According to a poll by the Marijuana Policy Project, nearly three quarters of respondents believe that the federal government should defer to a state’s decision to legalize marijuana for certain uses, even when federal law calls for stricter enforcement:

QUESTION: Currently, 16 states plus the District of Columbia have made the medical use of marijuana legal. In some of these states, individuals have been authorized to cultivate and sell medical marijuana under tightly regulated conditions. However, medical marijuana use remains illegal under federal law, even in states that have passed laws or ballot measures that allow it for medical treatment.

Do you feel President Obama should: (ORDER ROTATED)

- Respect the medical marijuana laws in these states, or

- Use federal resources to arrest and prosecute individuals who are acting in compliance with state medical marijuana laws? . . .

RESPECT STATE LAWS 74% . . .
PROSECUTE FED LAW 15% . . .
NOT SURE 11% . . .

To be fair, much of the language in this poll question is highly suggestive — the phrase “tightly regulated conditions,” for example, implies that marijuana use will still be closely guarded even in states with relatively permissive laws — so it is likely that the poll would not have achieved such a dramatic contrast if it had used less loaded language. Nevertheless, the poll is consistent with other polls showing increased support for liberalization of marijuana policy, including a recent Gallup poll showing majority support for outright legalization.

The poll also highlights the very real political danger facing progressive lawmakers if they continue to support a marijuana policy that is both overreaching and unpopular. Regardless of how they poll, there is simply no question that federal marijuana laws are constitutional. The Constitution gives Congress the power to “regulate commerce . . . among the several states,” and this includes the power to ban a substance from commerce entirely. Moreover, states simply do not have the power to nullify federal laws that they do not wish their citizens to be required to follow.

Nevertheless, many tenther activists who believe that everything from Social Security to Medicare to national child labor laws violate the Constitution are aggressively trying to entice young people into their movement by highlighting the fact that their misreading of the Constitution would also lead to federal marijuana laws being declared unconstitutional — or, at least, significantly rolled back. Progressive lawmakers can ill-afford to cede a generation of young voters to an extremist movement simply because they would rather cling to policies the country neither wants nor benefits from.

Late last year, after the Department of Justice announced it was cracking down on several medical marijuana dispensaries that allegedly were dealing the drug to people who had no medical need for it, several dispensaries fought back with lawsuits claiming that this crackdown is unconstitutional. At the time, ThinkProgress lamented the crackdown as an unfortunate waste of limited prosecutorial resources on an activity that nearly half of all Americans — including our last three presidents — will at some point engage in.

At the same time, however, the fact that a law is misguided does not make it unconstitutional — the consequence of living in a democracy is that our elected leaders will sometimes do foolish things — and a federal court just did the right thing by tossing out the first of these lawsuits:

A federal judge in Sacramento this week dismissed a federal lawsuit filed in November by members of the NORML Legal Committee against the US Department of Justice, US Attorney General Eric Holder, and DEA Director Michele Leonhart. The lawsuit (read it here), one of four filed simultaneously in the state’s four federal districts, argues that the Justice Department’s ongoing crackdown against medical marijuana providers and distributors in California is in violation of the Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution because the use of cannabis therapeutically is a fundamental right. Petitioners also argue, using the theory of judicial estoppel, that the Justice Department had previously affirmed in public memos and in statements made in federal court that it would no longer use federal resources to prosecute cannabis patients or providers who are compliant with state law.

On Wednesday, US District Judge Garland Burrell, Jr., rejected those arguments and and granted the respondent’s dismissal motion.

The fact that constitutional litigation is not an appropriate vehicle to move America towards more reasonable drug laws does not mean that medical marijuana dispensaries should simply hang up their heat lamps and go home — or even that they need to lobby Congress to enable themselves to operate legally. Currently, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, which means that it has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” Meanwhile, many common painkillers that cause thousands of deaths every year are classified at Schedule II or Schedule III and can be prescribed by a physician.

The Obama Administration has the power to reschedule marijuana to allow doctors to decide when it is the right treatment for their patients, and, indeed, a bipartisan group of Members of Congress have called up it to do so.

In January, marijuana legalization activists in Colorado turned in twice as many signatures as they needed to place a legalization initiative on the state’s 2012 ballot. Yesterday, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler officially announced that the activists had submitted enough signatures, meaning the initiative will appear on the ballot this November.

According to the Marijuana Policy Project, if passed, the Colorado initiative would legalize limited marijuana use and possession for adults over age 21, while regulating and taxing it like alcohol:

If passed, the initiative would allow adults 21 and older to possess and use limited amounts of marijuana. It would also establish a system of regulations to control and tax marijuana sales, much like the system that exists for alcohol, and direct the state legislature to enact legislation governing the cultivation, processing, and sales of industrial hemp.

“Supporters of rational marijuana policies everywhere should congratulate the residents of Colorado for placing this initiative on the ballot,” Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a press release. Indeed, a slim majority of Americans now support legalizing marijuana, according to recent Gallup polling, while more than three-quarters support legalization for medicinal purposes. Sixteen states have legalized medical marijuana, but the federal government still maintains strict prohibition laws.

And while progressive Colorado Rep. Jared Polis (D) has led the fight to end marijuana prohibition at the federal level, the cause has also been taken up by libertarians who have used legalization as a wedge issue to attack the Constitution’s guarantee that national leaders can actually govern. Activists in California, for instance, sought to declare Justice Department enforcement of federal marijuana laws unconstitutional last year. While DOJ’s actions were unfortunate, the lawsuit itself was a seemingly frivolous way to attack the federal government.

Meanwhile, libertarian activists and politicians who view much of the 20th century’s social policy as unconstitutional have used marijuana liberalization as an issue to jump-start their anti-government crusades. That should concern progressives, who cannot afford to cede an increasingly popular issue that holds important implications for criminal justice reform and public safety to a movement that wants to use it as a way to end the social safety net and gut worker safety laws.