"The marijuana laws can most directly be compared to the Prohibition-era laws, which didn’t work, undermined the law, and were capriciously enforced. " Wm F Buckley
The problem is more than the laws’ contradictions. The Uniform Sentencing Act has given prosecutors, not judges, almost plenary powers over defendants, power ruthlessly used to extract information and to encourage duplicity and to make property rights insecure. Judicial process is convoluted to the point where a judge can reasonably exercise a choice between 100 years in prison and one day in prison.
And then there is this coming down the road:
At the same time, one branch of that thinking has itself evolved into a new project: the notion of creating downloadable chemistry, with the ultimate aim of allowing people to "print" their own pharmaceuticals at home. Cronin's latest TED talk asked the question: "Could we make a really cool universal chemistry set? Can we 'app' chemistry?" "Basically," he tells me, in his office at the university, with half a grin, "what Apple did for music, I'd like to do for the discovery and distribution of prescription drugs."