Quote Originally Posted by senorx12562
I do suspect that the Feds will attempt to take some action against open pot retailing at stores, but since the law specifically allows growing one's own cannabis and specifically allows giving it away, in the end it will be like pissing in the ocean for them to bother. I expect that we are also about to revisit the Commerce Clause.
This is indeed the crux of the matter. In the New York magazine, Benjamin Wallace-Wells has a long article about the failure of the War on Drugs, in which he says, “Without really acknowledging it, we are beginning to experiment with a negotiated surrender. Hanging over these policy changes is the still-to-be-determined reaction of the Obama administration, which hasn’t yet said whether it plans to send DEA agents to crack down on the businesses these laws allow for, or the growing operations they’ll produce." The assumption being that the administration will probably try to set some kind of policy course intended to be as low-key and neutral as possible, neither giving Colorado or Washington the green light to proceed as their new laws envision, nor embarking on some kind of dramatic and visible crackdown.

"Obama has been a continuing disappointment to his supporters who favor legalization, but there’s a kind of inverse Nixon-to-China thing going on with him. As the first president who admits to being an enthusiastic pot smoker in his youth (and of course the first black president), he’ll be the last person to begin the dismantling of the War on Drugs. But maybe, bit by bit, it’ll happen without him."

Unfortunately, without a clear stance from Washington, municipalities and counties will have to do something by July 2013, and that something will most likely be to ban retail stores and marijuana cultivation for retail stores for fear of eventually running afoul of the Fed.