹3› ‹4› ‹5› ‹6› ‹7› ‹8› ‹9› ‹10› ‹11› ‹12› ‹13› ‹14› ‹15› ‹16› ‹17› ‹18› ‹19› ‹20› ‹21› ‹22› ‹23› ‹24› ‹25› ‹26› ‹27› ‹28› ‹29› ‹30› ‹31› ‹32› ‹33› ‹34›
Entrusted within its sphere to make policy judgments, the Commission may abandon its old methods in favor of what it has deemed a more desirable "approach" to calculating LSD quantities ... We, however, do not have the same latitude to forsake prior interpretations of a statute. True, there may be little in logic to defend the statute's treatment of LSD; it results in significant disparity of punishment meted out to LSD offenders relative to other narcotics traffickers. (Although the number of doses petitioner sold seems high, the quantities of other narcotics a defendant would have to sell to receive a comparable sentence under the statute yield far more doses, see United States v. Marshall, 908 F.2d 1312, 1334 (CA7 1990) (Posner, J., dissenting), aff'd sub nom. Chapman v. United States, 500 U.S. 453, 114 L. Ed. 2d 524, 111 S. Ct. 1919 (1991).) Even so, Congress, not this Court, has the responsibility for revising its statutes. Were we to alter our statutory interpretations from case to case, Congress would have less reason to exercise its responsibility to correct statutes that are thought to be unwise or unfair.
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From their unique vantage point, Ohio's courts observed that traffic stops in the State were regularly giving way to contraband searches, characterized as consensual, even when officers had no reason to suspect illegal activity. One Ohio appellate court noted: "Hundreds, and perhaps thousands of Ohio citizens are being routinely delayed in their travels and asked to relinquish to uniformed police officers their right to privacy in their automobiles and luggage, sometimes for no better reason than to provide an officer the opportunity to 'practice' his drug interdiction technique." 93 Ohio App. 3d at 594, 639 N.E.2d at 503 (footnote omitted).
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The offense to the dignity of the citizen who is arrested, handcuffed, and searched on a public street simply because some bureaucrat has failed to maintain an accurate computer data base strikes me as equally outrageous. In this case, of course, such an error led to the fortuitous detection of respondent's unlawful possession of marijuana, and the suppression of the fruit of the error would prevent the prosecution of his crime. That cost, however, must be weighed against the interest in protecting other, wholly innocent citizens from unwarranted indignity.
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It is true that the District Judge did not make specific reference to the (unquestionably significant) health risks posed by ecstasy...
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The crack/powder disparity originated in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (1986 Act), 100 Stat. 3207. [...] The 1986 Act uses the weight of the drugs involved in the offense as the sole proxy to identify "major" and "serious" dealers. For example, any defendant responsible for 100 grams of heroin is subject to the five-year mandatory minimum, and any defendant responsible for 1,000 grams of heroin is subject to the ten-year mandatory minimum.
Crack cocaine was a relatively new drug when the 1986 Act was signed into law, but it was already a matter of great public concern: "Drug abuse in general, and crack cocaine in particular, had become in public opinion and in members' minds a problem of overwhelming dimensions." [...] Congress apparently believed that crack was significantly more dangerous than powder cocaine in that: (1) crack was highly addictive; (2) crack users and dealers were more likely to be violent than users and dealers of other drugs; (3) crack was more harmful to users than powder, particularly for children who had been exposed by their mothers' drug use during pregnancy; (4) crack use was especially prevalent among teenagers; and (5) crack's potency and low cost were making it increasingly popular. [...] Based on these assumptions, the 1986 Act adopted a "100-to-1 ratio" that treated every gram of crack cocaine as the equivalent of 100 grams of powder cocaine. The Act's five-year mandatory minimum applies to any defendant accountable for 5 grams of crack or 500 grams of powder, 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B)(ii), (iii); its ten-year mandatory minimum applies to any defendant accountable for 50 grams of crack or 5,000 grams of powder, § 841(b)(1)(A)(ii), (iii). [...]
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