and nary a hint of input from the drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske? who even while still a lowly Seattle police chief, evinced a clear phobia about the coming marijuanapocolypse?

Translation: "We're trying to figure out how much we can crack down on this without suffering more political blowback than we can afford. When we bring the hammer down, we're going to blame it on some treaty no one knows anything about and try to make it look like Obama's hands are tied. And what are you going to do about it anyway, vote Republican?"

It's Agenda 21. The black helicopters are coming!

Crackdown. Bet on it.

International issues like the effort that Mexico puts in trying to keep pot from coming over the border will have to be addressed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-am…

feds sue WA & CO, fed court injunction preventing state stores from opening, goes up ladder to SCOTUS, both initiatives tossed. it will take 3 years, then back to the status quo.

i could really use a bong hit.

@6 ahem. Read this.

"Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson predicts that California, Oregon, and five other states will soon follow Washington and Colorado's lead and embrace the right to smoke up. And most American voters believe that the feds should let them. Even in the relatively conservative states of Florida, Iowa, and Kentucky, polls released in the past week have shown majority support for recently proposed medical-marijuana laws."

Is the Fed going to sue a dozen states all the way up to SCOTUS? What enforcement mechanism is going to actually stop all these states? This is already feeling like the late 1930s when states in the East began to simply not even enforce alcohol prohibition, because they were done with it.

@2,4,6 yep, the Feds will probably say that they've been wringing their hands about it and decided that for the safety of communities and since its against Fed law, we're going to deny your ability to open the state licensed stores.

@7, I'm betting on a DEA blitzkrieg to stop the states.

Obama has Big Pharma, Big Alcohol and Big Tobacco to answer to.

@8 the DEA 4800 Agents world wide. Where are they going to get the manpower to police the West Coast alone? Remember that many towns and localities won't be helping them. The Seattle city government for instance already said they won't put resources toward Federal enforcement, and will just stand aside.

This would also go completely counter to the stance of the Obama administration to only go after people who violated their state's laws concerning locally legalized marijuana so far. Which is what they've done, more or less.

The international obligations are a little more extensive than just the UN treaty (which was forced thru by the US.) US aid to other countries is usually contingent upon their mimicking our anti-drug stance. The US has forced the world to adopt its War on Drugs, so the implications of ours & Colorado's initiatives are indeed global. Holder knows this, and I would guess they are dragging their feet, not so much as to figure out how to handle our two states, but how to completely re-vamp America's role in addressing drugs world-wide. Seeing as how there's only been one approach that America has gone for since we've become a super-power, trying to find another one is not going to be easy.

If you voted for 502 so you could toke w/o getting "hassled by the man," great, wonderful, thanks. I argued for it, wrote LTE for it & voted for it because I knew we would literally be changing the world if it passed. And we are. This is one of the (admittedly very few) examples where the people led, forcing the leaders to follow.

@6- Back to the status quo which includes several states in which petty possession is not a crime. Things are better than they were.

How 'bout we follow those anti-pot treaties the same way we follow anti-torture treaties?

Why is it that we're perfectly willing to tell the UN to go fuck itself so we can invade a country like Iraq, but we're worried to death about the UN when it comes to growing pot?

@14 The amnesia is called pot, and it's only contagious if you're nice.

But seriously, how does remembering that our leaders are amoral and atrocious make ridiculous the question of what the feds will do about legal pot? Would you feel contented if I included a paragraph about torture and drones whenever I ask a fed-pot question?