Randy Gross hopes a new law allowing children into Illinois' medical marijuana program will reunite his family, nearly a year after his wife moved to Colorado so their son could receive a controversial treatment to ease his epileptic seizures.
A year into the nation's experiment with legal, taxed marijuana sales, Washington and Colorado find themselves wrestling not with the federal interference many feared, but with competition from medical marijuana or even outright black market sales.
Advocates say marijuana legalization, which passed as a ballot initiative in November, still stands because it was enacted before Congress intervened. The initiative legalized the possession, growing, and gifting of small amounts of marijuana, but not sales.
Anti-marijuana activists have warned that legalising weed would lead to increased drug addiction, mental problems and crime – but in Colorado, which legalised recreational use of marijuana, the opposite has happened.
With marijuana legalization efforts complete in Colorado and Washington, advocacy organizations and lawmakers are looking to Vermont as one of the next major battlegrounds in the fight.