Drug Policy Opinion: Page 5

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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.

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Harmelin v. Michigan (1991)
The Honorable Justice KENNEDY, with whom JUSTICE O'CONNOR and JUSTICE SOUTER join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment:

Reasonable minds may differ about the efficacy of Michigan's sentencing scheme, and it is far from certain that Michigan's bold experiment will succeed. The accounts of pickpockets at Tyburn hangings are a reminder of the limits of the law's deterrent force, but we cannot say the law before us has no chance of success and is on that account so disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual punishment. The dangers flowing from drug offenses and the circumstances of the crime committed here demonstrate that the Michigan penalty scheme does not surpass constitutional bounds. Michigan may use its to address the issue of drug possession in wholesale amounts in the manner that it has in this sentencing scheme.

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Harmelin v. Michigan (1991)
The Honorable Justice WHITE, with whom JUSTICE BLACKMUN and JUSTICE STEVENS join, dissenting:

Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962) [...] held it to be cruel and unusual to impose even one day of imprisonment for the status of drug addiction, id., at 667.

[...]

Harmelin v. Michigan (1991)
The Honorable Justice WHITE, with whom JUSTICE BLACKMUN and JUSTICE STEVENS join, dissenting:

Drugs are without doubt a serious societal problem. To justify such a harsh mandatory penalty as that imposed here, however, the offense should be one which will always warrant that punishment. Mere possession of drugs -- even in such a large quantity [672 grams of cocaine] -- is not so serious an offense that it will always warrant, much less mandate, life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Unlike crimes directed against the persons and property of others, possession of drugs affects the criminal who uses the drugs most directly. The ripple effect on society caused by possession of drugs, through related crimes, lost productivity, health problems, and the like, is often not the direct consequence of possession, but of the resulting addiction, something which this Court held in Robinson v. California, 370 U.S., at 660-667, cannot be made a crime.

[...]

Harmelin v. Michigan (1991)
The Honorable Justice WHITE, with whom JUSTICE BLACKMUN and JUSTICE STEVENS join, dissenting:

To be constitutionally proportionate, punishment must be tailored to a defendant's personal responsibility and moral guilt. See Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S., at 801. JUSTICE KENNEDY attempts to justify the harsh mandatory sentence imposed on petitioner by focusing on the subsidiary effects of drug use, and thereby ignores this aspect of our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. While the collateral consequences of drugs such as cocaine are indisputably severe, they are not unlike those which flow from the misuse of other, legal, substances. [...]

...[I]t is inconceivable that a State could rationally choose to penalize one who possesses large quantities of alcohol in a manner similar to that in which Michigan has chosen to punish petitioner for cocaine possession, because of the tangential effects which might ultimately be traced to the alcohol at issue. "Unfortunately, grave evils such as the narcotics traffic can too easily cause threats to our basic liberties by making attractive the adoption of constitutionally forbidden shortcuts that might suppress and blot out more quickly the unpopular and dangerous conduct." Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 427 (1970) (Black, J., dissenting).

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Ferguson Et Al. v. City of Charleston Et Al. (2001)
JUSTICE KENNEDY, concurring in the judgment:

There can be no doubt that a mother's ingesting this drug [cocaine, see Trivia for this case] can cause tragic injury to a fetus and a child. There should be no doubt that South Carolina can impose punishment upon an expectant mother who has so little regard for her own unborn that she risks causing him or her lifelong damage and suffering. The State, by taking special measures to give rehabilitation and training to expectant mothers with this tragic addiction or weakness, acts well within its powers and its civic obligations.

[...]