Marihuana : a signal of misunderstanding first report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse.

  • United States. Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse
Date:
[1972?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Marihuana : a signal of misunderstanding first report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    154/200 (page 142)
    use of birth control devices by married persons. Although the Justices did not agree completely on the reasons for their decision, Justice Douglas stated in the opinion of the Court: The present case, then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees. And it concerns a law which, in forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than regulating their manufacture or sale, seeks to achieve its goals by means of having a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship. Such a law cannot stand in light of the familiar principle, so often applied by this Court, that a “governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep un- necessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected free- dom.” (citation omitted) Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship. Four years later, the Supreme Court, in Stanley v. Georgia, held that even though obscenity is not “speech” protected by the First Amend- ment, a state cannot constitutionally make private possession of obscene material a crime. The Court’s reasoning is revealed in the following language: [The] right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, (citation omitted), is fundamental to our free society. Moreover, in the context of this case—a prosecution for mere pos- session of printed or filmed matter in the privacy of a person’s own home—that right takes on an added dimension. For also funda- mental is the right to be free, except in very limited circumstances, from unwanted governmental] intrusions into one’s privacy .. . While the judiciary is the governmental institution most directly concerned with the protection of individual liberties, all policy-makers have a responsbility to consider our constitutional heritage when fram- ing public policy. Regardless of whether or not the courts would overturn a prohibition of possession of marihuana for personal use in the home, we are necessarily influenced by the high place tradi- tionally occupied by the value of privacy in our constitutional scheme. Accordingly, we believe that government must show a compelling reason to justify invasion of the home in order to prevent personal use of marihuana. We find little in marihuana’s effects or in its social impact to support such a determination. Legislators enacting Pro- hibition did not find such a compelling reason 40 years ago; and we do not find the situation any more compelling for marihuana today.