Dear Jack Cole,
I am writing you out of concern for the people of New Hampshire.
An incident occurred this weekend that places the sovereignty of our citizens, and the implicit authority of Officers of the Law in grave jeopardy. The actions that were allowed to happen are actually cause for your removal from office. I do endorse this type of action, because it is your fault due to lack of knowledge of the law and/or the oath the LEO take.
First, you must understand that they take their oath of office and this oath was to “uphold, support, defend and obey the United States Constitution”. If your oath of office did not include this phrase, then the administrator of that oath is in clear violation of Article VI paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution. If you did not know, they are actually in the “EXECUTIVE BRANCH” of government. You are the Executor of the Law. What is that Law? The U.S. Constitution to which you swore your oath.
Second, the 10th amendment of the U.S Constitution states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”. Federal laws -enacted outside the Constitutional mandate- are not binding to any states legislature or Citizens of the particular States. This was confirmed in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Mack/Printz v. United States (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/95-1478.ZC1.html ). The only people that can be held accountable to this Federal Law, in my opinion, would be Federal employees or persons dwelling on Federal Property. I am pushing the envelope on the former, but believe I am 100% accurate on the latter.
Your states Legislature enacted a law allowing for the cultivation and use of this substance for medical purposes. This law is the Supreme law of New Hampshire and is to be enforced by the Executive/Judicial branch of your State, not the Federal government. In fact, the Federal government has no authority over any Law Enforcement authority or person in your state when it comes to this issue.
It is up to you to support and defend the individual sovereign rite of the people of every State. You will be one of them when you retire, do you want to be on the wrong end of illegal enforcement of un-Constitutional laws? I pray not sir, pray not.
To be honest with you, I do not encourage or support the use of marijuana in any way, shape or form. I am concerned with the distinct separation of powers, the Constitution of this Country and the individual Constitutions of each Sovereign State of the Union.

He literally said that if an officer gets an order he has no right whatsoever to decline to follow that order.

What kind of mindset is that? Is a man who enters law enforcement to give up his consiousness? Give up his freedom? This would mean that, to have freedom for the citizens some men have to give up their “inalienable” rights?

I am of German heritage and I have to tell you, I heard that phrase more often than I would had love to hear it. It was the excuse of all the SS guys and petty dictators after the regime of national socialism (mind the word socialism) had broken down.

Now get me right, I do not say that law enforcement in the US can be compared in any way to the Nazis.

But the argument used by John Cole is just the equivalent of theirs to justify their deeds.

That should make him rethink his position. At least I hope he will.

Have a great weekend all.

If LEAP was to be seen as a group which encourages police officers to not do their jobs, their on-duty members could be fired or forced to quit LEAP.

Of course Brad Jardis is doing a brave thing, but for LEAP to endorse his actions would risk the jobs of all their other on-duty officers.

When you said you were ashamed of every one on this thread I thought you meant our point of view of ending prohibition & changing tactics by regulation & education rather than continuing prohibition & the drug war.

Let me clarify on regulation. I am not for the fed gov doing that. I do favor state govs doing it. The feds have too much power as it is & meddle way too much in state’s affairs.

Plus the only way to get control of the drug war is to legalize everything. The dangerous stuff like coke,heroine, meth, X & so on should be allowed, but connected to what I call Consequences Of Use education. Cannabis is the only drug that they have to lie about how dangerous it is. That cannabis is not a dangerous addictive killer means it should be RE-legalized & left alone like alcohol, tobacco & coffee.

I agree that cannabis should out be be RE-legalized. If we can make beer & wine at home why not be able to grow the much safer than alcohol cannabis plant?

To my mind prohibition of ‘smoking’ cannabis & industrial cannabis [hemp] is in place to protect the killer Rx industry, synthetic industries (plastics, synthetic ‘supplements’, rayon, nylon…), big cotton big oil & lumber… It’s all about the $$ & protecting huge profits.

SamFox

Your actions represent HOPE!

that question seems valid in the first place. Yet, the reason for the shadow market is the prohibition itself. Because the risk to deal with prohibited goods is of magnitudes higher than with, say bubble gum, criminal gangs will start to run the market, as they do not shy away of violent action and big scale bribery to minimize their risk getting caught.

Once the prohibition ends, the market for gangs with such violent behavior dries up (see alcohol prohibition) and crimes in this realm almost ceases to exist.

End prohibition equals end crime that paid during prohibition.

Now instead just having a free market you would opt to have the gov control the good. Admitted it might reduce the violent crime, but not as much as just ending prohibition.

Government would come up with rules on whom to sell, what to sell at what price, all the good stuff. Rules to be effective are always enforced at gun point. And voila, we have again a market with a pretty high risk for all those bad guys willing to provide those that do not fall within the government admitted group of users.

That’s why I think just ending the prohibition is the right means. Besides my basic belief that government has no business in any victimless crime anway.

I of course agree with you that regulation would be better than prohibition, however.

No good person should kidnap sick people for using cannabis. Jardis took the right stand. I think the thinking of LEAP (not that it’s unusual) is far too concerned with process, rather than morality. Actions are not judged rightly by whether they follow a certain process e.g: did politicians elected in a vote approve them? Rather, they are judged rightly by their inherent nature.

It is no conflict to say that for southern police to refuse to arrest murderers of minorities was immoral, but refusing to arrest Rosa Parks would have been moral. Rosa parks was not harming others — the murderers were. That is the criteria — the law is not the criteria.

Again: there is no valid moral judgment of an action on any basis other than its inherent moral nature.

I certainly wish LEAP great success in their efforts against prohibition, but I choose to use my limited resources on efforts I find to be more principled. Reformation towards a society in which all individuals, including cops, take responsibility for their own moral actions is far too important a goal for me to sideline it in any way.

I don’t want respect for the law, I want respect for people’s rights, and opposition to aggressive violence.

I want people to decide for themselves, on better information than they have now. We can only do that with regulation – which means some government involvement