State by state, the march towards decriminalization of marijuana rolls on – despite the drug’s continued illegality at the federal level.

Here in Massachusetts the voters have spoken and the personal growth and use of marijuana is now the law of the land. You can’t sell it, but you can grow it – and smoke it.

This presents some interesting challenges in the world of real estate.

The impact appears to be somewhat less in the single-family realm where, as Jim Morrison reports this week, the plants are viewed as “personal property” that probably won’t keep you from getting or refinancing a mortgage.

Things get more complicated in the multifamily world; plenty of strange things go on behind the doors of Boston’s apartments, some which are technically legal but which you wouldn’t want to share with your neighbors. Most apartments and condominiums in Greater Boston have separate, metered utilities – but not all of them, especially heat and water. It takes a lot of water to grow six pot plants, and landlords aren’t going to want to bear that burden.

And then there’s the actual location of the plants to consider. Basements are usually common areas; utility use and payments come from the condominium association. The growth costs can be considerable in water and electricity. And how best to secure these valuable plants in a common area which, by definition, should be accessible to all tenants?

What to do with the plants once they are ready for consumption is less of an issue; many associations and buildings are already smoke-free – and that means all forms of smoke. (Ingestible smoke; setting one’s dinner on fire is ill-advised, but not generally prohibited.)

It’s a sticky issue (pun intended), but the people of Massachusetts are nothing if not resourceful. Boards and buildings would be well advised to get in front of these issues before they become problems, but in a couple of years the matter will likely be as much of a nonissue as the smoking of cigarettes has become.

The commonwealth itself isn’t exactly a live-and-let-live kind of place – it is currently debating a bill to ban smoking in all common areas of residential buildings – but residents themselves are a pretty reasonable bunch. In the end, growth will generally be allowed in private, separately metered spaces and consumption limited to methods that don’t produce second-hand smoke. That’s a reasonable compromise between personal liberty and the rights of fellow residents.

But it doesn’t address the larger issue – that marijuana possession is still illegal in the eyes of the United States government. Sen. Cory Booker last week introduced a bill to decriminalize marijuana across the country, but he’s likely to make little progress in the face of pushback from the Trump administration and conservative lawmakers.

Until that happy day, recreational smokers in Massachusetts will just have to content themselves with the progress the commonwealth has made in this sector – at least until their electric bills become unmanageable.