SALON

Friday, Dec 7, 2012 9:48 PM UTC

Will Obama harsh Washington and Colorado’s high?

Now that voters have made it clear they support legal recreational marijuana use, the feds need to make a choice

By , Alternet

Topics: AlterNet, Washington, Colorado, marijuana, Pot, Barack Obama,

Will Obama harsh Washington and Colorado's high? (Credit: Reuters/Cliff DesPeaux)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet Since it became clear last month that recreational marijuana initiatives would pass in Colorado and Washington, the big question has been: Will the feds come after these states?

Under federal law, recreational marijuana use is still illegal. But now that the American people (in two states, at least) have made it clear they support legal recreational marijuana use, the Feds have to make a choice about whether to lay down the law – the federal law, that is — or respect voters’ choices.

The New York Times had a story yesterday about this issue. It noted that “the Obama administration has been holding high-level meetings since the election to debate the response of federal law enforcement agencies to the decriminalization efforts.”

Marijuana use in both states continues to be illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act. One option is to sue the states on the grounds that any effort to regulate marijuana is pre-empted by federal law. Should the Justice Department prevail, it would raise the possibility of striking down the entire initiatives on the theory that voters would not have approved legalizing the drug without tight regulations and licensing similar to controls on hard alcohol.

Some law enforcement officials, alarmed at the prospect that marijuana users in both states could get used to flouting federal law openly, are said to be pushing for a stern response. But such a response would raise political complications for President Obama because marijuana legalization is popular among liberal Democrats, who just turned out to re-elect him.

Indeed, legalizing marijuana for recreational use is not only popular among Democrats but also among the majority of citizens, as a whole, in at least two states. It was controversial enough when the feds were raiding medical weed facilities in California; just imagine the outcry if they try to go after the full marijuana legalization that the citizens of Colorado and Washington voted for.

Meanwhile, legal marijuana advocates are waiting for the ruling to be handed down in the Americans for Safe Access v. DEA case, which went to the Federal Appeals Court back in October. According to Americans for Safe Access, the case “is an appeal of the DEA’s rejection of a petition filed in 2002 seeking to change the placement of marijuana as a Schedule I drug per the Controlled Substances Act. Based on the scientific evidence, ASA and our fellow plaintiffs feel that it is simply untrue that cannabis is a drug with a ‘high potential for abuse’ and ‘without accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.’” The case represents the first time in two decades that the science of medical marijuana has been considered by federal courts, and the ruling could have huge implications: The loser is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, which could lead to huge changes in federal marijuana laws.

So will the feds accept that the tide is turning? It looks like we’re about to find out.

Continue Reading Close

More Lauren Kelly.

Next Article

Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 11 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from AlterNet, an award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources.

follow salon

Most Read

From Around the Web

Recommendations