The whole political scam is to culture a scheme to extract tax money from pot sales.
The federal government must be in on the scam because the HHS has had a patent on it since 2003.
Consider U.S. patent #6,630,507, entitled Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. Filed in 2001, this patent, which was subsequently granted in 2003, gives us an insight into the canny duplicity that has characterized U.S. government policy toward marijuana. In the patent, assigned to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the applicants state the following: "Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia."
(See: Patent on Pot)
The ineffective War on Drugs is the price the Left pays for Scalia’s support of the New Deal Commerce clause that make all federal regulation of commerce “legal”. It all stands together or falls together. So far, the Religious Right is content with this deal with the Devil after losing with alcohol and knowing they can’t get another Prohibition Amendment.