It seems absolutely remarkable, considering that the usage of marijuana is a federal offense, that there is anything such as legal medical marijuana, but as incredible as that might seem, that is the case in 32 States of the union; and then, even more amazing is that legal recreational usage of marijuana is the law in 10 States of the union. What makes this seem so improbable, is that the reality is that federal law trumps State law, and not only that but importantly the history of the United States is a history in which individual freedoms and State freedoms have basically been curtailed by federal law and federal power trumping over them. So that, the federal law in regards to marijuana does not equivocate about marijuana, whatsoever, in which marijuana is classified as a schedule 1 drug, which means by federal law that marijuana is considered to have ”… no medical value and a high potential for abuse.”
Yet, somehow in the last twenty-odd years, marijuana has become decriminalized in many States as well as being medically prescribed within a majority of States, in addition to becoming legal as a recreational drug, regulated by those States, that have legalized it within their State jurisdiction. None of this makes any sense whatsoever, because quite clearly, the possession of, the selling of, and medicinal use of marijuana are all federal crimes, subject to federal law and its penalties, and there are no exceptions to that law.
The thing about federal laws is that there are so many of them, so that laws that are not equally applied to all, or selectively applied to some, or not applied at all to anyone, are laws that will allow lawyers, States, and citizens to possibly circumvent what is the law, by simply ignoring federal law, and thereby considering federal law to be a nullity, and proceeding with that mindset.
At this point with the majority of States having either decriminalized, medically accepted, or permitted the recreational use of marijuana, with the federal government, during all of this time, simply sitting on its hands, has effectively created a situation in which it is now too late for the federal government to stop something that for all intents and purposes is now legal, or medically prescribed, or decriminalized within the United States.
This would seem to imply that it is only a matter of a relatively small amount of time, before the federal government, legalizes marijuana throughout the entire United States, so that the federal government, can at least generate some federal revenue from marijuana, as well as to set up federal rules and guidelines for the possession of, the usage of, and selling of marijuana. This so signifies that the federal government’s war against marijuana, has been fought and it has been lost, and that marijuana for all effective purposes going forward is going to be treated more akin to something like alcohol and will no longer be treated as a schedule 1 drug.
Whether all of this is good or not, misses the biggest point, of which, the people of this great nation, should well remember; which is that the people in conjunction with progressive and imaginative legislators, have a voice, of which that voice, can successfully trump federal law, even federal law of long standing, because this is in substance, supposed to be a nation by the people, of the people, and for the people, and revolutionary State marijuana legalization laws are proof positive, that this can indeed be true.