A lot is left up to the discretion of individual states in this country.
Despite federal laws, there are some jurisdictions left solely to the states of this country. For example, it was inividual states legalizing same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court of the US changed the federal law. On a single hand, this makes sense because this is a diverse country, even just from a geographical standpoint. You can’t use the exact same approach to statewide issues when population demographics & sizes don’t match either. Regardless of any frustrations people might have with state sovereignty, the marijuana community has used it to their advantage over the past 30 years to slowly put a stop to cannabis prohibition. Now there are numerous states where cannabis is legal in at least a single form than those where it’s not. Just like with other state laws, the medical miarjuana rules & regulations in our state aren’t the same as other states. For instance, our constitutional amendment for medical cannabis legalization states that brand new licenses for companies are handed out as the patient pool grows. Despite this rule, the state is way behind its original goal. We were supposed to have 40 licenses for medical marijuana companies in this state because our patient pool has reached 200,000. Instead of 40, we only approved our 23rd license last month. Hopefully the office of medical marijuana use gets caught up with these licenses, because they’re certainly not short of applicants. There are companies that run successful companies out west that are trying for a piece of our state’s cannabis market share.