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I think the international law is more of a hurdle than the DEA. The DEA is working with delegated powers. What Congress giveth, it can taketh away. Passing the buck is just standard government practice when they don't want to do something. The international law is a little tougher. Obviously we don't have to abide by it. We can get out of treaties, but we have to be careful about that because when we start breaking treaties other treaties we want begin to fall apart.

I don't think marijuana will be legalized here anytime soon. My bet is that it actually happens in one or more other countries before it happens here and that the treaties begin to fall apart or are modified at least with respect to marijuana. If not for the various treaties and conventions I think we probably would have seen a country or two legalize already. Several are a lot closer to doing it than we are, but they worry about how big powerful countries like the U.S. will react. We don't have to worry as much about these things as a small country with little power on the world stage.

What would the world do if we legalized marijuana tomorrow? Would we be punished? What about a smaller country like Canada? Would they be punished? I know they have a lot more support there for legalizing marijuana than we do and their Senate has even recommended legalization. But our government was quick to let them know there would be serious trade consequences if they were to do it and that was enough to put a damper on that debate in Canada. I wonder though what would really happen if Canada legalized? Would we really punish them that hard? I kind of doubt it. They need us more than we need them, but they are a pretty significant trading partner and significant trade sanctions against them would cost a lot of people and businesses here a lot of money. I don't think the American people would support all that over something silly like Canada wanting to make their own laws with respect to marijuana and folks would complain loudly enough that our government would back off. I think we're just “blowing smoke” with our threats.

I don't think there are really any major domestic hurdles to legalizing marijuana here, if our lawmakers wanted to do it. Internationally it's a little bit more of a problem but just watching what is going on around the world with this issue I think we'll see some changes in these treaties and conventions on drugs in the coming years that will open things up for countries that really want to legalize. These things won't go away. They'll be modified so that the whole framework doesn't fall apart. That's just my guess, but I don't have a crystal ball.