legalized marijuana ... what will CAP do ?

[Garibaldi]

Not necessarily help him to his car, but there may be several reasons.

Ensure it is locked... Get something of value out. To sleep it off.

I did not say he had the ignition key, just that he/she is helped back to the car.

Anyway, do not throw smoke around the issue. You know when someone has been smoking and/or drinking. So can you tell with MJ.

I'm not "throwing smoke". I've been there. It's not so easy to tell whether the person has been smoking or not unless there are more overt signs than what you gave. Red eyes, smiling like a loon for no reason, stumbling around, slurring words, mad munchies. I'm not being flip here. Cheech and Chong movies aside, these signs are real. Just smelling like it and acting a little off isn't a big indicator. Alcohol and prescription drug abuse gives more overt signs of intoxication. I've been around people who smoked pot so much they can't get high anymore, as well as a few who smoked and never displayed any signs of intoxication.

One of my cadets back in Wisconsin came from a questionable family. His mom showed up to a ceremony once and stumbled to the stage when she stood up and nearly fell. We honestly could not tell what she had been doing, even after the cadet admitted his mom had a "problem". We chalked it up to pills and the unit commander politely took her aside later and asked her not to come back in that state. She apparently realized she had a problem and never showed up in anything less than a sober state again.

They say if you want to protect yourself from burglary, you ask a burglar. If you want an honest answer as to how to spot the junkie, you ask a junkie. Sorry to say, I hung out with a bunch of questionable people in the seven years between high school graduation and getting back in CAP. I did some things I'm not proud of, but honestly, having BTDT to an extent, you really can't give a simple answer like yours without knowing a little more about the situation.

[lordmonar]

A member SM or Cadet who is "known" to be smoking pot on or off CAP time is subject to a 2b even if he is in COWG or WAWG.

That "known" is the problem. Who is the knowing one and how do they 'know'? What proof do they have? The 'everybody knows X is a pot head' shouldn't be good enough - but too often it is - just a handy way to get rid of someone 'they' don't want to have around.

If there is no conviction under the criminal code there is no proof anything illegal has occurred. I would include under 'conviction' the various and sundry diversion programs for first-time, youthful offenders etc.

I disagree.  As a former commander I don't have the time or luxery of waiting for the justice system to do it's job.
That is why we have a 2b process.

[ProdigalJim]

As many Captalkers have noted, it remains a federal offense. How I or anyone else feel about it is irrelevant.

Except, there's one organization whose feelings *do* count a little bit more, and that's Ma Blue. And she has spoken...

"Colorado amendment changes nothing for service members" (AF News)

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123326759

[Nathan]

I don't think anyone's denying that it's still illegal under federal law.

What is unclear is whether or not it's going to stay that way in the future. This is certainly going to end up in the courts, and these states that have legalized marijuana are going to challenge the federal government to prove that the need is there to make the drug illegal. If the DEA flounders (which they likely will, considering that alcohol, as a legal drug, will have to serve as the standard for legalization), then chances are the federal government is going to have to do some real soul-searching on this topic.

I'm highly doubting that the federal government is going to go against the states on this one.

CAP has always taken the "drugs are bad" approach rather than the "drugs are illegal, and breaking the law is bad" approach. Now it's going to force leaders to contend with how marijuana is still "bad' while also at the same time as legal as alcohol (in the likely future), which isn't even prohibited for legal drinkers at CAP activities. That's the more interesting conversation, and the one that seems to be getting missed here.

[JeffDG]

I don't think anyone's denying that it's still illegal under federal law.

What is unclear is whether or not it's going to stay that way in the future. This is certainly going to end up in the courts, and these states that have legalized marijuana are going to challenge the federal government to prove that the need is there to make the drug illegal. If the DEA flounders (which they likely will, considering that alcohol, as a legal drug, will have to serve as the standard for legalization), then chances are the federal government is going to have to do some real soul-searching on this topic.

I'm highly doubting that the federal government is going to go against the states on this one.

CAP has always taken the "drugs are bad" approach rather than the "drugs are illegal, and breaking the law is bad" approach. Now it's going to force leaders to contend with how marijuana is still "bad' while also at the same time as legal as alcohol (in the likely future), which isn't even prohibited for legal drinkers at CAP activities. That's the more interesting conversation, and the one that seems to be getting missed here.

The courts have already made perfectly clear that federal drug laws, including MJ laws specifically, are entirely within the federal government's authority to prohibit. 

[The CyBorg is destroyed]

"When" it becomes legal nationwide is an academic question.  Right now, it isn't.  We operate under "what is," not "what should/shouldn't be."

The Federal Government says it's illegal.  The Air Force says it's illegal.  That's all we need to know.  We are not a state organisation, though I'd bet that state Adjutant Generals have plenty to say about their National Guard and SDF personnel toking up.

The Netherlands are often used as an example of what pot laws "should be."  That said...I'm still willing to lay odds that the Royal Netherlands Air Force are not "down" with someone who has toked up AND/OR put away a few pints of Heineken in the cockpit of one of their F-16's.

[flyguy06]

My guess would be the same thing that they do in CAWG and everywhere else in the nation. They will maintain a drug

[flyguy06]

What will CAP do about Colorado Wing?  Will it be OK to have THC in your system?  While at meetings of course. Operations should be outright banned...

Personally, I think if your mind is obviously altered due to a drug, no matter it's legality,  it should be grounds for dismissal. What will CAP do in Colorado?

So, my friend suffers from anxiety disorder and takes Xanax, a mind altering drug. Should he be dismissed?

[abdsp51]

What will CAP do about Colorado Wing?  Will it be OK to have THC in your system?  While at meetings of course. Operations should be outright banned...

Personally, I think if your mind is obviously altered due to a drug, no matter it's legality,  it should be grounds for dismissal. What will CAP do in Colorado?

So, my friend suffers from anxiety disorder and takes Xanax, a mind altering drug. Should he be dismissed?

As long as he has a script and is taking per Dr's orders no.

[scooter]

Easy question to answer for flight crew. FARs apply. The tolerance is zero. Pilots will loose license and should if they are users.   Someone somewhere before in all these posts probably said this, I hope.

[Johnny Yuma]

A member SM or Cadet who is "known" to be smoking pot on or off CAP time is subject to a 2b even if he is in COWG or WAWG.

That "known" is the problem. Who is the knowing one and how do they 'know'? What proof do they have? The 'everybody knows X is a pot head' shouldn't be good enough - but too often it is - just a handy way to get rid of someone 'they' don't want to have around.

If there is no conviction under the criminal code there is no proof anything illegal has occurred. I would include under 'conviction' the various and sundry diversion programs for first-time, youthful offenders etc.

I disagree.  As a former commander I don't have the time or luxery of waiting for the justice system to do it's job.
That is why we have a 2b process.

So based solely on unit scuttlebutt or your sense of smell you'd 2B Joe Senior Member?

Good luck fighting that IG complaint.

[Johnny Yuma]

What I'm saying is that CAP, Inc. or anyone in CAP for that matter has no legal or other authority to start snooping around in the private affairs of its members outside of the organization.

Your assertion is flawed, at best.  CAP is an "at will" organization, and therefore can establish any policies it deems fit.  If that fact is too onerous,
then the organization is not for you.  Further, as a benevolent organization with one of its stated goals to be the development and protection
of its most vulnerable members, there is a strong argument that CAP is duty-bound to take action whenever it becomes aware of situations
where "off-duty" behavior is dangerous or illegal, especially for cadets, but also for seniors who are frequently in charge of its cadets and / or other
members safety.

I've gone around and around with many on the CPPT, of which we'll have to agree to disagree on CAP's ridiculous policies between relatioships between consenting adults.

CAP's rules in this regard are neither uncommon nor onerous, and are intended for the common good.  Life is not "Twilight", and CAP is not "holding back the star-crossed destinies of its members just to turn them into automatons".  Plenty of corporations, schools, and the military, actively prohibit or discourage the same sort of relationships, for the simple reason that any "romantic" entanglements where the parties are not on equal emotional ground are a bad idea, and that badness tends to cause collateral damage and unintended consequences.

But we've also had threads on here regarding cadets caught with contraband off CAP time and how it should have been handled by CAP even though the courts and parents had the situation in hand. Now we're talking about how to deal with members who may partake in using a legal drug in their state yet is still illegal by Federal law.

what about when the situation is not "at hand"?  And while you're there, define "in hand".  How many convictions are necessary before its back "out of hand"? 
Again, CAP is not unique in this stand, and it protects everyone involved.  private corporations, most government agencies, schools, and similar organizations will all have a say or generate additional consequences for someone who violates the law, external to their direct involvement with the
respective organization.

Something deemed legal at the state level and illegal at the Fed level is..."illegal".  So arguing about it is pointless unless and only when that
simple fact changes.

I will not get into the whole Interstate Commerce clause and the overreaching that is occurring for the sake of brevity.

Trying to argue about the way thing s"should be", in a discussion of "is", is also pointless.  The Federal Government's authority
is not likely to shrink in our lifetime, nor is an organization like CAP going to have a say in the matter, or champion a contrarian attitude.
So this simply "is".

I get the perception sometimes on here that its OK with CAP to meddle in what its adult members do in the privacy of their homes and use the rationale you offer below as their excuse. That attitude will neither add members to our rolls nor will it do anything to retain members, either.

Then it would appear the "attitude" is effective.  Adding or retaining people who engage in illegal activity or poor judgement does not serve CAP's
purposes.

And while any number or substances may be legal, it will never be in CAP's best interest to do anything but actively discourage the
use of anything which alters or intoxicates its members.

At what point do these "at will" policies supposedly in the name of safety  become over reaching and well outside the business of CAP, Inc.? When they tell me what medicines I can take or not, who I can associate with, or where I live?

The only surefire way you're going to 2B a member for weed is a) they get caught at an activity with it, arrested and convicted or b) you start making members pee in a cup. NHQ ain't gonna pay for that and neither's the members. Personally, I think members who feel the need to do random sniff checks of other members to see if they might have smoked MJ sometime is a little creepy, but I guess if it's some new CAP, Inc. policy that's going to make CAP, Inc. safe from a lawsuit...

 

[Garibaldi]

At what point do these "at will" policies supposedly in the name of safety  become over reaching and well outside the business of CAP, Inc.? When they tell me what medicines I can take or not, who I can associate with, or where I live?

The only surefire way you're going to 2B a member for weed is a) they get caught at an activity with it, arrested and convicted or b) you start making members pee in a cup. NHQ ain't gonna pay for that and neither's the members. Personally, I think members who feel the need to do random sniff checks of other members to see if they might have smoked MJ sometime is a little creepy, but I guess if it's some new CAP, Inc. policy that's going to make CAP, Inc. safe from a lawsuit...

Point 1: Stuff you do outside your employment, enlistment, or volunteer service can have a detrimental effect on the aforementioned list. Let's say you are an average human, for the sake of argument. You go to a party, you drink or smoke something, and go home. On the way home, you're involved in an accident. Maybe your fault, maybe not. You're not really drunk, mostly buzzed, as you've only had one or two drinks or maybe you took just a couple hits off the MJ pipe that was passed around. The responding officer notices the smell of alcohol on your breath or perhaps your glassy eyes. He administers a field sobriety test, which you fail due to a combination of the late hour, stress of the situation, and your intake of the evening. You're taken into custody, and sometime in the wee small hours you are able to get hold of your boss to tell him you might not make it into work, or at least you're going to be very late. The boss recognizes you have a history of this, and promptly tells you that up with this he will not put, and fires you. You have to go home and explain to the wife that you're not employed anymore and she says "see ya" and kicks you out of the house.

You just happen to be a functioning alcoholic and pot smoker who has managed to skate by for many years and managed to hold it together long enough to serve in CAP for many years. You've snowed everyone into believing you're the upstanding citizen you portray to your unit and wing. For some reason or another, the unit busybody, who just happens to work in HR at your now-former company, starts telling people what happened, which is in direct conflict with the story you told. She just happened to be at that party and saw you hit the ol' bong before you left. She feels that perhaps the unit CC should just for the sake of $#!ts and giggles to dig back a few weeks to that little accident you had with the unit van, which caused a few hundred dollars worth of damage, just to see if something is amiss. The CC goes back and looks at the accident report and re-questions the witnesses, one of whom seems to recall you stumbling down the stairs of the restaurant after lunch slightly and doesn't recall seeing the dog you swerved to miss, even though you were in the front seat. He says he recalls smelling alcohol on your breath as well but you chalked it up to the cough medicine he saw you taking earlier.

What does the responsible CC do in this situation? In this situation, assume CAP has instituted a policy of drug screening for members involved in sensitive positions, and allows commanders to test members who are involved in MVAs and aircraft incidents. Discuss.

Point 2. We had a cadet shoplift not 2 hours after arriving to an activity and had make the hard call to his parents telling him he was arrested. There was a group of cadets in my unit who were busted for drinking ON A MILITARY BASE at a wing conference. CAP's jurisdiction begins at the start of the activity and ends when the CC of the unit involved has concluded his investigation. Punitive action we can't do, but we can 2B the offenders. How that action is completed is yet to be determined, but you can bet if corporate assets are involved, like a plane or even cadets, someone is going to foot the bill for a urine test.

There is very little you can do to avoid a lawsuit in CAP these days. You make a cadet angry and there is nothing stopping him/her from making a false accusation of cadet abuse and there goes your membership. You pass someone over for promotion to a new position and they can file charges of discrimination. The wrong person sees you do the wrong thing, even during non-CAP time, and can raise questions about your fitness to be in the program.

I'm sure Eclipse will either render my argument moot or back me up on some of this. I said some. 

[Nathan]

The courts have already made perfectly clear that federal drug laws, including MJ laws specifically, are entirely within the federal government's authority to prohibit.

Again, nobody is arguing that.

The point is that even some of my DEA friends believe that it's a "when", not "if" question regarding marijuana legalization now that the states are willing to challenge the federal government on it. This will bring out the need for evidence establishing why marijuana deserves to be classified at the same level of addictiveness and danger as heroin while alcohol is legalized. IF the federal government chooses to fight (which I doubt it will), then it's either going to pull out something that has remained completely invisible to the mainstream scientific community that establishes its case, or it's going to fail to prove that the prohibition of marijuana is justified.

And just because this is "academic" doesn't mean it's "theoretical." This is an issue that CAP will likely have to confront within the next five years, maybe sooner. Since we've been operating off of the apparent belief that the legalization of marijuana would NEVER occur, then we're kind of at a weird place if it becomes legal for our adult members to use.

Remember that the belief of marijuana somehow being more addictive or potent than alcohol, or many psychoactive drugs, or prescription painkillers is simply not true, and we don't limit the use of these drugs for our members, even at CAP activities. The ONLY time that CAP needs to be involved if there is a demonstrated incident, backed by evidence, that establishes the drug use is causing problems for the member's ability to function in CAP.

It's probably also important to note that a "demonstrated effect on CAP function" CANNOT include the bias of other members against the member in question's personal behaviors. Otherwise, we could claim that a member being a Wiccan is a disruption to CAP function because someone else is uncomfortable with their religion, which is not a road we can go down. If you don't like that someone is smoking marijuana legally, but the member is still performing his/her job to expectations, then it's not the member's job to mold to your ideal behaviors.

If the member is not breaking the law, and his/her work at CAP is not being demonstrably affected, then CAP simply isn't going to have a case against marijuana, so long as they want to maintain the allowance of alcohol, prescription medications, and even some psychoactive over-the-counter supplements.

[Eclipse]

The whole discussion falls apart as soon as the "its still illegal" card is played.

If it becomes legal, then it will likely be handled in the same way alcohol is, however it's never going to be legal at the Federal level in this country in the lifetime of anyone reading this message today.

Never. 

So all these misguided arguments about "rights" and "What will CAP do?" are irrelevant.

[Nathan]

The whole discussion falls apart as soon as the "its still illegal" card is played.

If it becomes legal, then it will likely be handled in the same way alcohol is, however it's never going to be legal at the Federal level in this country in the lifetime of anyone reading this message today.

Never. 

So all these misguided arguments about "rights" and "What will CAP do?" are irrelevant.

Pretty sure you're wrong on this one. It's historic that it was voted legal in the states it was. Public opinion is changing on a LOT of social issues, including this one. Again, I'll be surprised if the federal government doesn't handle this the same way it handled DADT.

[Luis R. Ramos]

Why do we have to spend time at the present on arguing this back and forth? Cant we let this die until that time it becomes legal in Federal organizations? I am tired of having to wade through messages to find this thread!

Flyer

[a2capt]

Then don't read the thread

[Luis R. Ramos]

...It takes half a minute of my very busy daily day to figure out what it is about, and whether I should read it or ignore it!

:angel:

Flyer

[starshippe]

   excellent points, nathan.

   heres what the sentiment was in the early 70's...
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Marihuana_and_Drug_Abuse

bill