by Jeremy Leaming
As Colorado voters were debating whether to support a ballot measure to legalize small amounts of marijuana, some fretted about fueling drug tourism. But the more obvious difficulty Colorado and Washington State, where a similar legalization measure was approved, face centers on the federal government and its law that sees marijuana as more dangerous than heroine.
As University of Denver law school Professor Sam Kamin told “60 Minutes” not long before the elections, the federal government 
has not been easy on the states that have legalized medical marijuana use. The government is employing several tactics to undermine the medical marijuana industry in Colorado – a fairly robust one – despite the challenges. Part of what the federal government does, according to Kamin, is to threaten banks with prosecution under the Controlled Substances Act if they help the medical marijuana industry to expand.
It seems safe to assume for the moment that the federal government will not look any more favorably on the limited legalization laws in Colorado and Washington than it has on states were medical marijuana has been legalized.
Alison Holcomb an attorney and leader of the campaign for Washington’s Initiative 502, sounded an optimistic note upon its passage, saying the state had “looked at 70 years of marijuana prohibition and said its time for a new approach,” the Associated Press reported. The Seattle Weekly in a Sept. profile of her work, lauded her for bringing together a “jaw-dropping list of sponsors – including travel guru Rick Steves, City Attorney Pete Holmes and former U.S. Attorney and Bush appointee John McKay – and keeps winning more and more endorsements as time goes on.”
Washington’s initiative creates a system of state-regulated marijuana growers and allows adults to buy up to an ounce. Colorado’s Amendment 64 will allow those over 21 to buy an ounce of marijuana and permit people to grow a limited amount of marijuana.
y, and drove him away in the back of a police car. 
, without a warrant, sniffed the front porch and door of a home, where the occupant’s Fourth Amendment privacy interests were at her strongest; he alerted that drugs were within the home by sitting down at the front door. Based on the dog’s alert, police obtained a warrant to search the home and found marijuana plants. At issue in Jardines is whether the defendant had a Fourth Amendment interest in protecting the exterior of her home from a sniffing dog. In 
mestic violence targeting groups of people because of hatred toward their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. He cited a 2010 FBI report showing that 6,600 hate crimes were reported in 2010. (That report revealed that a wide swath of communities was targeted by hate crimes. For example, the FBI said 47 percent of the crimes were racially motivated, 20 percent were triggered by hatred of the victims’ religion, 19 percent targeted the LGBT community, and 13 percent were based on ethnicity or national origin.)