Russ Belville is currently at the Cannabis Science & Policy Summit at New York University. The meeting was put together by New York University and BOTEC Analysis and is being run by Professor Mark Kleiman, Ph.D. You may recognize these names; well that is because BOTEC was the company chosen by the state of Washington to speak to on the I-502 cannabis legalization law. Kleiman was given the title “Washington’s Pot Czar,” and decided to take up a job helping Washington legalize cannabis whether or not it was legal under the federal government in 2013. But just three years before that, as California worked to pass Prop 19 to legalize the drug, Kleiman was asked by the Los Angeles Times about it.
“There’s one problem with legalizing, taxing and regulating cannabis at the state level,” Kleiman said, “It can’t be done.”
Kleiman had all sorts of guesses as to what and how things would happen after legalizing marijuana.
made all sorts of predictions then about how events would unfold post-legalization.
“[A]ny grower or seller paying California taxes on marijuana sales or filing pot-related California regulatory paperwork would be confessing, in writing, to multiple federal crimes,” Kleiman guaranteed. “And that won’t happen.”
“[W]e’d see massive federal busts of California growers and retail dealers,” Kleiman added, “no matter how legal their activity was under state law.”
In order to legalize marijuana, Kleiman warned, “it’s going to have to be at the national level (which includes modifying the anti-drug treaties) rather than state by state. Any other approach is a pipe dream.”
Fast forward three years and Kleiman and BOTEC were beginning to collect taxes in order to make that dream a reality. At the moment, Kleiman is leading the summit with other public policy Ph.D.s that support and do not support legalization are debating the same topic from six years ago: “There’s no way on earth the federal government is going to tolerate that.”
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