Medical Marijuana, Big Pharma Style

Daily Kos
Gr33ner Pastures
June 6th, 2011

The federal government does support the marijuana industry, just not the one you think.

The East Bay Express reported last week that the DEA has been quietly giving out licenses for large-scale marijuana growing operations to a number of unnamed companies. But these actions have nothing to do with the real medical marijuana industry, which is still a favorite target for DEA persecution; instead they are designed to enable a total coup by the pharmaceutical industry. Until now, the belief was that there was only one DEA licensed and operated marijuana farm which existed mainly to provide research material. However, in a letter to the East Bay Express, the DEA revealed that:

“there are 64 active DEA registrations (reflecting 55 companies) for manufacturers that have listed drug code 7370 (THC, Delta-8 THC, Delta-9 THC, dronabinol and others) and drug code 7371 (TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL, ORGANIC) on their DEA record.”

In other words, 55 companies have active licenses for producing organic THC; which means growing marijuana.

Whether these companies have already began growing marijuana or not is irrelevant; the mere fact that the DEA can hand out growing licenses while continuing to raid state-approved growers and dispensaries is a testament to the government’s unlimited capacity for hypocrisy. It is also a sign of how the pharmaceutical industry has co-opted the DEA and the FDA, turning government agencies into its lackeys. Even as the Department of Justice intensifies its attacks on legitimate medical marijuana, the pharmaceutical industry demands to be given a way to profit from cannabis. Now that the patent for the (reportedly mediocre) THC pill Marinol has expired and GW Pharmaceuticals’ Sativex, a cannabis-based oral spray, is on track for U.S. approval, pharmaceutical companies are getting ready to cash in, and they are using the government to keep the competition at bay.

With the rapidly growing list of medical conditions treatable with marijuana making the plant’s medicinal properties almost impossible to deny (unless you are the DEA of course) the pharmaceutical industry figured it needed to get in on the action. This presented a conundrum: to make halfway decent pills, organic cannabinoids are needed, and for that marijuana would have to be federally rescheduled. However, if that happened, how could the drug companies maintain a ruthless monopoly on this plant? The result is a plan so devoid of logic or consistency it would get laughed out of Wonderland: to expand the less restrictive Schedule III category of drugs so that that it can include what the DEA calls “naturally derived or synthetically produced dronabinol.” Dronabinol is Marinol, which is synthetic THC.

Thus under this system a marijuana plant is illegal, but commercial organic THC is officially just a dronabinol analogue. Never mind that both are the same thing, and that such “dronabinol analogues” can be gathered from the still illegal marijuana plant; the alchemy of Big Pharma turns the illegal into business gold. Ironically enough, actual synthetic marijuana that the industry doesn’t have much of a use for, such as the JWH-018 or JWH-073 used in herbal blends like Spice or K2, has been aggressively pursued and banned by the DEA. There really is no overstating the depth of lunacy required for this to make sense to anyone; luckily for the pharmaceutical industry, our government can always be counted on to toss sanity out the window for the right price.

The Pharmaceutical lobby is the biggest lobby in America, spending over 240 million dollars in 2010 alone. With that kind of money going towards supporting politicians on both sides of the aisle, the industry has reached the point where it can get government agencies to carry water for it in even the most outrageous of situations. Only last year, GlaxoSmithKline used the FDA to keep a diabetes drug, Avandia, on the market despite a Senate committee report showing that not only was it dangerous, but that GSX knew this and had colluded with the FDA to hide it. Even the revelation that a member of the FDA advisory panel making the decision was a paid speaker for GSX failed to have any effect.

The government has also been proactive in its service to the pharmaceutical industry, most recently laying the groundwork for a federal center for drug research: The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. The center will be operated under the National Institutes of Health, an agency with a history of conflict of interest issues, whose head recently resigned to join the board of directors at a pharmaceutical company. Drugs developed by this institution will be turned over to private drug companies, effectively turning it into a taxpayer funded R&D arm for the pharmaceutical Industry.

Given this very special relationship, is it any wonder that the government is willing to bend over backwards to take medical marijuana away from patients and hand it over to the drug companies wholesale? The key to winning this battle is the growth of the legitimate medical marijuana industry made up of dispensaries, doctors, growers, etc. As more states, businesses and patients put their weight and wealth on the side of real medical marijuana, they are building a wall to keep out the big drug companies. Economic and political power can stall the government and give the issue more time to mature into a powerful civil rights movement that will ultimately win the day in court.

Thou Shall Not Steal, Thou Shall Not Covet

Repair_Man_Jack
Red State
6/3/11


"You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour." - Exodus 20:17

Gallup may have identified yet another fault line that divides the American People into two ideological camps. They recently polled as to whether the rich should be heavily taxed to provide more social benefits for the poor.

"Republicans and Democrats have sharply different reactions to the government’s taking such an active role in equalizing economic outcomes. Seven in 10 Democrats believe the government should levy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth, while an equal proportion of Republicans believe it should not. The slight majority of independents oppose this policy."

Although no one would ever call me rich unless they meant it as a sardonic pejorative, my chosen title of this post accurately describes where I come down on this issue. Count me in with the 70% of Republicans and the 49% for reasons both positive and normative.

My positive reasoning is this. The US economy has to stop looking like it does according to what is hyped as “The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever.” The money, resources, and other assets have to be put in the hands of people who are competent. We need people who know their jobs, if we want to create more jobs. Whether you buy into Keynesian Theory for correcting a recession or not, those competent people are not currently running the US Government.

Spreading the wealth, pace Candidate Obama, often puts this money into incapable hands and leads only to lower-order, non-productive consumption. This fails to stimulate the economy beyond a brief burst. People unprepared to handle money properly, often times merely lose it. They then have the same problems they had in the first place. Take the sad example of lottery winner Jack Whittaker.

"Take the case of Jack Whittaker, the lone winner of $314 million. He picked the cash option and took home $114 million after taxes…. Today Whittaker is broke and his claim to fame is the run-ins with the law while having millions of dollars. How someone can go from having over $100 million to being broke is something most of us will never understand but it happens all too often."

If giving people large sums of money insulated them from consequence, Jack Whittaker would probably tootle around town in a brand new Ferrari. Certainly, a few of the retailers, strip clubs and divorce attorneys patronized by Mr. Whittaker got a nice economic sugar high. However, no meaningful, lasting improvement resulted from placing $114 million dollars of hot cash in inexperienced hands. A very similar case can be made about many of the recipients of President Barack Obama’s stimulus funds.

"The Government Accountability Office, in a report being released Tuesday, said at least 3,700 government contractors and nonprofit organizations that received more than $24 billion from the stimulus effort owed $757 million in back taxes as of Sept. 30, 2009, the end of the budget year." - Yahoo News

The examples of the broke lottery winners and the stimulus crooks are excellent counter-examples to the old Keynesian Theoretical argument that you can resuscitate a moribund economy by paying people to bury a collection of objects and then paying more people to dig them back up again. Meaningless government handouts, designed merely to goose the velocity of money, do nothing more than urinate a large collection of funds down the drain.

Then we get to the more moral arguments. How do we justify having the government steal the property of another person on our behalf? And make no mistake about it. When we order the government to go “make the rich pay their fair share,” this is precisely the moral behavior we truly engage in. My position on this is simple. Thou shall not covet. Thou shall not steal.

Let me make this perfectly plain, perfectly simple and perfectly offensive. If you believe the government should tax the rich to make them “pay their fair share,” you are greedy and you are a thief. It is just that simple. Just saying “Barack Obama taxed the rich, not me!” does not absolve that evil. It is a dishonest answer if you voted for the man or morally approve of his “spread the wealth” positions on taxation or regulation.

Any person who voted for Barack Obama for the express purpose of having him utilize the US tax and regulatory apparatus to take money away from the rich and give it to them personally, is the moral equivalent of a bank robber. Neither I, nor any other person alive, is entitled to two red cents out of another person’s stash just because we don’t have as much.

Class envy and class warfare lead not only to bad economic investment, but also a society of blood-sucking amoral cannibals. The current desire to “tax the rich” is born of both petty hatred and cynical hucksterism. For America to fix many of our problems, we need to go back to our historical moral roots. Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not covet.

The Patriot Act Is Not Conservative

Jack Hunter
The American Conservative
5/31/11

If Americans needed another reminder of why the Democratic Party is absolutely worthless, they got it during last week’s Patriot Act extension debate when Senate Majority leader Harry Reid again behaved exactly like the Bush-era Republicans he once vigorously opposed. In 2005, Reid bragged to fellow Democrats, “We killed the Patriot Act.” Today, Reid says that anyone who opposes the Patriot Act might be responsible for the killing of Americans. Dick Cheney now hears an echo and Americans deserve congressional hearings—as to whether Harry Reid is a sociopath, mere liar, or both.

But while Democrats stand pat for Bush Republicanism, the GOP now debates the extent to which it will remain the party of Dubya. Tea Party favorites like Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee and Congressmen Ron Paul, Justin Amash, Allen West and others, all voted against the Patriot Act. To varying degrees, each of these GOP representatives questioned the act’s effectiveness and legality. But unfortunately, most Republicans still won’t ask any questions.

The “War on Terror” that defined and preoccupied Republicans during the Bush era brought with it not only massive government growth and debt, but an unprecedented expansion of extra-constitutional state power, symbolized most famously by the Patriot Act. In the name of national security, government officials could begin wiretapping phones, hacking into email accounts, prying into business records and spying on citizens—all without a warrant and at government officials’ own discretion. Defenders say the Patriot Act did what needed to be done after 9/11. Critics say it did away with the 4^th amendment.

Let us say both have a point, and that for arguments sake, both Harry Reid and Dick Cheney are correct in arguing that it is sometimes necessary to surrender our liberties for increased security. Is this still true a decade after 9/11? Will it be true two decades after 9/11? How about three? Have the actions of Osama Bin Laden and his fellow terrorists forever altered our Bill of Rights?

Allegedly, the default position for conservatives is to distrust the government and defer to the Constitution. Concerning the Patriot Act, too many conservatives blindly trust the government at the expense of the Constitution. This type of thinking mirrors the logic of the Left, in which the constitutionality of a big government program like Obamacare is considered irrelevant due to the severity of the problem at hand. The liberal healthcare ends justify the unconstitutional means. This characteristic mentality of the Left is exactly how most of the Right approaches the Patriot Act—though it is an outright rejection of what most conservatives of any generation have held most dear.

Think about it. Conservatives get upset about many things on a regular basis—ACORN corruption, NPR funding, demanding that French fries be renamed “Freedom Fries.” At any given time there is always some new and outrageous rightwing distaste of the week.

But most of these controversies are a speck on a gnat’s ass compared to the damage done to the Constitution by the Patriot Act. For genuine constitutional conservatives, something like NPR funding is undoubtedly wrong but ultimately trivial and peripheral—while the protection of the Bill of Rights is crucial and integral. If George Washington or Thomas Jefferson were alive today, are we to believe that they would be more outraged that: A. The federal government helps fund public radio. B. The federal government snoops on citizens without restraint. Those who answered A. truly don’t understand the mindset of the men who founded this country.

A Republican critic of mine once asked me during a radio broadcast “Jack, can you show me where any American has been harmed due to the Patriot Act?” I replied, “Can you show me where any American has been harmed by Wikileaks?” The caller said he couldn’t, but stated that he believed private individuals shouldn’t haven’t access to private government documents. The gentleman was basically saying that whether or not Wikileaks has hurt anyone to date is irrelevant—the whistleblower outfit shouldn’t be trusted with such power to begin with. I argue the same is true of the federal government. So did the Founding Fathers. That’s why they wrote the 4^th amendment.

The entire reason we have a written charter like the Constitution is to specify the enumerated powers that define the hard parameters of our federal government. Among those powers is national defense and security. But much of what we call “defense” is anything but. Similarly, a total police state could undoubtedly provide much better security, though few Americans would desire a country so void of liberty. After all, most Americans can barely tolerate the way the federal government handles air travel these days.

When Ronald Reagan said there was nothing closer to eternal life on this earth than a government program he could have easily been describing the Patriot Act. When Barry Goldwater said that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” he could have easily been describing the minority of Republicans who now at least question the Patriot Act. When James Madison wrote, “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other,” he could have easily been describing our current state of perpetual war that now gives seemingly permanent life to the Patriot Act.

If the “War on Terror” is a perpetual war—as so many politicians readily contend—have we now permanently given up our liberties? If terrorists really do “hate us for our freedoms” is the best method of defeating them to permanently surrender our historic freedoms? And if so, who is really winning the War on Terror? Us or the terrorists?

By the very nature of their philosophy, conservatives are supposed to question their government. And given the very nature of our Constitution, this is precisely how the Founders would expect any true patriot to act.

Read more of Jack Hunter's work at The Southern Avenger.

Ron Paul Warns of 'Dictatorship in Washington DC'

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com
6/2/11


While at a campaign stop in Mason City, Iowa Ron Paul (R-Texas) admonished the crowd before him.  According to Josiah Ryan of The Hill: 

"'We're not on the verge of having a king, but we are on the verge of having way too much dictatorship in Washington, D.C.,' Paul said, comparing the U.S.'s current situation to a Biblical tale in which the ancient Israelites demanded, against their own good, that a king rule their land instead of God."

Paul continued on, stating "Our rights come from our creator, not our government."  

The biblical tale Dr. Paul was referring to can be found in 1 Samuel 8.  Regardless of your views on the Bible or whether you adhere to Christian, Jewish, or Muslim dogma/doctrine the author of these words obviously understood politics and government, this much is difficult to deny.  

In ancient times Israel, having escaped from Egypt, was governed by a theocratic monarchy.  Moses passed down a constitution and enshrined into law what was thereafter interpreted and executed by elders and priests.  Samuel was the last of these elders to govern in large part because his successors (his sons) were found to "accept bribes and pervert justice."  

Israel mistakingly believed their system had failed rather than simply admitting their leadership had betrayed their system.  Instead of impeaching their leaders and retaining their constitution and decentralized familial organization their false conclusion lead them to subsequently demand a king.  The command and control political models which yielded the fabulous military victories of nearby nations evidently persuaded Israel.  

These autocracies appealed to a young, vulnerable, and ambitious Israel because they were able to make the quick and efficient decisions necessary to "lead [them]...and go out before [them] and fight [their] battles."  While this general king, as it were, would in fact lead to glorious victories and the establishment of Israel as a powerful regional power it would also set the stage for chronic internal struggles which would plague Israel throughout the Old Testament.

What the Israelites didn't understand was that a king, unlike the theocratic constitution and its executors they were accustomed to (however flawed), would wield very different powers as God lays out in verse 9.  Speaking to Samuel: 

"Now listen to them (the Israelites); but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights."  

God continues and warns Samuel how in 7 different ways the Israelites personal rights and liberties will be violated once they took on the arbitrary and expansive powers inherent in a king.

1. Military Conscription "He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots."

2. Military Industrial Complex "Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots."

3. Central Economic Organization "He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers."

4. Redistribution of Wealth "He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants." 

5. Bureaucracy & Largesse "He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants."

6. High Taxes "[He will take] Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use."

7. High Debt & Slavery "He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves."

The wonderful thing about a constitution is that unlike leaders who are in the end human, prone to failure and corruption, a constitution remains consistent, knowable, and often times flexible, manipulated through democratic initiative or judicial interpretation.  A biblical example can be found in the story of the Daughters of Zelophehad – American examples are abundant.   

Human nature has changed very little over the last few thousand years, albeit our technology and cultures may.  Rep. Paul contends that when nations vest most of their political power into one area of government, or into one person for that matter, history teaches us the aforementioned violations and encroachments on our liberty necessarily occur. 

What is the solution to this historical tendency?  "Be the change you want to see in the world" as Ghandi encouraged.  Don't give up your rights and liberties in order to feel safe or to alleviate yourself of the responsibility to better the lives of those in your community.  It is no doubt an intoxicating idea that the right government formula or a charismatic figure might potentially save society from its perpetual ills, but the human experience unfortunately provides no examples of this.  

Freedom by contrast requires vigilance and hard work.  It is therefore understandable that people would rather be told what to do in certain instances; however, this acquiescence inevitably leads to being told what to do in every instance. 

When we abandon the confines set forth in the Constitution (federalism, separation and limitation of powers) in favor of expediency, when our government takes on more of the responsibility we owe to ourselves it becomes harder and harder for our culture to regain what it has given up.  

I agree with Ron Paul, we are not on the verge of having one king, however, I feel he understates in this instance the fact we have too many kings (czars, heads, whatever...)  already in Washington. We submit to so many of their decisions because we docilely operate under the flag of democracy when most of our laws are in fact legislated, adjudicated, and executed by faceless unelected bureaucrats.

We live in an increasingly centralized society where most look to Washington DC for answers rather than within their own communities.  Washington is a den of self serving bureaucracies, self aggrandizing power brokers and entrenched interests whom shape the national dialogue, laws, and policies of our country and where the state, county, and city governments are being undermined at the expense of the family and the individual.  

In reviewing the Constitution and history it is clear, we have ceded too much power to DC in order for it to fight the battles we ought to fight ourselves.  It is up to us to watch over our own health, it is up to us to save for a rainy day, and it is up to us to defend ourselves against those who would do us harm.  We are the generals and armies of our own lives - we should start acting like it.

"Cannot Be Won"

Jonathan M. Katz
Huffington Post
6/2/11

"[The Drug War] Cannot Be Won"

Drug War Has Failed And Governments Should Experiment With Legalizing Marijuana, Says Report

The global war on drugs has failed and governments should explore legalizing marijuana and other controlled substances, according to a commission that includes former heads of state, a former U.N. secretary-general and a business mogul.

A new report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy argues that the decades-old "global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." The 24-page paper will be released Thursday.

"Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won," the report said.

The 19-member commission includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. official George P. Schultz, who held cabinet posts under U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Others include former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, writers Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, U.K. business mogul Richard Branson and the current prime minister of Greece.

Instead of punishing users who the report says "do no harm to others," the commission argues that governments should end criminalization of drug use, experiment with legal models that would undermine organized crime syndicates and offer health and treatment services for drug-users in need.

The commission called for drug policies based on methods empirically proven to reduce crime, lead to better health and promote economic and social development.

The commission is especially critical of the United States, which its members say must lead changing its anti-drug policies from being guided by anti-crime approaches to ones rooted in healthcare and human rights.

"We hope this country (the U.S.) at least starts to think there are alternatives," former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria told The Associated Press by phone. "We don't see the U.S. evolving in a way that is complatible with our (countries') long-term interests."

The office of White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said the report was misguided. "Drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated. Making drugs more available – as this report suggests – will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe," Office of National Drug Control Policy spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said.

That office cites statistics showing declines in U.S. drug use compared to 30 years ago, along with a more recent 46 percent drop in current cocaine use among young adults over the last five years.

The report cited U.N. estimates that opiate use increased 34.5 percent worldwide and cocaine 27 percent from 1998 to 2008, while the use of cannabis, or marijuana, was up 8.5 percent.

Limbaugh Loves Foreign Socialists

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com
6/1/11

Vs.

Last week Rush Limbaugh received a call from a libertarian lovingly referred to as Malcontent Caller #2.  After lauding Mr. Limbaugh over his tax and economic views Greg from Louisville lambasted US foreign policy in so far as it came to funding two middle eastern powerhouses Egypt and Israel.  According to Greg:

"I think we need to stop borrowing money from China to give handouts to Israel. They don't do anything for us. It's a pretty one-sided deal. For the last 30 years, we give them $4 billion a year or so. Plus almost the same amount to Egypt to bribe them not to fight each other. Frankly, I don't see why we need to prop up Israel. They're the biggest welfare queen in history."


Rush Limbaugh obliquely responded by claiming that Netanyahu's speech earlier that day rebuked the idea of sending US troops to aid Israel.  It was is an intentional obfuscation which Greg summarily executed by quipping "no send em money" and "we borrow from China to 'em money" catching Limbaugh relatively speechless.  


Limbaugh deflected by saying "We do a lot more for other countries" while obviously ignoring the implicit question - should we.  Failing to address this fundamental question Limbaugh retreats into the classic Wilsonian dogma and disagrees with the caller that our support of Israel yields us nothing tangible.  Limbaugh asserts benightedly that "we have a cultural alignment that is worth a lot, they're the lone democratic outpost in that region."  Greg adds "socialist" to Limbaugh's characterization of Israel as merely democratic adding another questionable dimension to our foreign aid.   


How do we measure the value of that cultural alignment Mr. Limbaugh?  Since when is democracy sufficient enough to warrant foreign aid?  Aren't there a myriad of other values to take into consideration?  Are we not supporting democratic-socialism not American capitalism of which you claim you champion?  


Limbaugh gives his answer: "They do a lot, or have done a lot of dirty work in that region that we won't do, can't do, and much of it we'll never hear about because it would divulge their involvement."


Wow.  Limbaugh wouldn't be talking about rendition activities, torture, assassinations, violating international law, provocateur black operations, etc. etc.  What a wonderful world we could possibly be funding it is too bad we'll never get to look behind the curtain.  I am sure none of those activities lend credibility to Islamic nations claiming an unholy alliance between the US and Israel. 


Greg succinctly slams Limbaugh's rationalization: "They're a socialist economy. We don't like socialism over here, but we love it over there."

Utterly failing to establish any logical continuity Rush Limbaugh falls back and fires from a well fortified position of pure emotion.  In a classic example of an "appeal to the people" preying upon emotion instead of working out the fine points of his argument reasonably Limbaugh asks Greg the libertarian "Do you want to see Israel wiped off the map?"


Is that the ultimate reason we fund Israel to ensure their safety?  Where do you find that in the Constitution let alone any law in the Federal Register?  


Joseph Sobran's controversial words have never rang as true as they do when you bear witness to a dialogue such as this.  Our country for some reason "has a more or less official national obsession with [this] tiny, far away, socialist ethnocracy" and so called conservatives grovel before the opportunity to perpetuate the phenomena!  Why do we support a country which is, for all intents and purposes, a racist polity?  A country that time and time again refuses to allow people to return to their ancestral homes on the grounds it must remain a "Jewish state."  Is there no right of return for Palestinians?  Is it too idealistic to ask those living in this tumultuous region to grow up and forge the ties necessary to establish a viable civilization?


America was founded on principles of pluralism and rule of law.  We sow none of those seeds by supporting Israel.

Florida Governor Signs Welfare Drug-Screen Measure

CNN
6/1/11

Saying it is "unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction," Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday signed legislation requiring adults applying for welfare assistance to undergo drug screening.  


"It's the right thing for taxpayers," Scott said after signing the measure. "It's the right thing for citizens of this state that need public assistance. We don't want to waste tax dollars. And also, we want to give people an incentive to not use drugs."


Under the law, which takes effect on July 1, the Florida Department of Children and Family Services will be required to conduct the drug tests on adults applying to the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. The aid recipients would be responsible for the cost of the screening, which they would recoup in their assistance if they qualify. Those who fail the required drug testing may designate another individual to receive the benefits on behalf of their children.


Shortly after the bill was signed, five Democrats from the state's congressional delegation issued a joint statement attacking the legislation, one calling it "downright unconstitutional."


"Governor Scott's new drug testing law is not only an affront to families in need and detrimental to our nation's ongoing economic recovery, it is downright unconstitutional," said Rep. Alcee Hastings. "If Governor Scott wants to drug test recipients of TANF benefits, where does he draw the line? Are families receiving Medicaid, state emergency relief, or educational grants and loans next?"


Rep. Corrine Brown said the tests "represent an extreme and illegal invasion of personal privacy."


"Indeed, investigating people when there is probable cause to suspect they are abusing drugs is one thing," Brown said in the joint statement. "But these tests amount to strip searching our state's most vulnerable residents merely because they rely on the government for financial support during these difficult economic times."


Read more about this story on CNN Politics.