If pot were truly legal in California, it would grow everywhere, like a weed (so to speak). Seems unlikely to me to wield the kind of value that would result in increased home invasion robberies. These happen now for the very reason that pot price is high because it is illegal, and therefore an unreported crime.
I agree with you on the Feds v. State dilemma, but the feds learned how to quit enforcing alcohol prohibition after the 21st amendment passed, and they can learn to back off and allow the people of the state to determine whether a weed like pot can be grown in their yards without having their property confiscated by the government to be given to law enforcement agencies as a reward.
Regarding prior propositions being passed only to be struck down in Fed court, there is a difference when the matter involves a state voting to take away a right, versus voting to secure a right. I’m sure you get that difference. If California voted to make slavery legal based on skin color or gender or age or what have you, then I would expect the feds to act, since that would be contrary to the federal constitutional rights of the persons voted to become slaves.
Voting to decriminalize pot does not take away anyone’s federal constitutional right.
The Obama administration may claim that federal law allows the feds to criminalize pot in California based on a bull Shiite commerce clause case from the 1930s (something to the effect of the SCOTUS confirming that congress can regulate my growing wheat in my back yard). OK, and I would expect the current SCOTUS to back them up.
But, it remains to be seen whether Obama will have the political will to invade California over pot plants directly against the expressed wishes of the same voters who helped put him in office. The federal courts will become unable to handle any other matters except trivial pot cases, and will lose the respect of a majority of the CA people in the process, similar to the federal prosecution of the medical pot growers (too many plants or whatever). The feds backed off, not because they acknowledged they did not have the “constitutional authority” to arrest and prosecute people, but because they do not have popular support for doing so, and the fed AGs do not like to be put in such position.
The bottom line is that “society” around the world, not just in CA, is questioning whether to continue to wage this insanely destructive and inhumane war on some drugs, while simultaneous doping ourselves crazy on the “legal” ones.
“Because I said so” has been the policy for 50 years. It is a failed policy.
