Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« The President Speaks About Marriage… | Text Message From Boston »

Friday, March 1, 2013

POT Attorney General Eric Holder Mumbles on Pot

Posted by Ben Livingston on Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 1:00 PM

United States Dept. of Justice
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder still reviewing legal pot

At a meeting of state attorneys general on Tuesday, US Attorney General Eric Holder was asked by Colorado's AG when they can expect an answer on the citizen-enacted legal pot thing. Politico reports that Holder responded thus:

"We’re still in the process of reviewing both of the initiatives that were passed. I would say, and I mean this, that you’ll hear soon. We are, I think, in our last stages of that review, and are trying to make a determination as to what the policy ramifications are going to be, what our international obligations are. There are a whole variety of things that go into this determination. But the people in [Colorado] and Washington deserve that answer and we will have that, as I said, relatively soon."

Intriguing to me is the statement about "policy ramifications" and "international obligations." Our primary international pot obligations stem from the UN Single Convention Treaty which regulates cannabis cultivation exactly as it does opium cultivation.

The treaty requires parties to designate government agencies—like the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board—to oversee cannabis production. One seemingly unworkable section requires these agencies to take physical control of all the pot and be responsible for any wholesale trading. Other than that, it seems like the cannabis regulatory system enacted by Washington State voters may comport with international law.

Colorado's law, which allows anyone to grow six pot plants without license, almost certainly does not comply with the UN requirement that cultivation must be licensed. But the commercial part of their law, which licenses growers through the state Department of Revenue, might fit within the Single Convention treaty's framework.

So what does Eric Holder's marijuana-inspired mumbling mean? Are the feds going to crack down on voter-enacted legal pot because of international obligations? Or are they going to find a way to comply with a treaty that requires cannabis production to be regulated quite similarly to Washington State law? Perhaps they will take a middle route, leaving alone the licensed systems but challenging the portions of Colorado's law that allow for unlicensed production?

FacebookShare

Comments (15) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

and nary a hint of input from the drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske? who even while still a lowly Seattle police chief, evinced a clear phobia about the coming marijuanapocolypse?

Posted by theophrastus on March 1, 2013 at 1:01 PM

Translation: "We're trying to figure out how much we can crack down on this without suffering more political blowback than we can afford. When we bring the hammer down, we're going to blame it on some treaty no one knows anything about and try to make it look like Obama's hands are tied. And what are you going to do about it anyway, vote Republican?"

Posted by bleedingheartlibertarian on March 1, 2013 at 1:15 PM

It's Agenda 21. The black helicopters are coming!

Posted by fletc3her on March 1, 2013 at 1:21 PM

Crackdown. Bet on it.

Posted by Fnarf

on March 1, 2013 at 1:22 PM

International issues like the effort that Mexico puts in trying to keep pot from coming over the border will have to be addressed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-am…

Posted by Field_Mice on March 1, 2013 at 1:27 PM

feds sue WA & CO, fed court injunction preventing state stores from opening, goes up ladder to SCOTUS, both initiatives tossed. it will take 3 years, then back to the status quo.

i could really use a bong hit.

Posted by Max Solomon on March 1, 2013 at 1:51 PM

@6 ahem. Read this.

"Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson predicts that California, Oregon, and five other states will soon follow Washington and Colorado's lead and embrace the right to smoke up. And most American voters believe that the feds should let them. Even in the relatively conservative states of Florida, Iowa, and Kentucky, polls released in the past week have shown majority support for recently proposed medical-marijuana laws."

Is the Fed going to sue a dozen states all the way up to SCOTUS? What enforcement mechanism is going to actually stop all these states? This is already feeling like the late 1930s when states in the East began to simply not even enforce alcohol prohibition, because they were done with it.

Posted by Joe Szilagyi

on March 1, 2013 at 2:02 PM

@2,4,6 yep, the Feds will probably say that they've been wringing their hands about it and decided that for the safety of communities and since its against Fed law, we're going to deny your ability to open the state licensed stores.

@7, I'm betting on a DEA blitzkrieg to stop the states.

Obama has Big Pharma, Big Alcohol and Big Tobacco to answer to.

Posted by neo-realist on March 1, 2013 at 2:12 PM

@8 the DEA 4800 Agents world wide. Where are they going to get the manpower to police the West Coast alone? Remember that many towns and localities won't be helping them. The Seattle city government for instance already said they won't put resources toward Federal enforcement, and will just stand aside.

This would also go completely counter to the stance of the Obama administration to only go after people who violated their state's laws concerning locally legalized marijuana so far. Which is what they've done, more or less.

Posted by Joe Szilagyi

on March 1, 2013 at 2:18 PM

The international obligations are a little more extensive than just the UN treaty (which was forced thru by the US.) US aid to other countries is usually contingent upon their mimicking our anti-drug stance. The US has forced the world to adopt its War on Drugs, so the implications of ours & Colorado's initiatives are indeed global. Holder knows this, and I would guess they are dragging their feet, not so much as to figure out how to handle our two states, but how to completely re-vamp America's role in addressing drugs world-wide. Seeing as how there's only been one approach that America has gone for since we've become a super-power, trying to find another one is not going to be easy.

If you voted for 502 so you could toke w/o getting "hassled by the man," great, wonderful, thanks. I argued for it, wrote LTE for it & voted for it because I knew we would literally be changing the world if it passed. And we are. This is one of the (admittedly very few) examples where the people led, forcing the leaders to follow.

Posted by Some Old Nobodaddy Logged In on March 1, 2013 at 3:36 PM

@6- Back to the status quo which includes several states in which petty possession is not a crime. Things are better than they were.

Posted by dwightmoodyforgetsthings

on March 1, 2013 at 3:42 PM

How 'bout we follow those anti-pot treaties the same way we follow anti-torture treaties?

Posted by Sir Vic on March 1, 2013 at 3:43 PM

Why is it that we're perfectly willing to tell the UN to go fuck itself so we can invade a country like Iraq, but we're worried to death about the UN when it comes to growing pot?

Posted by Tacoma Traveler on March 1, 2013 at 10:12 PM

Given A.G. Holder's track record on everything else, considerably more important than the needs and wants of potheads, his record has been both amoral and atrocious, as it was when he was with Covington & Burling.

Is there some contagious form of amnesia among The Stranger staff which precludes them from remember this? ? ?

Posted by sgt_doom on March 2, 2013 at 10:32 AM

@14 The amnesia is called pot, and it's only contagious if you're nice.

But seriously, how does remembering that our leaders are amoral and atrocious make ridiculous the question of what the feds will do about legal pot? Would you feel contented if I included a paragraph about torture and drones whenever I ask a fed-pot question?

Posted by ben@hemp.net on March 2, 2013 at 7:23 PM