To look from afar, or talk to people up close, we have entered the golden age of marijuana legalization. The city of Seattle celebrated its state's first anniversary of legal pot last December by allowing a public "bring your own bud" event under the Space Needle. In Colorado, upscale cannabis-themed dinner parties, where food is paired with weed in the same way it has traditionally been paired with wine, are all the rage.

State approval is buzzing: on Thursday, Minnesota became the 22nd US state to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. There's also DC, where petitioners are pushing for full-on legalization. And, of course, Colorado and Washington state, where it's legal to grow and sell recreational pot to adults – and business is booming in a Green Rush.

But where there is buzz, there is nearly always a buzzkill: as far as the federal government is concerned, marijuana remains a schedule-one drug on a par with heroin, LSD and crack cocaine and is subject to the same severe criminal sanctions. Early Friday, the House of Representatives voted, 219-189, to support a bipartisan amendment that helps bridge this divide by prohibiting the federal government from spending more taxpayer money to interfere with state medical marijuana laws – by way of DEA raids on legal operations.

Even if the latest sane marijuana legislation survives a Senate vote, perfectly legal pot growers and sellers remain stuck in an imperfect legal limbo – at risk of criminalization, at increasing risk of becoming victims of crime, and forced to behave like criminal actors even as they observe the laws of their own states.

Far from the Washington-based crackdown by the Department of Justice (DOJ), there is Washington state, where a family of medical marijuana patients and a family friend, known collectively as the Kettle Falls Five, are facing minimum mandatory sentences of at least 10 years in prison ... for growing an estimated 74 medical marijuana plants on their property – for personal use. All of the defendants, the eldest of whom is 70 years old, claim to have acted in compliance with their state's laws.

But even if these five growers were abiding by Washington's year-and-a-half-old marijuana laws, it will have no bearing on outcome of their prosecution. Just over a week ago, US District Judge Fred Van Sickle ruled that the five defendants will not be allowed to argue as much in court, or even mention it to the jury, when their case goes to trial next month. So despite all the progress made in their state on marijuana legalization, these small-time growers remain at the mercy of unforgiving federal laws and those laws are very likely to send them to prison for a very long time.

It's maddening that the DOJ continues to go after small-time growers like the Kettle Falls Five, especially when attorney general Eric Holder has made it his personal mission to reduce incarceration rates for non-violent, low-level drug offenders before he resigns later this year. If Holder's intent is to strike fear in the hearts of marijuana producers across the country – people who thought they were safe from prosecution because they are, you know, complying with their state's laws – then it appears to be working.

Right now, the best assurance legal marijuana businesses have that they will not be targeted by the DOJ is an August 2013 memo issued by the AG's office urging all US attorneys to focus their enforcement efforts on obvious criminal activity, such as distributing to minors or enabling gang activity. But as the Kettle Falls Five case illustrates, if the DOJ decide to go after any parties who fall outside these guidelines, they can and they will.

As NORML's Erik Altieri told me this week, the only way local growers and sellers who act in full compliance with their state's laws can be confident they won't face federal charges is if Congress passes HR 499, which would decriminalize marijuana at a federal level. But we all know that's not going to happen anytime soon. The bill was referred to Committee in February 2013, and Govtrack.us currently rates its prospects of being enacted at a rather discouraging 0%.

But the risk of criminalization is only the beginning of federal problems facing the legal marijuana businesses in the states. Just look at federal banking laws that force its practicioners to conduct most of their business dealings in cash. This has led to a ludicrous situation wherein dispensary owners are having to stuff duffel bags with wads of cash and drive along discreet routes – sometimes under armed guard – to pay utility bills, rent, license fees and even their taxes.

Unsurprisingly, dispensaries are increasingly being targeted by cash-hungry criminals, but aside from encouraging modern-day Butch Cassidy wannabees, all the counting, manual record keeping and manual ledger balancing make it nearly impossible for these budding businesses to run efficiently or to expand as they might wish. As Kristi Kelly, the owner of GoodMeds Marijuana Dispensaries in Colorado, explained:

We're a 21st century business forced to operate in an 18th century environment. We want to get to a place where we can grow and function like any normal company, but instead we have to endlessly think of ways to get cash from A to B safely.

Last July, the Marijuana Business Access to Banking Act of 2013, known as HR 2652, was also referred to committee. As its title suggests, the bill would make it easier for legal marijuana entrepreneurs to open bank accounts and get access to credit, but it fared only slightly better than HR 499 – with its chance of being enacted currently rated at 1%.

Congress could fix this mess by taking another look at those two bills, instead of passing incremental amendments like the one it did on Friday. It will help, of course, if the Senate follows the House's lead by approving that amendment. But a majority of Americans now support marijuana legalization, and an even bigger majority supports decriminalization. But don't hold your breath – or your bong rip – on the US Congress listening to a majority on this one.