As has been well documented on Vocativ and elsewhere, the format of legal (and sometimes highly profitable) weed farms and dispensaries supplying the federally banned substance to consumers on medical or recreational grounds has spread quickly from state to state over the past decade.

Despite state-level laws allowing production and possession under certain restrictions, the Department of Justice through the FBI still executes raids and arrests for violations of federal drug laws.

Whatever the states decided to do on their own, Washington, D.C., played a strange game of simultaneously allowing legal pot programs to flourish, while periodically cracking down on those same initiatives.