Americans want the federal government to keep its hands off of state-level marijuana regulations.

Americans overwhelmingly want the federal government to keep its hands off of state-level marijuana regulations.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27424-two-thirds-of-americans-want-congress-to-grant-states-qsafe-havenq-from-federal-marijuana-enforcement

That's one of the conclusions of a survey on marijuana legalization recently commissioned by Third Way, a centrist think tank. Similar to other recent polling, the survey found Americans split on the question of full legalization, with 50 percent supporting versus 47 percent opposed. But the poll found that six in ten respondents said that states, and not the federal government, should decide whether to legalize marijuana. And 67 percent of Americans said Congress should go further and specifically carve out an exemption to federal marijuana laws for states that legalize, so long as they have a strong regulatory system in place.

In short, there's a lot of nuance here. "Even 21% of those opposed to legalization for recreational use still agreed Congress should pass" a waiver policy for the legalization states, according to the report. The waiver approach isn't without precedent: Congress issues waivers to states all the time.

"Waivers are a nice way for the federal government to acknowledge that they can't do everything they want, but that ensure that the goals of the law are not lost," according to John Hudak of the Brookings Institution. Education, the environment and health care policy are all fertile ground for waivers: "We have sort of waivers with these Affordable Care Act programs in red states, where they’re coming up with their own modified version of it. Where the state designs a system that fits its own needs, but is still generally consistent with federal law and regulations," Hudak says.

How this would work for marijuana is detailed in an exhaustive forthcoming study in the UCLA Law Review. In short, Congress could allow states to opt out of the Controlled Substances Act provisions relating to marijuana, provided they comply with regulatory guidelines issued by the Department of Justice.