Legalize It: Supreme Court Tells Obama To Make Up His Mind On Marijuana
It’s war between the states, Supreme Court-style, and this time the stakes are green, marijuana plants that is.
Nebraska and Oklahoma are suing the state of Colorado over its marijuana laws and the Supreme Court wants to know what President Barack Obama thinks about legalizing marijuana.
The two states claim Colorado has created a “cross-border nuisance” by legalizing marijuana and claim their citizens are affected by the increase in marijuana coming from nearby Colorado.
Aaron Cooper, spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, told the Wall Street Journal that Obama caused the marijuana lawsuit in the first place.
“The administration’s wholesale disregard for the law led Oklahoma and Nebraska to sue Colorado to stop the stream of illegal marijuana flowing into our states as a result of Colorado’s legalization of the commercial production and sale of marijuana.”
Americans live in a federalist system so even though marijuana is illegal under federal guidelines, individual states still have the authority to legalize it.
But because marijuana is still illegal under federal law, Oklahoma and Nebraska have asked the Supreme Court to wade into the issue and overturn the Colorado law.
So far, Obama has had a hands-off policy concerning marijuana and lets the states experiment as they choose, but now the Supreme Court is asking for some guidance.
Colorado, meanwhile, has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the marijuana discussion is changing political views across the country and that the nation is in the middle of re-evaluating its stance on the issue.
Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington state and the District of Columbia have all legalized the recreational use of marijuana and many other states have allowed its medical use or decriminalized it, including Nebraska.
We’ll have to wait and see what Obama says as a legal brief from the White House isn’t expected for some months, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
We do know a few things though: marijuana is still prohibited federally as a Schedule 1 drug, the Obama administration has ordered the Justice Department to go after other crimes, and the war on drugs has been a dismal failure.
In January, Obama said he expected more states to legalize marijuana and said he wouldn’t stand in the way.
Polls by both CBS News and NBC News show the majority of Americans support the medical and recreational use of marijuana, according to the Inquisitr.
Do you think marijuana should be legalized for recreational use?
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