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Colorado and many other states legalize weed.

I wonder, just like some states in the United States can legalize weed, can some cities in those states decide to legalize other drugs too?

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    Important note: The states have not legalized weed, they've just decriminalized it at the state level. Weed is still illegal at the Federal level.
    – Drunk Cynic
    Feb 24, 2019 at 3:28
  • Ah ya. I understand. The basic idea of this question is that as businessmen, 80% of my decisions is based on try and see the result. I wonder if it's possible for a state in US for example, to tell their cities to legalize whatever they want to legalize.
    – user24251
    Feb 24, 2019 at 6:28
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    See en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
    – JonathanReez
    Feb 24, 2019 at 23:22

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Regional Marihuana legalization in the United States is a rather fragile legislative construct. According to federal law, Marihuana is still considered a Schedule I substance (the most regulated of five levels) under the controlled substances act. Why it got classified like that and whether or not that classification still makes sense from a medical or political perspective is a different question, but that's how it is.

State and municipal laws which legalize Marihuana are basically a promise that the local law enforcement organizations will not enforce that federal law. And the federal law enforcement organizations like DEA and FBI generally do not interfere with this in order to avoid a conflict between state rights vs. federal rights.

The US legal code doesn't have any laws which apply to Marihuana in particular (as far as I know, IANAL and it's hard to prove a negative in a legal code which fills a whole bookshelf). The substance is covered by the Controlled Substances Act as one of a very large range of substances. So there is no legal reason why the legislative processes which lead to a de-facto legalization of Marihuana could not also be repurposed for different substances, if there would be the political will to do so.

The biggest obstacle is that it is impossible for states to change the federal import or interstate commerce laws, so any substances which are infeasible to produce locally and thus must be imported from other states or even from outside the US would require a change to federal law in order to be made available.

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  • So no state can declare MDMA or DMT to be legal because those stuffs affect interstate commerce? Is that what you're saying? Or is it possible for Colorado to says, every city in my state can choose what stuff they want to legalize?
    – user24251
    Feb 24, 2019 at 23:04
  • @aegoscharyo The last paragraph of my answer refers to things like Opiates or Cocain which are made from plants which are difficult to grow in North America. I am not a chemist, so I don't know what ingredients you need to create MDMA or DMT. But if all the ingredients are legal to acquire, then it would be an option to manufacture those drugs within the state. Interstate commerce laws apply when you move goods over state borders.
    – Philipp ♦
    Feb 24, 2019 at 23:41
  • @aegoscharyo: It's impossible to discuss the federalism issues here without citing Gonzales v. Raich, but TL;DR: If there's a national market for it, then the feds can ban it locally. IMHO that makes very little sense, but it's The Law.
    – Kevin
    Feb 27, 2019 at 5:04
  • If Colorado says, every cities can have their own list. What would federal government do?
    – user24251
    Mar 7, 2019 at 18:12
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    @user4951: They could, but they won't, because either it would be entirely pointless, or some city would actually legalize some other substance, which would likely force the FBI's hand. Right now, the FBI can credibly argue that "Marijuana enforcement isn't worth our time if the local cops aren't cooperative." But involving other substances in that discussion changes things pretty drastically, and it's unclear what the political and legal endgame would look like.
    – Kevin
    May 1, 2019 at 3:50
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I just want to add that the city of Denver voted to decriminalize magic mushrooms:

Denver will become the first US city to effectively decriminalize mushrooms containing the psychedelic psilocybin, also known as “magic mushrooms.”

So the answer is, yes. Cities can move toward legalization.

It is still not legalization but it's close.

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