SENATE BILL: The Regional Exemption Act of 2014 (Failed)

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

While this is the most realistic of the drug bills that could pass, I worry it could pose a public safety problem if regions all have wildly different drug laws. There is some benefit to uniformity, but that's all I will say on this for now.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

There are some instances where yes, the federal government must impose freedoms on the regions. If this never happened, integration would have taken much longer to achieve nationwide, among other things. I support the rights of regions to do as they please, but not when it involves discrimination.

My biggest worry with this bill is public safety. If one region has wildly different drug laws than another, it creates a nightmare on law enforcement and the medical community, to name a few.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

It also creates a nightmare for people, yes, to keep track of the laws when they are so wildly different.

I think there are cases where uniformity in the law benefits everyone from a public safety standpoint, which is also why I oppose dry counties and the like, because it forces people into attempting risky behavior in order to get their fix, and that endangers more people than we would like to think.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

What is the status quo anyway? I guess once we get our GM installed, we will figure it out. I thought Nix showed that last time we asked this question, the ending of the drug war had a positive effect?

I am not sure what I will do with this bill, but I fear that if this goes into law, some regions may enact laws that are so different from other regions that it will create a dangerous environment and cause people to engage in risky behavior to get their drugs, and persons traveling through or visiting these regions will be open to prosecution they may not be aware of or understand, and this will put a strain on our legal system.

Once you legalize things like we have, it's difficult to go back and make them illegal. See: prohibition in earth 20th century.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

As I said in another thread, I am going to veto this bill if it passes. At the end of the day, we have decriminalized all of these drugs. Reversing course and allowing regions to enact archaic drug laws will not only cost us money and penalize people who use drugs that hurt no one but themselves, it is counterproductive.

I am a big proponent of uniformity in the law, and I fear this will also give people incentive to engage in risky behavior, and that will lead to a strain on our judicial system and the prisons. Once we decriminalize/legalize something, recriminalizing it without some concrete proof of it's dangers/addictiveness is just irresponsible. People need to be treated for drug addictions, not put in jail.

X stood up for his beliefs, and that's okay, I admire that, it takes guts, but I simply cannot go along with it, and I am the big man in the big chair with the big veto pen.