quote:Assuming the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment does ultimately affect enforcement of the federal ban on marijuana in states that allow medical use, that is not the same as eliminating the ban. The rider has no practical impact in the 27 states that do not currently authorize cultivation of medical marijuana (although two of them, Florida and Texas, plan to allow production and distribution of low-THC cannabis oil). Furthermore, the rider applies only to the Justice Department, so it has no effect on actions by the IRS or the Treasury Department that make it difficult for medical marijuana suppliers to pay their taxes and obtain banking services.
More fundamentally, the amendment, which has to be renewed every fiscal year, does not change the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which continues to classify marijuana as a Schedule I substance with no legal uses. Because marijuana is still prohibited by federal law, people who grow and sell it, no matter the purpose and regardless of their status under state law, commit multiple felonies every day. If no one is trying to put them in prison right now, that is only thanks to prosecutorial forbearance that may prove temporary.
So much money & man hours have been wasted on "the war on drugs", ugg!
Posted by Heisenberg (Member # 13004) on :
The Feds will never again enforce those laws in states that have made it legal.
Obama has basically ignored the issue for eight years, and old people keep on dying at a good clip so it's a losing position even for a conservative at this point.