> What bothers me the most about this story is how marijuana is supposedly 'legal' yet some locals seem Hell-bent on treating it like an illegal and necessarily dangerous.

Marijuana is illegal in the United States. There may not be state-level prohibition in some states, but that doesn't make it legal in those states, any more than the fact that individual states may not prohibit fraud against the US government makes such fraud legal in those states.

The federal policy against enforcing the existing federal criminal prohibition of marijuana against medical use that complies with state law is an unusual complication, but the criminal prohibition still applies even in those cases (particularly, should that policy be lifted by Congress tomorrow, all the crimes that occurred while it was in place could be prosecuted—and criminal and/or civil forfeiture associated with them pursued—because neither the crime nor it's punishments were removed, so no ex post facto issues would exist.) And it's not clear what the boundaries of that policy are, and, more importantly, it's not clear that anyone but Congress itself would have standing or an available remedy should the executive branch act in a manner that is arguably outside of the bounds of the policy.