From my layman point of view, there is a lot involved with legalizing federally. Some of the obvious points that I can think of are:
1. Career politicians don't want to seem "soft on drugs or crime". This seems to be changing, but it's a slow roll.
2. Agency funding. The DEA gets a ton of money to enforce these federal laws. This has many layers to it and it seems much more complex than what I'm aware of, but I can imagine that all the people who currently get paid to enforce the ban on cannabis would be against this because there would likely be decreased funding to them (or at the very least, their roles would be changed).
3. Lobbying. Many people might want cannabis to be legal, but a lot of business do not because it could hurt their business. Big pharma has made a ton of money from prescription drugs that might possibly be replaced by a plant that people can grow on their own. These companies pay our representatives, and then representatives vote in their interests. One of the reasons cannabis was made illegal in the first place was because of a paper company that felt threatened by the use of industrial hemp.
4. In addition to the points related to money above (agency funding, lobbying), there are private prisons that make money from offenders of the current crimes in place. Police departments can get easy revenue from fines related to cannabis. Big pharma doesn't want legal alternatives to their drugs. Cartels also have an interest in keeping cannabis illegal. Alcohol companies may even be incentivized to keep it illegal so that alcohol remains the vice/drug of choice (this seems to be changing, major hard beverage companies have invested in cannabis companies).
These are some of (not all) the main reasons for why I think it's taking much longer than we would like.
But: Racism. https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-marijuana-illegal-in...
It was popularly perceived that the "medical" requirement would not last for more than a few years before recreational was legalized.
So while it might still be a deal-killer in, say, Utah, I don't think it holds nearly the sway it did even ten years ago. It got almost as many votes as the presidential race, and even if you assume that every Biden voter was pro-legalization, there are nearly 300k extra "yea" votes you have to account for. You only make that go away if you assume that every Biden voter was pro-legalization and voted for the citizen initiative, and that every Trump voter who voted to legalize voted for the (more restrictive) legislative proposal instead of just voting against it or choosing the citizen proposal.
and on the flip side some democrats aren't great about it either, but it's far from the lockstep opposition on the republican side.
personally I think democrats are fairly likely to bring it up as an easy victory lap before the 2022 elections but it's highly likely that republicans will filibuster it anyway to prevent democrats from "getting an easy win" . and that's about the state of the things - republicans are just 100% against it and democrats are tepidly for it but don't really have the political control to break lockstep opposition, even if they were agreed within their own party. It's easier to work at a state level but obviously that leaves huge problems with federal enforcement and various legal logjams.
it's largely a problem of republicans, if there were only a few republicans willing to cross the aisle it could probably pass, but it's more important that democrats be denied political "wins" than to do what's good for their voters, and what their voters overwhelmingly want. Like I said, probably look for it to be brought up sometime in 2022, unless democrats lose their senate majority in the meantime in which case probably 5-10 more years (republicans ain't gonna do it, just like they didn't under trump).
would be the easiest possible "crossing the aisle" ever, if republicans were the least bit interested in good governance, but they're not.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/2-republican-lawmake...