In Colorado, you can smoke all the weed you want inside your home … if you're well-off enough to rent or own one. But if you're in need of federal housing assistance and live in low-income housing? Well, you better flush your stash before the feds come marching in.

In Colorado, you can smoke all the weed you want inside your home … if you're well-off enough to rent or own one. But if you're in need of federal housing assistance and live in government-subsidized low-income housing? Well, you better flush your stash before the feds come marching in.

Take the case of Lea Oliver, who, at the ripe age of 87, occasionally uses medical marijuana to ease her arthritis pain. Under Colorado's new legalized weed regulations, that would be fine and dandy … if she didn't live in a federally-subsidized low-income apartment.

She's being booted out of her home because a compliance officer "smelled smoke" during a routine inspection.

"I don't think it was even me. I've used it before to ease arthritis pain," she said, although there was no further investigation as to whether or not the smoke was actually coming from her.

Weed is obviously legal in Colorado, but as long as possession and consumption of it is still illegal under federal law,  federally-subsidized housing and federally-operated lands and facilities remain zero-tolerance zones for the stuff. It's conflicting state and federal marijuana laws like those that have caused a lot of problems in federally-subsidized housing operations across the state, as Lea is finding out.

She was told that she has 10 days to find a new place to live. Residents living in federally-subsidized housing are subject to yearly inspections, and are evicted if illegal drugs are found.

Alternatively, if she wants to keep her home, she can, as her property manager told her, "Go beyond a certain gate, or leave in a car and go somewhere else" if she wants to smoke. But, Colorado's current regulations are very strict about where you can smoke; almost anywhere except for your own private property, or a permitted event like the Cannabis Cup is considered illegal to smoke at. That, and even if Lea could find a place that's not her own home, she's 87 years old and lives in a rural town. We don't think she's going to be going to the Cannabis Cup anytime soon.

"Now I have to use pain pills, which I don't like to do," she said. Not cool!

Cases like Lea's are starting to highly how socioeconomic inequalities alienate people from Colorado's ever-changing marijuana laws, which is both a good and a bad thing. On one hand, it's bringing attention to a group of people that may have been overlooked in writing Colorado's marijuana laws, but on the other, an octagenarian is being persecuted for something more well-off Coloradans have a right to do, and that's a buzz-kill if we ever heard of one.

However, there is a measure being looked at in Congress right now that would federally legalize non-psychoactive CBDs in medical marijuana, so if Lea can lay off the bong for a little while, those measures might come into effect soon (if they're passed).

In the meantime, she's more than welcome to come hang out with us.