Did you hear Ted Cruz enthuse about marijuana?

In last night's debate, Cruz said he might not be the guy you'd pick "to grab a beer with," though he'd be good at driving you home safely. Later, giving Cruz a few more seconds for something, the moderator Carl Quinanilla wove in the beer reference — "Before we go to break, we're clearly not having that beer you mentioned..." — and Cruz said, "Then I'll buy you a tequila... Or, even some famous Colorado brownies."

What is Ted Cruz's position on marijuana anyway?

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland [Feb. 26, 2015], Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) endorsed marijuana federalism during an exchange with Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity. "Look," Cruz said. "I actually think this is a great embodiment of what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called 'the laboratories of democracy.' If the citizens of Colorado decide they want to go down that road, that's their prerogative. I personally don't agree with it, but that's their right."

But, about a year before that, at a Texas Public Policy Foundation conference, Cruz had criticized Obama for announcing that his administration wouldn't prosecute certain crimes. His criticism seemed to be mostly about not enforcing the laws that remain on the books:

You can go to Congress. You can get a conversation. You could get Democrats and Republicans who would say, "We ought to change our drug policy in some way," and you could have a real conversation. You could have hearings. You could look at the problem. You could discuss commonsense changes that maybe should happen or shouldn't happen. This president didn't do that. He just said, "The laws say one thing"—and mind you, these are criminal laws; these are laws that say if you do X, Y, and Z, you will go to prison. The president announced, "No, you won't."

That's not inconsistent with saying the states can serve as laboratories, experimenting with different approaches to decriminalizing and regulating marijuana. I do see a problem with saying that citizens of a state, like Colorado, if they want to do this kind of policy experiment, have the "prerogative." A "prerogative" is "A prior, exclusive, or peculiar right or privilege." (OED definition.)

The federal law is the supreme law. Even though the President may decide to refrain from enforcing it, he's the one with the prerogative. It's a word used to refer to the power of kings. It speaks of priority. The states do not have that as long as the Controlled Substances Act outlaws marijuana. They're proceeding at the forbearance of the federal government.

Now, Cruz might be saying that, as President, he too would forbear, but would he work to change the federal law so that we can overcome the disorder of having the people in some of the states deeply involved in the commission of federal crimes?

ADDED: "Sanders proposes nixing marijuana from federal list of dangerous drugs."