This is a short post, not so much a legal analysis but an attempt to do a “big picture” moment wherein one puts the situation in context.

If there is a legal aspect, it is called “shifting the burden.”  The burden was once upon the proponents of cannabis normalization to justify their position.  It should have been the other way around: now the time has finally come for proponents of cannabis prohibition to justify their position.

Cannabis prohibition from the beginning was always a mistake: a foolish, false and massively destructive policy.

It was a mistake when the federal government prohibited cannabis on the basis of reefer madness in 1937, it was a mistake in 1972 when the Nixon Administration rejected the proposal of the Shafer Commission, it was a mistake in 1979-1980 when the “drug prevention movement” AKA the “parents movement” took over the federal government and made eradication of all cannabis the foundation of drug control policy, and it was a mistake in 1988 when the DEA administrator rejected the conclusion of the DEA Administrative Law Judge to reschedule.

The arguments now over whether there has been sufficient research to establish a medical use, whether anyone should allow medical use without FDA approval, whether federal law preempts state law or whether state law preempts local law all dance around the big picture – the time has come for the forces of prohibition to justify the last 75 years of prohibiting the plant and all human enterprise associated with it.