Honest question: is there a silent tug of war over the use of the word "legal" regarding drugs in the U.S.?
I also spent an hour lined up against a wall while MP's buzzed around and tried to get CSPD to extradite me from a military base over some "spice" (that awful engineered-to-be-legal weed) which turned up in a search of the truck I had borrowed to buy a couch on Craigslist.
So in gray areas like those, the tug of war still lives. But nobody I know of is afraid that the feds are gonna kick their door in over something that's legal in CO.
Edit: grey area was the wrong phrase. But when the military is trying to hand you off to the cops and the cops won't take you, you know the system still has some kinks.
A gray area would be when federal agents/LEO attempt to enforce federal laws in places where the state has jurisdiction (such as raids of dispensaries).
But federal land is definitely the worst. I had a federal agent obtain a search warrant to strip search me and drag me to a hospital and 'internally search' my GI tract because they claimed there were drugs up my ass.
Your last two sentences are correct, but there are actually grey areas here. It's actually more complicated than it seems. IANAL, but I have worked in drug policy previously, so I have worked with lawyers who are very well-versed on the nuances of this law.
The ambiguity isn't whether marijuana falls under the CSA (it does) - it's the extent to which federal agents can pursue violations of it in specific circumstances. Especially since this often involves the cooperation of local law enforcement (ie, subject to the state), and some states even statutorily prohibit local law enforcement from assisting federal law enforcement with matters that are legal under state law.
A lot of it is grey specifically because aspects of these issues haven't been definitively tested in court in recent years, and as time goes on, they become more murky because state laws change, and federal agents become less excited about pressing the issue with the possibility of an unfavorable court ruling.
> But federal land is definitely the worst. I had a federal agent obtain a search warrant to strip search me and drag me to a hospital and 'internally search' my GI tract because they claimed there were drugs up my ass. It's truly insane.
I'm sorry that happened to you. That's awful.
The whole system of a patchwork of half-measures is really insanity in the face of the simplicity of just de-scheduling cannabis.
Hopefully, a bill like this will get passed into law: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/459... and provide much more structure for removing the remaining barriers.
At this point it doesn't seem like many people in the fed world really want to do any gatekeeping, but apparently elected reps are more cautious.
Decriminalization is removing criminal penalties - there may still be fines or other non criminal penalties.