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Joint Reform?: The Interplay Of State, Federal, And Hemispheric Regulation Of Recreational Marijuana And The Failed War On Drugs, Steven W. Bender

Faculty Articles

In 2012, Washington and Colorado voters surprised the nation by authorizing the recreational use of marijuana. The outcome sent state regulators scrambling to implement the directive and supply a product source, while the federal government faced its own dilemma of whether to tolerate or squelch these state initiatives contradicting longstanding federal law. Surely the Mexican drug cartels (and other illicit growers and suppliers from Canada and within the United States) weighed the prospect for wider reform and its consequences for their multi-billion dollar industry. Although few of these uncertainties have been resolved with any clarity at the time of this …