Medical Marijuana

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For those who are not in the U.S. and/or are not familar with U.S. laws related to cannabis, there are federal laws that are supposed to apply to all 50 states. On the Federal level at present time, cannabis is still considered illegal for any reason including medicinally.

However, to date 39 states have legalized cannabis medicinally and 24 states have legalized it recreationally.

How can this be? How can it be illegal at the federal level but certain states have legalized it? In short, those states have ignored federal law. Could the federal government send a federal force into each of those states and forcibly arrest, shut down, etc cannabis operations or at the very least cut off federal funding to said states? Yes. But that hasn't happened.

 

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How can this be? How can it be illegal at the federal level but certain states have legalized it? In short, those states have ignored federal law. Could the federal government send a federal force into each of those states and forcibly arrest, shut down, etc cannabis operations or at the very least cut off federal funding to said states? Yes. But that hasn't happened.

Australia has some similarities to the US in the way that we are a federation of self governing states. Technically the federal government rules over all but in reality they have to tread carefully and not step on toes to heavily or the states will revolt. We have a very long history of disputes between different states and the feds, Queensland has previously threatened to secede from the federation and Western Australia has almost done it twice.