Smoking Pot Legal in Washington State and Colorado..well, at least on the State level at any rate

[shadowkat]

Apparently Colorado and Washington made recreational marijuana or pot legal. Which is interesting, considering it isn't legal Federally. This sort of puts Colorado at odds with the Federal Government.

So...while it is legal to smoke pot in Colorado from the State's perspective, you might not want to do it around any Federal DEA agents?

Also, they couldn't have passed this law when I was in school out there?

Go here: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/political/marijuana-legal-in-colorado-washington-but-dont-break-out-the-cheetos-yet

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/marijuana-laws-eased-in-colorado-and-washington.html?_r=0

Comments

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum. If they do manage to set up legal places to buy the pot, though, they're going to take a huge chunk of money out of the illegal drug trade (to the tune of 1 billion+ per year, is what I'm hearing) so while I think it will probably end up going through the courts, the federal government might be persuaded to back down on this one. The money alone is a compelling argument.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

from the news commentators I've been listening to it sounds like the Federal Govt won't want to fight these new laws legalizing marijuana: there has been so much problem with the illegal drug trade AND the over crowding of jails for non-violent offenders (which ends up effecting non-white Americans disproportionately). So they (the pundits) are expecting a 'wait and see' view of this experiment. I hope that it is successful myself... it would do a lot of good, potentially.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

While it does create pressure on the Feds...masq is right, it also creates bureaucratic head-aches. I want marijuana to be legal, but it's hard to do much when the State and the Federal laws aren't in agreement, because Federal law will govern the trafficking. Federal law often governs movement of goods across state lines or between one country and another. There's all sorts of interesting conflict of laws and jurisdiction issues sprouting up over this one. It's a conflict of laws attorney's or attorney specializing in drug trafficking cases wet dream.