ABSTRACT
In 1970 the Congress passed and the president signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The CSA declared marijuana, first 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 benefits of marijuana led California to enact a medical marijuana law in 1996. By 2011 medical marijuana was legal in fifteen states and D.C. (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan,
Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) and the Obama administration had instructed federal law enforcement officials not to enforce the CSA in those states. Can federal and state laws conflict 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.
