US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana

One major effect of this is that weed stores will be able to use banks and payment processors legally once the regulators catch up.

That's so sad.

Here in Ontario Canada I can walk into a local neighbourhood cannabis store (one of many on every block, it seems) and make a purchase using my debit or credit card. I'm not sure if any of them even keep a cash float although I imagine they must, just in case granny comes in "for medicinal use". Alternatively, I could just go to the government-run web store and get home delivery through Canada Post at no extra charge.

You can in the U.S. too. For instance, in Portland we have a neighborhood shop and you can use a debit card there because each transaction is classified as an ATM transaction. All the ban ever did was making accounting and reporting more complicated, it didn't stop state legal sales or transactions.

The difference is in Canada it's actually fully legal at all levels of government, so the transaction is a normal point of sale transaction, it can also go through a credit card as a normal purchase without being subjected to the expensive cash advance interest rates, and so on. It can even be a tax-deductible and reimbursable business entertainment expense under similar conditions to alcohol.

Its super weird how america can make things half legal. In canada the responsibilities are divided up between different levels of government. None of this legal at one level but not another level bullshit.

The same is true in Canada. There are things that are federally illegal that are not illegal at the provincial level. There are also local laws that supersede federal law. E.g. There is no federal law against woodburning for home heat, but many local jurisdictions have banned it for air quality reasons, and provinces also have pollution laws. You can have something be illegal in one town, and legal outside of it, or illegal province wide but legal in another province.

What is going on is that not that weed is 'half-legal' in the states. It is fully illegal. What is true is that the federal enforcers have more or less decided to leave people alone when the state allows the use of Marijuana. Pre 2017, the exact same thing was happening across Canada where local jurisdictions allowed cannabis use and sales, and the RCMP basically turned a blind eye. Vancouver is the most obvious example, where there was actually a decline in the number of dispensaries after weed became federally legal.

> There are also local laws that supersede federal law. E.g. There is no federal law against woodburning for home heat, but many local jurisdictions have banned it for air quality reasons, and provinces also have pollution laws

That's not what supersede means.

There is no federal law about wood burning stoves because the constitution assigns environment to the provinces.