I suspect there is also a desire to avoid creating cases that might reach the Supreme Court and challenge enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act based on

I suspect there is also a desire to avoid creating cases that might reach the Supreme Court and challenge enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act based on several potential constitutional issues. This is a not just a fringe legal theory, but one endorsed by several supreme court justices in their dissents to Gonzales v. Raich. I think there is a good chance that if the right case made it to this supreme court, the federal government would lose. > Relying on Congress’ abstract assertions, the Court has endorsed making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one’s own home for one’s own medicinal use. This overreaching stifles an express choice by some States, concerned for the lives and liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana differently. > If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption (not because it is interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably bound up with interstate commerce), then Congress' Article I powers – as expanded by the Necessary and Proper Clause – have no meaningful limits. I would also note that the Cole memo was rescinded in 2018 by Sessions and decisions about enforcement were pushed back onto federal DAs. I do not believe that Garland has reversed Sessions memo so the blind eye policy is informal.