You can disagree all you want. It’s still illegal at the federal level. A fed could still cite you even though you are in CA, regardless of the CA legalization.
Caveat is Congress enjoined the DOJ from enforcing against medical marijuana use. Get a medical card (suuuuuuuper easy) and you’ve derisked. Sucks to have to hack around stupidity wrt federal policy on marijuana, but This Is America. It also reduces the tax you pay (typically, ymmv based on state) vs recreational purchases.
> There are some exceptions. In each fiscal year since 2015, Congress has included provisions in appropriations acts that prohibit the U.S. Department of Justice from using funds to prevent states from “implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.” In effect, Congress prevents the DOJ from enforcing federal law in medical marijuana states. Courts have held up the provisions, and federal prosecutions of state-licensed businesses effectively stopped when it went into effect. However, those same protections haven’t been extended to adult-use (recreational) program participants, who remain at risk.
(not legal advice, not an attorney, not your attorney)
> Caveat is Congress enjoined the DOJ from enforcing against medical marijuana use. Get a medical card (suuuuuuuper easy) and you’ve derisked
Caveat to the caveat is that DOJ keeps pushing the limit on the medical marijuana prosecution prohibition, and that in California (and the rest of the Ninth Circuit), the controlling case law is that the prohibition only applies to strict compliance with state medical use rules, and that even minor technical violations (even in states that also allow non-medical use) allows federal prosecution (the First Circuit last year established a slightly different rule).
There are some federal forms that ask about drug use and will disqualify you for use of marijuana. For example, employment forms and firearm background checks. And if you lie, they are still enforcing those laws. So while you may not go to prison for smoking weed, you might go to prison for smoking weed while doing something else that is regulated.
It's de facto legal for someone to smoke a joint at Venice Beach, but you can still get arrested for possession in a national park, lose your job for smoking over the weekend, and even get your cash civil forfeiture'd by local police for running a dispensary in a way that is compliant with CA but not federal laws.
It’s illegal in every state. California cannot override the federal government. They can choose not to enforce it, but federal law enforcement will still be able to arrest you.
Legality has nothing to do with enforcement. We can say that X Y or Z is illegal according to the laws of the Roman Empire, despite the fact that it hasn’t been able to enforce anything for more than 1000 years. Similarly, weed is illegal in the US — whether it’s unenforced because the feds choose not to do so, or because they can’t, is perhaps an interesting question but has nothing to do with whether it’s legal.
When I disagreed with "California cannot override the federal government." I didn't mean to override their law on a theoretical level but their authority on a practical level.
Sanctuary cities have shown that the state/local governments partially override the federal government on an overall basis, though not so much directly in individual cases (though they are able to request, not demand, and get their way in a lot of individual cases).
> Sanctuary cities have shown that the state/local governments partially override the federal government on an overall basis
No, they don’t.
Sanctuary cities are not sanctuaries from the federal law the “sanctuary” status references, merely ones where the city has prohibited public resources from being used to provide extra, nonmandatory, help to the feds.
