US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana

Do they have jurisdiction to go and do that?

If you get hit with a federal charge and they care enough, federal prosecutors can absolutely dig into your financial records.

That said, I imagine it would only get done if they really wanted to throw the book at you...

sure they do. for example it's illegal to be in possession of marijuana and a firearm. the purchase of said MJ would be pretty good evidence that could lead to other warrants. That's the Hunter Biden gun charge.

"For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law."

It's oddly not. Only to be a user or addict with a firearm. IIRC if you just like the way weed looks in your hand that doesn't make you a user, and there's plenty of reasonable doubt you're guarding it for grandma or whoever.

Of course people are still being convicted of weed and firearm, but it gets recorded as gun law violation and nobody cares, cuz left hates guns and right hates weed, so they'll never repeal it.

oh fair enough about the "user" vs possession. but my point was they could possible use this info to get a warrant to surveil you to catch you using it.

They don't need that. I was served a federal search warrant after a detective wrote an anonymous officer claimed an anonymous DOG accused me of wrongdoing.

When 3rd order anonymous interspecies hearsay is sufficient for a warrant it means a warrant is just a rubber stamp.

fair. its not hard to get a warrant. but your info in the database could still make you a target

Even a rubber-stamp warrant process serves a point, by making the police identify who they are targeting, as opposed to targeting everyone, and deciding who to charge after the fact.

Warrants aren't supposed to be hard to get. They are only supposed to stop the most blatant fishing expeditions.

The Silver Platter doctrine prevents your financial institutions from handing over that data unbidden, but they can do so by request from law enforcement.

This is why I'm going to buy a gun to celebrate marijuana moving to schedule 3

The worst part is that the states are quite happy to help the feds enforce this. E.g. Hawaii has both mandatory gun registration and requires a state-issued license for medical marijuana. And if you happen to have both, well:

https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/surrender-your-guns-pol...

It should also be noted that while DEA is instructed by the executive to not go after cannabis users in states where it's legal for recreational use, there's no equivalent directive issued to ATF.

What you're saying is how people generally think the law works, but it's not how it works in practice. This is easily illustrated with possession of drug paraphernalia charges. There's two types of possession, actual and constructive - but both face the exact same charge. Constructive just means something like 'could be reasonably accessed.'

So imagine you're in a car, get pulled over, it smells of weed so the cop executes a search, and he finds a pipe in the glove compartment. You're getting arrested for PDP there 100%. Even if it genuinely wasn't yours, you stand very little chance of acquittal. Beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't mean 'is there some other viable explanation' because there literally always is. It means is it reasonably likely that one of these other explanations is what really happened.

What you're saying is how people generally think the prohibited possessor law works, but it's not how it works in practice. It says nothing of drug possession, only gun/ammo possession by someone who uses or addicted to illegal drugs. There is plenty of reasonable doubt that constructive or actual possession of drugs is not accompanied by use, in fact this is the case for many dispensary workers.

>922 g (3) ... who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802));

which law enforcement can get, trivially, if they're prosecuting a felony.

it's just a function of time and process, and while you can dispose of plants and bury money in your back yard, you can't undo old bank transactions. 20 years later those records may not be a thing, but last year sure will be...

It would be great if the DEA and ATF were a bit more consistent in their enforcement. Joe Rogan smokes pot and has guns, federal agents busting down his studio door and dragging him away in handcuffs (while state ones look on and clap) would do more to move the needle on drug legalization than most anything else.