Please follow the link and read the article. I found it to be an enlightening read.
If weed was a legal option everywhere, and there was no drug testing to keep a job, weed would overtake alcohol and illegal narcotics in no time because it fills the need and is safe. If you can buy a pack of marlboro dank just by showing your ID at the 7/11 who's going down the alley to maybe get rolled by the crack dealer?
The unfortunate thing no one in cannabis considers is the constitution.
Amendments 1-8 of the Bill of Rights specifically define the purview of the federal government. There are literally 8 portions of society's function that the federal government is allowed to regulate and cannabis is not one of them. Neither is education or healthcare.
The 9th says "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." meaning that just because they didn't define the right doesn't mean we don't have it.
The 10th says that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." - State and local governments want to keep their power so they choose "reserved to the State" rather than the part about us peasants. But that's where lawsuits and probono weed lawyers step in and smash the state. The last two are pertinent to us having the right to smoke and grow it, and the states thinking they have the right to regulate it - because the feds can't.
Right now it is still prohibited to the states, since it is federally illegal, but some states choose to operate under the 10th and wait for the feds to push the issue in court - which they still could.
All the fed can do is remove cannabis from the schedule and decriminalize what they have criminalized. The other option the fed has is to drop cannabis to schedule 2 like codeine and the rest of the narcotics. That way they can control us and hand out profit to their big pharma buddies - who will make THC pills.