U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Referee State Disputes Over Marijuana

&gt; Nebraska and Oklahoma said Colorado&#x27;s decriminalization has &quot;increased the flow of marijuana over their borders,&quot; forcing them to expend greater &quot;law enforcement, judicial system, and penal system resources,&quot; thereby harming the welfare of their residents.<p>And what about all of the resources you spend prosecuting people for recreation drug use? If you want to save money in that arena then Colorado and Washington have a great idea they can tell you about.

Sometimes I wonder about how the country evolves its view on things. And living through the evolution of gay marriage, and legalization of marijuana gives you some nice concrete data points. Watching the will of the people being expressed in these ways is kind of like watching a family dealing with a grumpy relative who slowly changes the way everyone else thinks about things. It isn&#x27;t &quot;fun&quot; but it is fascinating.<p>I also know that in my parent&#x27;s case it is their primary evidence that the country is going downhill fast even while I see it as a hopeful sign that the country can move forward. Not surprisingly, that dissonance is being tapped rather effectively at times by the political process. It is strange to see &#x27;change&#x27; as the fuel that is used by others to either accelerate or stop further change.

Nebraska and Oklahoma continue to fund cartels south of the border when they could start funding their schools and help their budget shortfalls, not to mention contribute to personal freedom, just by ending prohibition.<p>Just another day in &#x27;states rights&#x27; focused states that aren&#x27;t adult enough to understand what that means. People voted this in en masse, does NE and OK hate freedom?<p>Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, DC are all asking the country when we are going to stop funding the black market and cartels.<p>States continuing to fight a losing and unneeded prohibition battle, will continue to send hundreds of millions and probably billions south to cartels that are quite rich while states budgets are poor. It is time that it ends across the board and quickly. What a waste of time and money prohibition has been.<p>The moralistic laws from last century making non-violent personal acts into crimes needs to end. It is too costly and the result is a black market with cartels awash in billions and billions.

It was a little bit of an odd case to begin with. The idea is kind of that there&#x27;s a cause of action around state policy creating an inter-state &quot;nuisance&quot; in arguable violation of federal law, but there&#x27;s no real precedent for that kind of thing in common law, and certainly not in statutory law.<p>If one were to establish such a cause of action, it would have major implications around things like differing environmental regulations, firearms laws, labor laws, tax policy, welfare, heck even fireworks sales.<p>I&#x27;m not surprised the SC didn&#x27;t want to leap into that giant legal cluster headache.

This was a great decision. Such a monumental shift in drug policy should be enshrined in federal legislation, and not dictated by the courts.

This is a technical thing. The court decided that Nebraska and Oklahoma can sue the Federal government for failure to enforce Federal law, but cannot sue another state.