Q: What I’d like to do is start sort of narrowly, and then talk more generally.
A: Okay.
Q: In terms of our narrow discussion, I’d like to hear you discuss how the federal government has been able to go about regulating drug use, sale, and possession over the last hundred years or so. And then we can talk about constitutional issues that flow out of that.
A: Sure. It’s really a fascinating story how it all developed because, of course, in the early part of the twentieth century the federal government wasn’t involved in drug regulation or prohibition at all. And really that was considered only to be something done in the local level, states, and so forth. In fact, the federal government wasn’t considered to have the power to do that. The earliest actual prohibition against marijuana, for example, was in the state of Utah in 1915. That was the first state law that was passed against marijuana, which came about because some of the Mormon members that had gone to Mexico had come back with marijuana, and the church decided they didn’t like that so the law was passed there.
Interestingly, as far as marijuana, the plant itself, existed throughout the United States, mostly referred to as ‘hemp’ or ‘cannabis’, used for rope, birdseed, for all sorts of other purposes, medicines and so on. But when it was brought in from Mexico it was often referred to as ‘marijuana’, people thought that was an entirely different thing. So that got tied up in a whole mix of racist approaches in terms of passing laws in states having to do with Mexicans bringing marijuana into the United States. Later on as it made it’s way through Chicago and then to New York and the jazz area and the jazz musicians, then it became a racial issue with the blacks in New York and that whole thing. So that got tied into the whole area.
Still, the federal government wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. This was a state thing. If you remember that alcohol prohibition in 1919 came about through a constitutional amendment, because that was the only way they thought they could, at a federal level, outlaw alcohol - because the federal government simply didn’t have the power under the Constitution to do that. What they had the power to do, they could regulate interstate commerce, that would be things going from one state to another, and they could levy taxes. That was specified in the Constitution, that they had the power to levy taxes to raise money that they needed. So the first case of that with drugs came in 1914, with the Harrison Act, where they essentially put a tax on opiates and cocaine; which was a way to take legal products, put a tax on them, and then you’d be in trouble with the Treasury Department if you weren’t doing it legally. So it was essentially a tax law, in that sense, that was involved, not a criminal prohibition against those, as it were.
That approach then continued on. And it wasn’t until 1937, with the Marihuana Tax Act, that the federal government then passed the first federal law against marijuana. Which at that time that they passed it, they had no idea what it was; they didn’t realize that they were talking about hemp and cannabis. They thought it was some other drug that was brought in from Mexico and it was a total of about thirty seconds on the floor of the Senate or the floor of the House, that they had this discussion that involved a speaker asking, “What is this marijuana?” And the response was, “I don’t know, I think it’s a narcotic of some kind.” And they went ahead and passed the prohibition through the Tax Act.
So that was really the entire discussion. They had had one hearing in the committee, which was pretty much dominated by Harry Anslinger, who was the head of the Bureau of Narcotics, who was looking for a little more job security. Opiates and cocaine just didn’t create enough business for him to be able to do something, marijuana gave him this option. So it gave you another thing to work with that a lot more people were using, and so he’d have, essentially, more to be able to do.
And that, combined with some fairly outrageous journalistic approaches, mostly referring to things like, “Marijuana will make a black person look at a white woman twice.” Those kinds of racist comments that were made in newspapers, and blown-up stories about a sixteen-year-old kid smoking marijuana and murdering his entire family with an ax. Those kinds of things were enough to sway it without any actual medical evidence.
So that’s sort of where that whole thing developed was through a series of state laws building up, the creation of the Bureau of Narcotics looking for a little more work. Creating that and then using the tax laws to find a way to get the federal government involved, being able to control in some way, this whole approach.
Q: The constitutional clauses and provisions that come into play in this issue are the Commerce Clause and the Tenth Amendment, primarily. If you could talk a little bit about how those have been interpreted over, say, the last one hundred years, and how those varying interpretations have played into the policy issues that face us in this discussion.
A: Certainly. Well, certainly at the time of alcohol Prohibition, during that time period, the early part of the twentieth century, the Tenth Amendment was regularly put in as a blocking of federal government interfering in what they termed as ‘local affairs’: the things that really were the province of the state, the local area, that the federal government shouldn’t be involved in. And the Tenth Amendment - judges regularly would bring the Tenth Amendment in at that time - something you would never see today. In fact, that’s one of those amendments that people sort of try to pretend doesn’t exist, it’s that part of the Constitution that just sort of gets ignored. But at the time that was regularly put in the path of federal regulation, was this whole notion that, “No, that’s something that the states get to do, federal government doesn’t get that power, they’ve got other powers. They’ve got to be involved in the overall defense of the country and other things. They shouldn’t be meddling in these kinds of things in the individual states.” And that comes from a historical approach from the way the country was founded from individual, very unique states, with individual governments that didn’t want to loose that identity. So this was regularly put in the way.
And then the other aspect was the Commerce Clause. And basically that is one of those areas that gives the federal government some authority. ‘Original thinking’ of the Constitution is that the Constitution is a granting of government of certain authority and that the Constitution and the government only has that authority that has been granted to it in the Constitution. Well, the one thing is that it could regulate commerce between the several states, which is the Interstate Commerce Clause. Basically, the idea of this would be obviously the states would control what was inside their own state, but it would get difficult if they were going to be dealing between two different states. And there might be areas in that that the federal government would need to step in. So that was the concept of the Interstate Commerce Clause, was the federal government would step in when it related to commerce between the states.
And this is why it’s kind of fun if you look at old movies, you’ll notice the ‘feds’ can’t get involved until the criminal crosses the state line. And you’ll see that, “Oh, now we can call in the feds because it’s become an interstate case.” And that even shows you just from popular culture how that has changed, because you don’t see that today in movies. It shows that that has completely erased over time, that notion that there was a clear distinction between the federal government, which really wasn’t supposed to have ‘police powers’ per se, that was related to the states. But the federal government would just step in at those times when it had to deal with multiple states. And that was held fairly strongly and it particularly related… The Tenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause particularly related to any kind of regulation of medical practice, that was really considered a very local kind of affair that the federal government had no authority, no business stepping in and interfering with doctors and what they would do. That was a state regulatory issue. So that all those things were in play in the early part of the century when these first laws were coming up, and the whole using tax law instead of criminal law…
Over the course of time…
(Pause for technical adjustment)
A: As time went along, various decisions over the course of that century expanded the federal government’s role. And this came through a number of areas. It came through such things as civil rights legislation and so forth. It would be things where the federal government felt that it needed to step in and assert itself over what individual states wanted. And so, in fact, it often became thought of as a fairly liberal thing to expand the role of the federal government in order to bring these kinds of principles to various states. As various things happened over the course of time, each case would whittle away a little bit so that it became not just when something crossed state lines, but it would also involve when things involved affecting more than one state. So it would be things like, no longer does it have to be that the criminal crossed the state line, but that the criminal’s actions would affect interstate commerce in some way, then the feds could step in. So there was no longer now the physical need to cross, but the mere collective involvement of more than one state somehow in the process of this. So you can see how this essentially just kept getting broader and broader and broader, until today where it’s come to the point of a real question of whether there is anything that qualifies as not being part of interstate commerce.
Q: That’s a great amount of detail, but I would like to take a shorter version of it.
A: Sure, absolutely. Do you want me to go back to the early part and get on to the Commerce Clause?
Q: I think so, yeah, and bring us home to the present day.
A: Okay. In the early part of the twentieth century, the Commerce Clause was considered to be a very limited grant of power to the federal government, really only for those instances where things crossed state lines. Which is like in the old movies, you’d notice that the bank robber crossed the state lines, now the feds can get involved. But beyond that, if it was in the state, the feds were out of it. As cases over the course of this decade continued to shift things slightly, it really eliminated all of that distinction. So that now there’s really anything that involves affecting interstate commerce, whether it affects the financial transactions of the entire country in one way or another, suddenly is now fair game for the federal government, to the point where it’s unclear that there’s any distinction that the federal government cannot get involved.
Q: I think we’ve covered the constitutional background to the extent that we need to right now, so I would be curious to hear you talk about the specific issue we’re looking at - which is medical marijuana legalization - because that’s going to provide our real world case study for this issue. And there has been a trend of states passing these laws over the course of the past ten years or so.
A: Yes.
Q: Can you talk about the history of that trend?
A: Sure. First of all, many people actually do not know that there are at least thirty states that have some form of support for medical marijuana passed from earlier days. Most of these aren’t useful for patients because they don’t eliminate criminal penalties or anything that way, or they would only kick in if the federal government were to allow it. But there’s actually quite a lot of support within the states for this. But really back around 1996 was when the first major effort to really take this to that states and say, “We’re going to pass this in the states and not worry about the federal government.” And that came with Proposition 215 in California, in 1996. And that really established the whole approach of really building the idea, state by state, of making it legal in the state even though the medical marijuana would still be illegal at the federal level. Since that started, there are eleven states now that have legalized it within the state, in other words, that means removing criminal penalties for those patients who have, under the proper circumstances, been given the permission to use it under state law. And eight of those came about through referendum and three of them through legislative action.
Q: The California law is at the heart of the case that we’re going to look at very specifically. Can you talk a little bit about the Raich v. Ashcroft case that arose out of passage of this law, eventually?
A: What happened, of course, was this was a pretty major thing for California to essentially thumb its nose to the federal government and say, “We’re going to allow our patients to use medical marijuana.” And it was done through the voters coming through and saying that if you’ve got a doctor’s permission, then you’ve got the right to use medical marijuana. The federal government immediately stepped in and asserted itself and said, “We’re not going to accept that.” And they made it clear right off the bat that they were not going to let that lie. And I think that part of the reason there has been such a strong effort by the federal government is they were trying to head off this movement, they wanted to stop it. And it created some situations where the federal government looked pretty bad, when you’ve got situations, for example, right after 9/11, when you have thirty armed DEA agents storming into a peaceful commune with sick people in wheelchairs using marijuana. It’s not a very good picture on the news. And the federal government didn’t do well from that, but they still have pursued that effort, and they have asserted the supremacy of the federal law over the state law, and that has been their position. It doesn’t matter what California passes, the federal law takes precedence. And California’s saying, “We passed the law, we have to live up to our law that was passed by our citizens.” So their officials are caught in a bind as well.
Q: Can you talk in a little more detail about what exactly Proposition 215 entailed?
A: Proposition 215 was really a fairly general statement. It basically said that patients who had received either written or oral recommendation from their doctor that marijuana would be beneficial to their particular condition, could use medical marijuana. That left it very vague. Now they did specify some particular illnesses that would be included but did not limit it to those. So that left the door fairly wide open to anybody’s interpretation as long as a doctor had signed off on it in one way or another. And they did both the written and oral part of it because the federal government’s first step was to try to go after the doctors, and if the doctors were recommending it, then the federal government would try to pull their license for other things. So that became an issue there, many of the doctors were afraid to make the recommendations. And the real problem with the state/federal distinction that way is that the state can’t come up with a very good system when the federal government is looking over their shoulder. And Prop 215 was not a perfect law; it was too vague. They have done some amendments since then. Senate Bill 420, which really specified how the system could be done with ID cards and so forth, was one effort to really tighten that up a little bit.
Q: So this had been on the books for several years, and then Angel Raich and Diane Munson, at some point, were raided by the federal government. Can you tell that story?
A: It wasn’t that they were really raided together. Diane Munson was one of those who was raided. She had local police, along with DEA agents, come and rip up her six marijuana plants. And the local District Attorney said, “Nope, we don’t need to prosecute her, she’s fine. She’s following the state law, you know, we don’t want to do anything about it.” But the DEA refused to return any of the things that were seized. So that tended to be a pattern. They knew it was difficult to get convictions putting somebody in a wheelchair or whatever in court, but what they’d do is they’d seize the equipment, the computers, the plants and so forth, and then people weren’t getting them back.
Angel Raich was another person. Angel has a list of medical problems a mile long, from a brain tumor, to chronic pain, to a whole bunch of different illnesses that combine and require this hodgepodge of medicines that cause even more problems because she’s allergic to them. And marijuana is the only thing that really keeps her alive. It’s something that she has asserted, her doctor’s asserted, and through out the entire time, the federal government has never disputed the fact that medical marijuana is what keeps her alive. She had been getting her marijuana through the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Club, which was shut down by the federal government.
So she and Diane Munson together got together and sued the federal government. So this didn’t come out of a case where they were on trial and getting appeal. This was a case where they sued the federal government to say, “Look, we need this to keep alive. We need the courts to put an injunction on the federal government to prevent them from killing us.” Which was, essentially, the idea of this, was suing the federal government so they wouldn’t come in and seize the plants that they had and take away their ability to get the medication they needed.
One of the great things about the Raich v. Ashcroft case, which is what it was first called, was it was such a pure case, because it was about marijuana grown totally in California, where it was legal, with doctor’s permission, with government permission, with no money changing hands. So nothing was being bought or sold, and it was all within California. The trial reports even talked about the fact that the water and fertilizer for the plants were also from within California, nothing crossed state lines at all. So they’re coming and saying, “How can you possibly, as a federal government, have any authority over these plants that are grown totally within the state of California with no money changing hands? How can you call that ‘interstate commerce’? There’s no interstate, there’s no commerce, how can that be?” So they were going in with a very pure case that way. And they essentially went to court with that, along with a list of other things: they were suing based on Fifth and Ninth Amendments, having to do with due process and right to life; Tenth Amendment, as far as the state’s sovereignty over it’s own laws. So they had a whole list of items that they put into this case, sort of a, you know - everything they could use to go after the federal government.
Now the District Court turned down the injunction, but then it went to the Ninth Circuit. And the Ninth Circuit, on a two-to-one vote, decided that the Controlled Substances Act, the CSA, which is the federal government’s way of scheduling drugs, and marijuana is a Schedule I drug, which by definition, as defined by Congress, means that it has no medical value and is dangerous. So that is what the federal government uses for regulating marijuana in this situation. The Ninth Circuit determined that the Controlled Substances Act, as applied to Angel and Diane’s case, was unconstitutional; that the federal government did not have the authority to step in and use that and apply that to them, it just did not fit.
Q: I would like to go and just get a beginning to that.
A: Sure.
Q: Just a summary.
A: Raich v. Ashcroft involved two women, Diane Munson, who had been raided by the DEA for six plants; and Angel Raich, who had been getting her marijuana through the Oakland Buyers Club. And that was shut down, so she no longer could. And basically they got together and sued the federal government to prevent the federal government from taking away their medicine.
Q: So once the Ninth Circuit decided that part of the CSA was unconstitutional, there was a Supreme Court argument following that. Can you talk about what brought the case to the Supreme Court, and who the major players were on both sides of the legal arguments?
A: As soon as the Ninth Circuit ruled that it was unconstitutional, that meant that an injunction was put against the federal government so they could no longer come in and interfere. So the federal government appealed that decision, so they appealed it to the Supreme Court and it became Ashcroft v. Raich rather than the other way around. The names keep changing. By the end of the case it was Gonzales versus Raich, because of the new Attorney General. That’s how these court cases are named, it’s kind of a fun little thing to keep track of. But the federal government then appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court then was specifically looking at this Commerce Clause issue, because that’s what the Ninth Circuit had dealt with, was the unconstitutionality of the CSA as applied to these women. So on behalf of the government we had Ted Olson, the Solicitor General, who was arguing the case. And on behalf of Raich and Munson and the caregivers who were never named, they were anonymous, we had Randy Barnett doing the arguing in the Supreme Court, two very experienced lawyers. And it was fascinating, the flurry of briefs that came out beforehand, both in support and opposition, from all different interests - the government briefs, of course, and the Raich briefs. You also had a lot of friendly briefs from different areas which included kind of an interesting one from several Southern states, Alabama, Tennessee - I can’t remember what the other one was - that was on the side of medical marijuana, even though they made very clear, “We don’t like marijuana. We have no interest in passing it, but we also don’t like the federal government having all this power. And so, because of that, we think that the federal government should not be allowed to regulate it in the state of California. And we’re not worried about them, because we’re not going to pass it in our state, but we don’t think that the federal government should be given that power.”
Q: Interesting. Who filed briefs on the side of the government’s case? I’m not familiar with that. Are you aware of … ?
A: Yes, there were a couple. Like, I think it was Partnership for a Drug Free America, some of those that are related, they get funding from the government in the whole drug area. The briefs weren’t very strong from that side. The real major briefs were from the government themselves. And as I read all those briefs, the briefs on the side of Raich seemed the most comprehensive, the most thorough, having the best arguments. The ones on behalf of the government seemed fairly thin. And it was as Randy Barnett said, who was arguing the case for Raich, that when you look at the government’s case, the only way you can look at it is, if they win that, sort of saying there is no restriction on the federal government. And that was the case that he was trying to make.
Q: (Inaudible) … Supreme Court level, I’d be curious to hear you weigh in about the outcome of the specific case, and then about the ramifications for federal regulatory power generally.
A: Sure. Okay, yeah. What happened then in the Supreme Court case, it was quite a delay before the results were issued and a lot of people were just waiting with bated breath. Eventually they decided, on a six-to-three vote, to side with the federal government. And the basic ruling came out that the medical marijuana used by Angel Raich and Diane Munson affected the overall economics of marijuana in the country. You may ask how that could possibly be. But basically it had to do with the fact that if you’re using it here, you’re not buying it there, and all this kinds of, you know just very… It’s sort a sneaky way of getting into saying, “Oh, it’s all part of commerce. No money changed hands, doesn’t matter. It’s still part of an overall commerce that Congress wishes to regulate. And so, therefore, the federal government has the authority to do that.” In the judge’s decisions there was even some statements saying that they’re not quite sure what that means. In other words, whether there is anything that could legitimately fall out of that, or if the mere fact of the federal government stating that it is part of an overall package of commerce is enough for it to qualify for federal government - whether there needs to be any kind of outside condition. So there is a real sense that the Raich case did have, in effect, an ending to much of any kind of restriction on the federal government as regards to the Commerce Clause.
Q: Before we talk about some of the issues with the Rehnquist Court and the supposed “states’ rights revolution” we were talking about, I would like to hear you tie in the result of the Supreme Court decision again, to the basic facts of the case.
A: Okay. So in the end, even though the marijuana was grown specifically within the state of California, with water and fertilizer only from the state of California, and that no money changed hands and it was under a doctor’s permission and under the permission of the local and state governments; it still counted as interstate commerce for the purpose of the federal government being able to regulate it under the Supreme Court decision. That was the ending of this case. Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s all over. In fact, Angel Raich is at it again. She has gone back to the Ninth Circuit, asking them to review the case based on the other, the Fifth Amendment, Ninth Amendment issues that had been talked about in the first case, but had not been thoroughly addressed, since the focus was on the constitutionality under the Commerce Clause. So she’s still working at it. She’s still trying to do what she can. But in the meantime, of course, the drugs are… the day of the Supreme Court announcement, said, “Well that ends medical marijuana as a political thing to talk about.” Well it didn’t. Almost immediately, Rhode Island passed…
Q: I would like to address, on camera, what we were talking about off camera, which is the fact that there have been many commentators who say there was a states’ rights revolution on the court in the last twelve, fifteen years. And then you have the Raich case come up … what does that portend for that trend?
A: Yeah, I think there has been a real issue in the whole states’ rights revolution. Lopez and Morrison were both cases in recent years that were supposedly signaling a shift in the court back toward states’ rights. And that led a lot of people to think Raich might have some hope, because the court was shifting in that direction. But the fact that the Court really kind of nailed the door shut there with that decision has really dampened a lot of hopes for those in states’ rights. There has been so much interesting political dimensions within the Court; you had liberals on the court siding with Raich emotionally and yet wanting to keep the federal government having the power for future civil rights type cases. You had conservatives who were liking the idea of states’ rights but have tended to be anti-drug in any type of case that comes along, so they found themselves in this very strange dichotomy that they were dealing with. The upshot was that it ended up being a real set back for states’ rights.
Q: And you had started to talk about Angel Raich and her current situation. She’s been petitioning the Ninth Circuit again. What is her physical and medical condition like right now?
A: Well, she’s still hanging in with all the different conditions that she’s got, most of this is not curable - this is an inoperable brain tumor. This is chronic pain that she’s going to have the rest of her life. And as long as she has her medical marijuana she is okay, she’s able to get around, that’s able to keep her going; whereas many of the other medicines would just completely knock her out and make it unable to function. But she’s back at the courts trying a different approach, hoping for different approaches through the courts while at the same time other activists…
Q: So if we can just summarize again, she’s back in front of the courts....
A: So Angel is doing fine. She’s got her medical marijuana. She’s allowed to use it under state law, and as long as the Feds don’t come and bust her, she’s keeping at it. But she’s back in the courts going after it in a different direction, trying for the Ninth Circuit to do it again. In the meantime, after the Supreme Court case was decided, immediately Rhode Island stepped in in overwhelming fashion, voted in their legislature for medical marijuana and then overrode the Governor’s veto to become the eleventh state. So the Supreme Court case did not stop medical marijuana in any way. It put it back to the status quo that existed before, which was states could legalize it, but they’d have to deal with the fact that it was still illegal at the federal level, and there would be always that clash that would occur.
Q: What do you think the Rhode Island Legislature’s recent action - in terms of the medical marijuana statute they just passed - means for the whole clash between federal and states’ rights concepts?
A: I think the Rhode Island decision is a signal. It is saying, “We’re not going to listen to the federal government on everything.” The fact that it was so overwhelming was a signal as well. I think where some people thought it would cause states to think twice about considering it because the federal government was not going to allow it, in some ways some states have gone, “Well then it is up to us. If anything is going to happen we’re going to have to do something.” And so I think you’re getting some more states - there’s an effort in New Jersey; there’s other states that are looking at it. Now you’ve got other kinds of situations, Colorado’s looking at an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana. You’ve got Nevada doing the same thing. You’ve got various things that - where the states are starting to step forward and go, “Okay, maybe it is up to us.” At the same time, you’ve got groups that are looking at going after the regulations and going after Congress. Congress is working on the Truth in Trials Act, which would allow a medical marijuana patient in a Federal trial to actually say that they were a medical marijuana patient, which is kind of important if you’re on trial for that. So your reformers have hopes in those areas, and it’s essentially sort of whittling away in all sorts of different directions - Angel is one of those doing it. A lot of groups out there, state by state, figuring there’s going to reach a point where enough states have legal medical marijuana that the federal government is just going to have to give up.
Q: One thing I’m asking everyone that we’re interviewing over the course of this film - across the political spectrum - is to get their gauge of the state of the Constitution right now. There’s a delineation of powers that the government has under the Constitution, and a delineation of rights that are given to individuals … and the pendulum has swung in various ways over the course of the last two hundred years. Can you tell us where you think we are in terms of that pendulum swing?
A: My personal view is that we have swung way too far in the government power side of that equation, that there has been a real erosion of individual rights. And I think the drug war has been a major factor in that. You take a look at First Amendment for example, in order to impinge upon free expression the government has to show certain things such as it’s narrowly tailored, that there wasn’t another way that they could have accomplished the same goal. They don’t have that same restriction when it comes to Fourth Amendment. And pretty much the courts have, whenever the government comes in and says the word ‘drugs’, the courts have never asked, “Well is what you’re doing actually working? Is it the best way? Is there another way that you could do this without busting down people’s doors or frisking them every time you see them on the street, or searching their cars? Is there another way that you could deal with this problem that you say that you have, than through eroding the Fourth Amendment more?” The courts have never asked the government that. They’ve never required the government to prove it. And pretty much, in most cases, when the government has stepped forward to say, “We need this tool,” and use the word ‘drugs’ the courts have said okay. It hasn’t been a hundred percent, but it has been fairly much. The recent one that I found most appalling was the Illinois versus Caballis case, which was on the dog sniffing. Where the Supreme Court, in a very poorly-written decision, basically said that if a dog say - if a dog says, barks, whatever, that he thinks there is something in that car, that is enough to justify a search. That becomes probable cause. So now we have probable cause based on the word of a dog, which is where our Constitution has come to.
(Pause for technical adjustment.)
A: Sure. I think a prime example is the case of Illinois versus Caballis, which had to do with when a dog sniff could justify the search of a car. And the Supreme Court, in a poorly-worded decision, basically came out and said that if a dog says, or barks, that he thinks that there is something in that car, that’s enough to justify a search. No other probable cause needed by the officer or anything else, which leads to all sorts of possibilities of dogs going through parking lots, past houses, who knows where that could lead in the future. And it’s just one more chink in that sort of eroding away of this whole notion in the original Constitution that we were secure in our persons, our homes, our papers, our cars, from unreasonable search and seizure; which meant there had to be some good reason for the government, not “I think there might be,” but some really good reason - and that has been eroded away. And the drug war has been a real big part of that and that has spilled into all sorts of other areas too, including things like the Patriot Act.
