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Full-Text Articles in Law
Preemption Under The Controlled Substances Act, Robert A. Mikos
Preemption Under The Controlled Substances Act, Robert A. Mikos
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
States are conducting increasingly bold experiments with their marijuana laws, but questions linger over their authority to deviate from the federal Controlled Substances Act. The CSA bans marijuana outright, and commentators have assumed that Congress sought to preempt all state laws that might somehow conflict with the CSA. Under the preemption rule now in vogue, state marijuana reforms are preempted if they either require someone to violate the CSA or, more controversially, if they pose an obstacle to Congress’s objective of eradicating marijuana. Seeking to avoid such conflicts, government officials have scuttled a number of important state marijuana reforms. This …
Making Sense Of Drug Regulation: A Theory Of Law For Drug Control Policy , Kimani Paul-Emile
Making Sense Of Drug Regulation: A Theory Of Law For Drug Control Policy , Kimani Paul-Emile
Faculty Scholarship
This article advances a new theory of drug regulation that addresses two previously unexamined questions: how law-makers are able to regulate drugs differently irrespective of the dangers the drugs may pose and independent of their health effects, and the process followed to achieve this phenomenon. For example, although tobacco products are the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. they can be bought and sold legally by adults, while marijuana, a substantially safer drug, is subject to the highest level of drug control. This article posits a conceptual model for making sense of this dissonance and applies this model …