States can't "legalize" marijuana when it's illegal at the federal level. They can decriminalize it locally when they remove state laws prohibiting it, but it's still illegal. Everywhere.
Now, as for why the Feds have decided to keep it illegal but not shut down and prosecute the owners and employees of weed shops in states that allow it - that's an exercise left to the reader, as the saying goes. There's clearly a move by numerous states to allow it. In my humble opinion, if there's a law you've decided not to enforce any more, then that law needs to be repealed. If there's a law that you've decided to selectively enforce, then you have a discrimination issue that needs to be fixed.
I have to wonder just exactly WTF goes through the mind of a DEA agent driving down the road in Colorado as he or she passes one weed shop after another.
At any level there's a lot of irony going on, if anyone thinks about it very much. Military resources being used to track down marijuana shipments, while oxy was being handed out under medicare being one. It's far from new, though. Washington led federal troops against farmers making whiskey before the ink was dry on the constitution.
I think we're off on the numbers. That we shouldn't be using >50% as any sort of metric. Would you take a group of people to lunch where 49% hated it? Of course not. But we try to run a country that way. We, as a country, need to learn a bit more tolerance of people who are different and want different things, and we need to adjust the numbers to accommodate that. The right way to set a speed limit, for example, is to take the signs down, monitor the traffic, and then set the max to include something like 90% of the drivers. Extend that to regulatory agencies. Want to ban XYZ? Great. Now get 80% of the people to agree on it. Can't? The leave it the f*&Jk alone. It probably doesn't affect your life very much, contrary to what a guy in a tie said. Like my suggestion with rappers next door. People need to wrap their heads around the concept that while individual freedoms are self-evident, banning people's choice of chemicals, devices, or behaviors isn't. An 80% rule would be perfectly capable of making sure we had the important stuff taken care of. We'd have lawn darts again, but it probably still wouldn't be legal to have your own land mines. Well, unless you didn't have a fence or a sign...
I say this because I think a simple majority and a two party system have been shown to be too easily manipulated by fringe groups, and many people just follow along with the latest talking head their special channel told them to believe.
If Marx and Orwell were both here, Marx would be looking at social media beaming like a little kid, while George would be stunned, muttering "I didn't think they'd LIKE it".
Ok, that's way too political. I might even sound like one of those people that sounds like "librarian", so I'll shut up for a moment.
