Can Smoking Pot Be Considered a Form of Free Speech?

[madokie]

Activists lit up in protest of the War on Drugs—now they face severe charges.



The latest front in the battle for rationalized drug laws is in downtown Philadelphia, where an activist facing a federal trial for marijuana possession asserts that he was smoking as a constitutionally protected method of political expression.

“This site is preserved for the First Amendment,” Chris Goldstein said, pointing toward the glass and brick building near 6 th and Market Street that contains the Liberty Bell. “That’s why we’re here.”

Goldstein and one other defendant will plead their case in a December trial that could result in six months in prison and $1,000 in fines.

“They’re taking the full weight of the law against us, ostensibly for that single joint,” said Goldstein, standing on the federal park space that lies in the shadow of Independence Hall. It’s here, at the site where the country’s founding fathers signed the U.S. Constitution that gives all Americans the right to free speech, where he’s been leading monthly “Smoke Down Prohibition” protests in his role as co-chair of the Philadelphia NORML chapter.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/can-smoking-pot-be-considered-form-free-speech

[Warpy]

1. More so than dirty money in politics can be

The whole drug war is unconstitutional, which is why they based it on tax law.

It needs to be ended.

[Live and Learn]

2. +1 nt

[LuvNewcastle]

3. I want pot to be totally legal, but I don't think

smoking pot is political speech anymore than drinking a beer is. There are still dry counties, after all. Are people exercising their free speech when they go over to the next county, buy their drinks, and bring them back home? Why should we make exceptions for pot when we wouldn't do the same for alcohol or LSD?

[randr]

4. It is definitely a part of my pursuit of happiness

[Jim Lane]

5. It's both speech and conduct, and the latter can be regulated, like burning a draft card.

Vietnam-era First Amendment cases established that:
(1) Walking into a courthouse while wearing a jacket that says "Fuck the Draft" is protected speech, even if the local authorities get in a snit about it.
(2) Burning one's draft card to convey the same opposition has expressive elements but is also conduct that can be regulated, because the government has the power to issue draft cards to men and to require them to keep them.

This is where Citizens United went wrong. The left is wrong to attack corporate personhood, a concept that's essential to restrain many conceivable forms of government overreaching. (It's what would prevent President Cruz from issuing an executive order confiscating the assets of Democratic Underground LLC.) Our point should instead be that the government has the power to regulate the movement of large amounts of money even if, as in the prohibition of draft card burning (or pot smoking), there is some incidental burden on free speech.