Cannabis has been legal in Washington for more than a decade, but federal policy is still getting in the way.
This past week, the National Academy of Sciences published a huge paper about cannabis policy, and it highlighted an issue that is often overlooked. The legality of cannabis has been delegated to the state level. The federal government has taken a back seat when it comes to cannabis, and when it comes to policy it's kind of getting in the way.
Weed is legal in roughly half of the United States, but weed is not legal according to the federal government of the United States. And that is a problem.
Recreational weed has been sold in Washington since 2014. Two years later, Oregon followed suit.
But almost a decade later, Washington and Oregon can't share, despite the fact that they've spent nearly 10 years building their own legal cannabis industries with nothing separating them but the Columbia River.
No matter how you feel about cannabis, you can probably agree that the United States is doing a bad job regulating it.
You can't take weed across the Columbia from Washington into Oregon, and you can't bring weed from Portland back to Spokane. It's legal in both places, but taking cannabis from one to the other is illegal.
And that doesn't make any sense at all.
Oregon and Washington are different states, so federal laws apply, but it makes no sense. Cannabis is legal in both, but crossing the state line with it is a crime.
The study that came out last week highlighted that. It pointed out that each state is doing its own thing, and the federal government has fallen well behind.
The United States, under three different presidents dating back to the Obama administration, has allowed individual states to legalize cannabis. But until the federal government legalizes cannabis, interstate commerce of the products will continue to be a pain in the ass.
I can buy a nice Willamette Valley wine in Oregon and bring it into Washington, but I can't do the same with weed.
For now, the United States aren't so much united as they are states when it comes to cannabis. Even where it is legal, each state remains on its own. There is nothing united about that policy. ♦