On Thursday Washington State became the first state in America where it is legal to possess marijuana for adult recreational use, and hundreds of people celebrated shortly after midnight by lighting up and smoking joints together under Seattle\u2019s iconic Space Needle.<\/p>\n
“I feel like a kid in a candy store!” shouted Darby Hageman, according to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
In November voters in the states of Washington and Colorado approved legalizing small amounts of marijuana for recreational use by people over the age of 21.<\/p>\n
The new law went into effect in Washington on Thursday and goes into effect in Colorado on January 5.<\/p>\n
Some of the legal details are still murky: Washington residents still aren\u2019t legally allowed to grow or sell marijuana, and they\u2019re not allowed to smoke it in public.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear how police are supposed to enforce the specifics of the law.<\/p>\n
The Seattle Police Department told its police department in an email Wednesday night that until further notice, \u201cofficers shall not take any enforcement action \u2014 other than to issue a verbal warning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes this mean you should flagrantly roll up a mega-spliff and light up in the middle of the street? No,\u201d wrote police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on the police department website.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re smoking pot\u00a0in public, officers will be giving helpful reminders to folks about the rules and regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
But technically, marijuana is still against federal US law \u2014 which means people can still be arrested by federal agents, though whether that will actually happen remains to be seen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Department of Justice is reviewing the legalization initiatives recently passed in Colorado and Washington State. The Department\u2019s responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged,\u201d said Seattle US Attorney Jenny Durkan in a statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless of any changes in state law\u2026 growing, selling or possessing any amount of marijuana remains illegal under federal law,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
That warning did not stop the midnight celebrations in Seattle. There were no arrests reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Thursday Washington State became the first state in America where it is legal to possess marijuana for adult recreational use, and hundreds of people celebrated shortly after midnight by lighting up and smoking joints together under Seattle\u2019s iconic Space Needle. “I feel like a kid in a candy store!” shouted Darby Hageman, according to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[86],"class_list":{"0":"post-17994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-latest-news","7":"tag-drugs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}