^ This. It is just going to take time for the older voters to be replaced by the new voters. Every year, huge swaths of older, conservative voters are replaced by 18 year olds.  Combine this with the fact that marijuana advocates will never quit in their legalization mission and we will have full scale legalization.  I predict that small amounts of marijuana will be perfectly legal in 1/4-1/3 of the U.S. states within the next four years.

And, although it would be great if all fifty states legalized, some states will move quicker than others.  But really, if 1/3 of the states are legal, then who really cares where its illegal - I mean you can just travel. Marijuana prohibition will go the way of gambling prohibition.

I appreciate your attitude of temperance and optimism, echoing the quotes from MLKjr regarding the arc of history bending toward justice. Eventually the bend becomes a slide, and things snowball.

I was not in despair even while Obama became demonized by the extreme left after the CA fed raids. (I think all drugs should be legalized, but I understand how politics works.) Obama, the first admitted user of hard drugs to be president, does run a huge federal agency called the DEA, which is supposed enforce laws on books, however bad. .What was he to say when the DEA head proposed her plan? No? Just be an idle agency?  

Only the most naive people of color -- and Obama ain't naive--  don't understand how the war on drugs is 100 x worse on them than whites. But he had to get healthcare passed. It was a moderate. corporate friendly  bill, and it still was demonized zealously by the insane right. Obama said early, "You want something? You have to MAKE me do it." Think of what Romney would have done if Obama had decriminalized all drugs too early.. Images of white teens from Plano, TX getting hooked on "Obamasmack", true or not, would have saturated the airwaves and jeopardized a tough election victory that will bring 40 million people health care who had none before. I was one of those people at one point, even though I had a job.. One day that health care will --- legitimately -- be used  help people afford cannabis to treat cancer and even anxiety, which is what I use it for. (I'd just grow my own, I am not looking for handouts).  I am given Klonopin, but the withdrawal is horrible, memory is far more impaired, motor control is lost, so working and driving is hard. I am not say "free govt. weed" for everyone. But recreational weed, like booze and cigs, will be. I only dread the arrival of cigarette type marketing of weed on billboards.But oh well, it will all balance in time.

Many dispensaries shut down in CA were opportunists, shady, and did not have true respect for the medicine, the patients or the process. I don't like those crackdowns but think about Holder's different reaction to the nine DEA heads calling for him to speak against the WA and CO initiatives. Total silence. That is very auspicious. It's been 75 years of this B.S., and it's actually beginning to end. Hallelujah.

Actually, this 50-50 bit is false.  Americans across the board want pot legalize, however, a great deal of those who want it, don't vote, so don't count.