The Pot Primary - Why 2016 could spell the end of legal marijuana.

 

"And you thought pot-smokers were lazy. While Washington has convulsed in gridlock and dysfunction, marijuana advocates have won ballot initiatives to legalize recreational use in Colorado and Washington, swung public opinion in favor of full legalization for the first time and begun knocking on the door in at least four other states. Alaska, California, Oregon and Nevada are all mulling decriminalization campaigns in 2014 or 2016, and they may be joined by others.

That success has also set up a vexing legal paradox: If marijuana, long illegal under federal law, is permitted by a state, smoking pot in that state—or buying it, or selling it—is both legal and illegal at once. And although the Justice Department and its law-enforcement authorities have allowed state laws to take effect this month as planned, there is every reason to believe the truce to be tenuous

It’s not clear yet what a marijuana debate within the GOP would look like: While it might be good politics to get behind an issue that most Americans support, only 37 percent of Republican voters favor legalization, compared with 58 percent overall . Republicans have traditionally stood for law and order, and against the kind of social decay that pot-smoking so handily represents—yet they also stand for states’ rights, minimal government and personal liberty. All of which means that with the next round of states considering legalization initiatives in the next two cycles, candidates, who until now have been able to laugh off questions about legalization, are going to find that they have to talk about it.

 read the article by REID CHERLIN