CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS

I was horrified to read Dean Kuipers' poignantly-titled piece "Why Is This
Happening?" ["Street," March 24] which detailed an incident in which about
30 LAPD officers abrogated California law by raiding the dispensary offices
of the United Medical Caregivers Clinic. If local police openly choose to
annul the controlling state law that they are sworn to uphold, and have the
ample time and manpower to do so, then it appears that the incessant
requests for more police officers (perversely endorsed by all of the major
mayoral candidates) are based upon a false premise that more of them are
necessary.

The federal government's unconstitutional prohibition on cannabis use
directly violates the 9th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. According to
this sacrosanct amendment, the citizenry is apportioned the incalculable
powers and unalienable rights necessary to 1.) constitute life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, and 2.) "secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity," as ordained in the Constitution's Preamble.
The 10th Amendment certainly apportions non-enumerated powers to individual
States to prohibit the rights of their citizens, but nothing anywhere in
the Constitution apportions similar powers to the federal government to
prohibit the rights and powers of the nation's citizens, unless enough of
the people in enough of the States amend the Constitution to do so per
Article V.

Given these facts, each and every cannabis-related arrest, imprisonment,
fine, or toxin-adulteration that has followed from these unconscionable
injustices have violated the Constitution and undermined the noble American
mission and purpose of the Constitution cited in the Preamble. The Supreme
Court has capriciously interpreted the Constitution's commerce clause so as
to disturb the supreme law of the land's balance of powers and rights and
has unconstitutionally grown the powers of the federal government at the
expense of the people and the States. It appears that the federal
government, now with the aid and abetment of ever growing local police
forces, intends to expand this tyrannical onslaught into citizens' private
lives.

Ivan Smason, Ph.D., J.D.,

Santa Monica