Some Books and A Film

Too Close For Comfort is a 1980s sitcom with Ted Knight, the dim guy on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I checked and saw that the dark-haired sister was in the film The Warriors a few years before. 

It is a silly if visually interesting film about a few members of a street gang who are wrongly labeled as involved in a murder. Deborah Van Valkenburgh is the girlfriend of a member of another gang (so lowly that they were not invited to a big meeting of the city's gangs held in Van Cortlandt Park, near where my sister lives now).  

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I have been recently reading many religious-related books. One textbook on the Old Testament talks about documents found at a Near East site. Stories from Ancient Canaan provide some stories from a polytheistic community overlapping with biblical materials. 

The small volume includes background and commentary. We learn about accounts of gods, kings, and heroes. The longer account of Baal is a bit tedious -- the oral tales already tend to repeat things -- but overall it was an interesting look into beliefs from over three thousand years ago.  

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The rescheduling of marijuana is a big deal and not a big deal. 

Marijuana should have never been classified with the likes of heroin. People knew that was wrong in the early 1970s. Attempts to address the situation repeatedly failed. Thus, eventually, other methods were used to allow for state acceptance of medicinal marijuana and sometimes more across-the-board decriminalization of marijuana and other drugs. 

The rescheduling of marijuana, which now seems likely, directly has limited tax implications. Also, federal criminal law will be applied less harshly. Nonetheless, medicinal marijuana still is not accepted by the FDA. Marijuana businesses cannot use normal banking services. 

Congress ultimately has the responsibility to change the law more expansively. Hopefully, the Biden Administration's actions will provide additional assistance in that reform, which has received some bipartisan support. Congressional action has hit various roadblocks since there still is a prohibitionist faction and some liberals think reforms are too limited. 

Ditto congressional policy in recent years that prohibits funding prosecutions regarding certain marijuana crimes that do not violate state law. (Keeping track can be confusing but the policy goes back to the Obama administration. The Trump Administration to some extent took a stricter stance but it is unclear how much exactly changed.) 

David Pozen wrote the article linked. He also wrote a recent book -- provided free online -- The Constitution of the War on Drugs. A legal blog has chosen it as one of the subjects of a group conversation. 

The book covers various subjects including liberty, privacy, equal protection, and religious freedom. It is filled with interesting details (e.g., in the late 19th and early 20th Century, multiple state courts spoke of a private right to drink alcohol) and insights. Pozen, like Jay Wexler (whose book on marijuana openly expresses his own enjoyment of the drug), notes personal enjoyment, the "pursuit of happiness," is part of the stakes here. 

(One commentator on that blog flags how the original draft of Lawerence v. Texas -- which we now know thanks to the release of additional Stevens papers -- more openly talked about sex for sex's sake. The final draft focused on "enduring" bonds, not quite relevant for the sex involved.)  

The book also discusses the paths not taken, including how government officials outside of the courts provided so little pushback. Marijuana is something of an exception. Justice Tom Clark, a conservative-leaning opponent of many Warren Court opinions, supported the legalization of marijuana in the early 1970s. He suggested personal use could seriously be seen as a constitutionally protected privacy right.  

This view received limited acceptance in court. See also, for instance, a few courts (and three justices in Oregon v. Smith) accepting a constitutional right to use peyote as a sacrament. The federal government accepted Native Americans should have the right to use the drug for that reason. The Supreme Court accepted an RFRA claim involving another drug used by a small religious group. These cases overall were outliers.

There is a growing acceptance of marijuana use, especially for medicinal purposes. Constitutional interests, such as federalism, have been used by government officials to help the cause. 

There also has been some opposition to excessive drug laws, including those that burden disadvantaged groups. Much more of that should be done. 

The book is a helpful resource toward a sane drug policy.