I’m in the USA and I have no idea how a law like medical marijuana be legal on a state level but not federal level? What does that mean exactly?
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The USA functions more like a bunch of individual countries than most countries do. There are specific explicitly defined things the federal government is allowed to do, and everything else is given to individual state governments.
One of the things the federal government is allowed to do is regulate interstate commerce (to prevent states trying to embargo or tariff each other willy nilly), but it cant regulate intrastate commerce. so it can pass a law saying “you cant sell MJ across state lines” but it cant make a law “You cant sell MJ”, so they passed the former (in vague terms).
So a state is free to say either “MJ sale is illegal here!” or the reverse. So long as it doesnt pass state lines, the federal government doesnt get a say in it (In this case, there are other things the federal government CAN force states to do, this just happens to not be one).
Any law needs to be enforced to be effective. Essentially you need some sort of police who can bring the people who break the law to justice. But usually a police agency is only allowed to enforce certain parts of the law. So your local neighbourhood cop is not allowed to go after you for tax fraud, this is what the IRS is for. The US have taken the division of police agencies to an extreme compared to other countries so you have thousands of police agencies each responsible for their own laws and/or their own territory.
Marijuana is illegal on a federal level in the US. There are technically no states where it have been legalised. But the way drug enforcement is done is that the FBI can only enforce drug crimes across state lines while the local and state police can enforce drug crimes within their state. There are no federal agency who can normally arrest you for selling marijuana unless you crossed state lines to do so. The states where marijuana have been made “legal” have just ordered the police to not enforce marijuana crimes. So while it is still technically illegal there are no police who are allowed to arrest you.
Imagine your parents are separated and you live at your mom’s. Your dad says that you aren’t allowed to eat candy but your mom doesn’t care. So can you eat candy at your mom’s house? Sure, but just don’t let your dad find out. Because you still have to go stay with him and he will whoop your ass.
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