

Will Obama Let Washington and Colorado Keep Their Legal Pot? - pav3l
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/will-obama-let-washington-and-colorado-keep-their-legal-pot/264962/

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_delirium
Congress could also help out by reclassifying marijuana so it's not a Schedule
I drug, and/or amending federal drug law in a manner that provides for more
state authority over the subject. Under current law, the DEA and Justice
Department are legally supposed to enforce prohibition vigorously and not
allow any usage, since Congress has decided that there is no such thing as
legitimate usage, not even medical usage. Congress has also chosen to preempt
state law on the subject, so the Justice Department doesn't formally have any
authority to defer to state policies.

It's true that Obama could essentially look the other way and enforce that law
only weakly: he could devote fewer resources to it, the Justice Department
could vaguely cite logistical difficulties in coordinating with state law
enforcement as a way to de-facto defer to states more, etc. Lobbying him to do
that might be the only short-term solution with non-zero odds of success. But
fixing the law would be better imo.

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Retric
Federal prosecutors are fairly independent, so Obama has less control over
there actions than you might think.

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protomyth
Given the directions from the Department of Justice and the statement made
after the election and what they've done in CA, the answer is no. The
President has been very consistent since taking office despite what was said
on the campaign trail.

