ABSTRACT
In 1970 the Congress passed and the president signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The CSA declared marijuana, fi rst made illegal in federal law in 1937, to be a Schedule I drug with a “high potential for abuse” and no legitimate medical use. The CSA is federal law to this day; yet new claims regarding the medical benefi ts of marijuana led California to enact a medical marijuana law in 1996. By 2013 medical marijuana was legal in seventeen states and D.C. (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine,
Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) and the Obama administration had instructed federal law enforcement offi cials not to enforce the CSA in those states. However, when the number of pot shops in California proliferated beyond apparent medical needs, federal authorities cracked down. In 2012, two states, Colorado and Washington, upped the ante when citizen referenda approved marijuana use by any citizen over 21. Can federal and state laws confl ict like this and, when they do, is not federal law supposed to prevail over state law? Yes, well usually, but occasionally federalism, the topic of this chapter, is messier than we would like.
