where do you live? Even in CA a very free state when it concerns mj has some weird laws. In my city it is a ok to sell glass(for tobacco use), but in the neighboring city they have some harsh regultions. I know some states are extremely strick to, TX i believe. It really does vary a lot by state.

Im out in MA, and the college I'm talking about is a pretty liberal/hipster place.  But yeah officers were walking around just not doing anything about it.  That compared to SWAT teams in Idaho just sounds nuts to me haha.

yea its really weird. There was a marijauna conference up in northern california recently with no issues. But I still try to play it safe even though I follow the state laws as i know the feds are still there, and as far as they are concerned medical marijuana may not be ok.

There is a "Marley Fest" in Austin, TX every 4/20 which is really labeled Reggae Fest or whatever but everyone calls it the Marley Fest.  People smoke weed at the festival while listening to reggae with tons of Austin cops sitting around watching.  I believe they will arrest people that are openly selling but if you are just smoking then you aren't bothered.  Austin cops can be hit and miss.  Most don't give a shit about weed that much considering there are worse things going on but some do.  I live in a suburb of Austin right now (Round Rock / Williamson County) and they love busting people for possession.  I believe one of the worst states would be Oklahoma for harsh weed laws.  I know Nevada used to be really harsh (remember the sign in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) but they passed laws reducing the outrageous sentences awhile back. 

There can't really be any meaningful marijuana reform when the federal government keeps marijuana listed as a schedule 1 drug with no medical value.  Till the assholes in the federal government wake the fuck up then we will continue to fill prisons (given rise to the private prisons) with nonviolent criminals while letting the ones that should stay there (rapist, murderers, molesters) let go early.

Nor should it be in my view.

The average human being is too stupid and irresponsible to be trusted with something so dangerous.

And yet, the cities that have restricted gun ownership, and/or states always have the higher crime in the US..

Is that a symptom of the ban or a reason behind the gun ban attempts?

Honestly i'd rather have it so that an 11-year-old can't just pick up a shotgun lying around the house to murder his pregnant stepmother, as was the case in my hometown a few years back (the trial for which was only finally resolved), and half the reason that local or state gun bans don't work is that the criminals who need them just go out of town/out of state. If they had to leave the country, now, that would be something.

For the Nth year in a row, the War on Drugs continues to make the world a worse place. *sigh*

Symptom of the ban, most likely. In most of the cities, the bans were enacted decades ago.

Comparatively, if you look at states that have eased laws, crime has gone down. Florida is a good example of it. They were the first state to legalize CCW, and their crime rate has dropped faster than the national average. There has never been a case to where you can directly correlate handgun restrictions and a decrease in crime. Its always been the inverse if anything.