Coach, I'm sure you know a lot about physical fitness. But you apparently don't know drug laws at points have been so severe people would get 40 years for an ounce of weed (3 strikes rule). Usage did not go down. I'd rather deal with facts, stats and reality than the emotional cry of the right wing "What about our kids?"
In some states you can (& do) get a 10-year sentence for simply heaven in your blood. Something called "possession by ingestion". It doesn't matter that you ingested It 2 weeks ago and you have pancreatic cancer and have a medical card in note from your doctor and live in California where it's legal.
For instance a guy living in California and has Medical marijuana card & ingests marijuana that's a weekly or maybe twice a week for a few months and then flies to South Dakota January 1st 4 a relative's wedding.
A week later, Jan 7th, After the wedding reception he drives away and he gets pulled over for suspicion of DUI, its a blizzard so they skipped a field sobriety test do a breathalyzer which comes back by .07 the cop decides it may be close (& this guy is from out of state) so he takes you into the hospital for a blood draw. they draw your blood and it comes out .06 or even .07, but they also test for drugs. Now the guy hasn't used marijuana for over a week now and where he lives is perfectly legal for him, however you still test positive because marijuana takes a long time to clear your system.
Now I stead of a DUI, the DA now has enough evidence to charge him with possession by ingestion. Because it's pretty black & white, if it's in your the guys blood he's guilty. There's no real way to fight it, and the DA isn't into making deals on slam-dunk cases. So he he's 10yrs, of which he'll only have to serve 25% (2.5yrs)... But it's still a felony drug conviction. And the person still does real prison time.
That is a COMMON thing in some states. All the DA cares about is the felony conviction. Especially in small communities such as South Dakota who is Prison Industries (it's actually called "Prison Industries".. they produce shit for profit and pay inmates $.25/hr to work for them) is a large source of income very large population of the state. For instance, where I was, the Warden at a particular present as well as the Secretary of Corrections were Partners in the company that ran the commissary. No such thing as "conflicts of interest" exist in places like that, especially when you have entire families husband and wife son's daughters uncle's nephew all working for the prison system in various positions as well as prosecutors and judges.