Indeed William, but use of cannabis is only one part of cannabis legalization, which refers specifically to the regulation and taxation of existing industry — and therefore whether it can exist somewhere.

Yes, of course, zoning is a local issue. But zoning laws only regulate the USE Of LAND. Zoning laws cannot in any way “trump” the legalization of the USE OF CANNABIS under federal law.

Even with Federal legalization, the endgame will still be local, since local jurisdictions hold the zoning trump card.

Great reply!
I forget that when Reagan took office in ’81 there were plenty of boomer 30 something lawyers and bureaucrats and yes, drug warriors in Washington climbing the ladders.

Veering off topic slightly, I wouldn’t mind seeing a reconstituted larger version of CAMP with the limited mission to clear public and commercial timber lands of the trespass grows. I wouldn’t be opposed to unarmed drone surveillance that might identify grows before they’re mature enough to have caused peak environmental damage. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s the political will to spend the money to protect fish and an occasional hiker or two who might wander into a grow.

Please forgive the generalization, I refer to Reagan’s consolidation and expansion of Nixon’s drug law and order politics, minus the public health stuff we like to forget Nixon included. This periodization captures the rise of mass incarceration and the drug war militarization of everyday life (CAMP is a good example from your neck of the woods, including its rebirth after I wrote that 2014 “Requiem for a CAMP” article), since 1980 or so, that we are still dealing with. In terms of legal frameworks this coincides with the biomedicalization of prohibition, once the 1937 Tax Act was ruled unconstitutional in the Leary case and prohibition was reborn as the Controlled Substances Act in 1971. The 1970s could have gone a different direction, but Reagan’s yuppie revolution had a pretty big say in the matter. #notallbabyboomers!