This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 9th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Federal Prohibition on Marijuana is selectively enforced,

and that won't change anytime soon, so it's time to give states the ultimate

control of the issue and end the federal prohibition. That from Republican

Congressman Thomas Garrett of Virginia, we spoke yesterday.

Republicans like to talk about federalism,

and it seems that in general they do support it, but when it comes to so-called vices, they don't.

Well, that's one of the reasons we're here.

There's two areas I think that the federal government's

created or promulgated laws that they just choose not to enforce one's

immigration the other's federal marijuana policy there are a couple of things

that work here number one we've got unnecessarily redundant government as it relates to federal versus state.

Number two, you've got a circumstance where, you know, if you have 30 pounds of marijuana in Colorado,

you run a dispensary. If you have 30 pounds of marijuana in Colorado, you run a dispensary.

If you have 30 pounds of marijuana in Virginia,

you're a drug dealer.

And these are under federal laws, which are theoretically uniform.

They've abdicated that authority.

You know, President Obama could have, as a matter of temporary policy, essentially removed

marijuana from certain elements of enforcement. He chose not to do that, but even if he had,

that wouldn't have fixed the statutory issue.

...