The one thing that we have learned over the last fifty-odd years in the United States is that Federal law trumps State law, for better or for worse. While it may be true that many States have decriminalized marijuana, and that some additional States have legalized recreational marijuana, from a Federal law perspective, marijuana is in direct violation of Title 21 United States Code (USC) Controlled Substances Act. This means, that at any time, without notification, the Federal government has what clearly appears to be the legal authority to shut down recreational marijuana, no matter the State legal status of such.
However, in demonstration that the laws of this country are truly arbitrary, clearly dependent upon which political party is in power and how that political party prioritizes what it will or will not prosecute, recreational marijuana is alive, kicking, and legal in four States of this union. Each of those States that have legalized marijuana have done so while a Democrat has been in the office of the Presidency, whereas most Republican candidates for the Presidency have made it clear, that should they be elected, that they would enforce the law of the land and therefore federally prosecute clear and present violations of the Controlled Substances Act.
This means, in effect, the laws of the United States in regards to the legalization of marijuana are most definitely not equally applied, and are wholly dependent upon who is in authority in this country. This is why banks that are federally charted will not and have not conducted business with organizations that are legally selling cannabis within their State, because the banks do not want to be caught in the crossfire of aiding and abetting consortiums that are clearly in violation of Federal law.
Further to this point, all landlords, vendors, employers and employees, and any and everybody that is directly or indirectly involved in the cultivation, storing, and selling of marijuana in States to which it is legal, are everyday putting themselves in legal danger, of being subject to prosecution actions by Federal authorities. The legal status of marijuana in those States that sell it is most definitely a status that rests on a foundation of sand, and until such time that the Federal government removes marijuana from its list of Controlled Substances that fact will not change, despite marijuana's ostensible popularity or State legislative approval.
In actual fact, marijuana proponents are in a race against time, to which four States, are not in aggregate even close to a plurality of the States needed to end this game in their favor. In all probability, the only real possibility for the Federal government to change its laws in regards to marijuana is for a significant number of States to legalize marijuana over the next few years and the number of those States probably needs to be somewhere around twenty States.
Should marijuana become legal in about twenty States, and should the office of the Presidency remain in Democratic hands, then and only then, would it become greater than 50:50 that marijuana would soon become legal and regulated throughout the entire United States through Federal legislation that applied equally to all fifty States. Until that time, those purveyors of legal marijuana, cannot rest easy, despite however much comfort they may get from the smoking of cannabis, itself.