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To protect consumers, cannabis growers, and business owners and further the purposes of federal trademark law the Federal Circuit should do one of two things. Section A encourages the Federal Circuit to read the CSA exemption under 21 U.S.C. § 863(f)(1) as creating federal trademark eligibility for cannabis products.128 This proposal would have the Federal Circuit affirm the lawful use in commerce the CIT acknowledged in Eteros Technologies in the context of federal trademark law.129 Section B suggests that, in the alternative, the Federal Circuit should adopt a framework that would treat federal trademark applications for cannabis-related products like other federally illegal products that have limited and lawful indicated uses.

[*191]

In Kiva Health Brands L.L.C. v. Kiva Brands Inc, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California directly considered the availability of federal trademark protection for a business engaged in cannabis commerce. 71The plaintiff, Kiva Health Brands L.L.C. (KHB), produced and sold food supplements in Hawaii. 72None of KHB's products contained marijuana. 73The [*282] defendant, Kiva Brands Inc. (KBI), produced and sold marijuana-infused confections throughout California. 74KHB sued for trademark infringement and unfair competition under the Lanham Act, citing concerns that brand confusion would lead consumers to assume KHB's products also contained marijuana. 75Both parties recognized that KHB possessed three valid USPTO trademarks relating to the "KIVA" name from the years 2014, 2015, and 2016. 76Kiva Brands Inc. (KBI) fully acknowledged these trademarks but claimed common-law trademark protection based on use in commerce in California since 2010. 77KBI only claimed ownership rights in California. 78KBH asserted that all of KBI's products were infused with marijuana and therefore cannot receive federal trademark protection. 79 The court accepted this argument wholesale stating that federal laws prohibiting marijuana production and sale precluded any federally recognizable trademark protections from developing. 80KBI accepted that it possessed no right to federal trademark recognition, but contended that the lack of a federal trademark was irrelevant to its claim under California common law. 81 The court rejected this argument and held that state trademark protections could not defend against a federal infringement claim if the trademark's use violated federal law. 82 This ruling decisively concludes that no business conducting marijuana commerce in violation of federal law can rely on federal protection. Even if a business has a valid trademark under state law, a different entity engaged in lawful conduct could apply and receive federal protection for the exact same mark.

Experts say every state will have legal or recreational marijuana rules on the books in next five years

56% of U.S. adults say states should be in charge of regulating marijuana, while 26% say the federal government should be responsible. 67% now support decriminalizing marijuana, up from 59% in 2016.

Investments in the legal cannabis industry are booming as Americans are demonstrating their support to continue legalization with the passage of new marijuana regulations in several states.

The legal marijuana market is estimated to grow by 64% to $2.34 billion in 2014 from $1.44 billion, according to a recent report by The ArcView Group, a cannabis investment and research firm based in San Francisco. The legal market consists of all states which have open sales of marijuana to people are allowed to possess it under their state law.

After more than 40 years of getting away with constitutional “murder,” Congress expanded its “authority” over intoxicating substances yet again in 1970, superseding the Marihuana Tax Act with the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, also known as the Controlled Substances Act. By this time, the shampoo formula had virtually supplanted the legitimate constitutional amendment process.

Meanwhile, reeling from the effects of the Great Depression, state leaders sacrificed duty for dollars, resulting in a chronic case of constitutional amnesia about preserving the healthy tension and balance of power by persistently pulling on the federalism tug-of-war rope.

Article 47 within the Single Convention provides instructions for amending the treaty, stating that “[a]ny [p]arty may propose an amendment to this Convention.”156 In order to make such a proposal, the amendment itself and the reasons behind the amendment must be transferred to the Secretary-General of the United Nations in writing who will then disseminate the proposed amendment to the other parties of the treaty and the Commission. At this point, the Commission has the power to decide if a conference should be held to discuss the proposal or if the parties should simply be asked if they are willing to accept.157 If there is no objection within 18 months, the amendment becomes fully adopted; if there is an objection, the Commission may then choose to hold a conference to review the proposal.158

With 153 current parties to the Single Convention, arriving at a consensus may prove difficult. This does not preclude the option to amend as “amendments require agreement between treaty parties, but not necessarily between all parties.” Once an amendment has been proposed and adopted, parties are free to decide if they will become a party to the amendment.159 Those who opt not to join the amendment remain bound by the treaty’s original obligations.160 By proposing an amendment that would permit the use of marijuana for recreational purposes, those countries who wish to pursue such legislation would be permitted to do so and those countries who remain in opposition would be able to remain parties to the original treaty preventing the use of recreational marijuana.

International intellectual property treaties cover the various private rights of intellectual creations such as copyrights, patents, and trademarks. 237In the process, the treaties enshrine those rights as property rights in sovereign states, which have obligations under international law to ensure compliance with those rights. 238What differentiates the private rights of intellectual property from other private property rights in the international system is the legal sophistication in which intellectual property rights are governed. International intellectual property rights created domestic private international law, which means intellectual property has a public origin and force in public international law, through treaty obligations.

Amending the Convention is possible under Article 47, but the process is arduous, and the US would likely need to push for this change to occur.[9] The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs requires a uniquely difficult process to enact an amendment and somehow, international affairs move more slowly than domestic U.S. affairs.[10] There is a way to modify the substances list to move marijuana to a less-restricted category which could ease pressure in the event of a domestic U.S. policy change, but this would not eliminate the legal conflict entirely. In 2020, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs moved cannabis from schedule IV (the most restricted category) to schedule I, which loosens control on it but still does not allow for recreational use.[11]

If the United States chooses to legalize or de-schedule marijuana on a federal level, the international community, namely the INCB, will expect the U.S. to address its international obligations under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. If the U.S. began efforts to amend the Convention now, then this could be completed by the time the federal government comes around to legalization, but this is unlikely to be a domestic priority any time soon. If the U.S. declines to decriminalize marijuana on a federal level and allows a complex, often discriminatory system of laws to continue, then it is fair for marijuana legalization advocates to ask, “is compliance with this convention worth the sacrifice?”

The effort to fully legalize marijuana got a boost Friday, with the speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates announcing her support for allowing voters to decide in 2022.

House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones issued a statement saying that a referendum should decide whether to legalize the drug, which is currently allowed only for medical use. She also formed a bipartisan work group to work out the myriad details that such legalization would entail, from changes to criminal laws to the taxing structure.

California’s transition to legal cannabis contains a mind-bending paradox: Ending prohibitions on marijuana will require newly aggressive law enforcement.

When Jan. 1 rolls around, California will not merely be permitting adults 21 and older to legally buy marijuana for recreational purposes. The state and its cities will be creating a new regime to regulate and tax cannabis.

The 80-year absence of interstate warfare in South America is noteworthy. From the standpoint of modern geopolitics, this is a truly a rare event. Geography discourages most of these countries from forming strong interdependent relationships and also makes it difficult to use key elements of modern warfare. Significant technological advancements in infrastructure, transportation and military hardware would be necessary to overcome these geographic challenges. Given our current model of the Western Hemisphere, this absence of interstate warfare in the region can be expected to continue for the foreseeable future. As a result, domestic issues – drug trafficking, guerrilla groups, disease, natural disasters, etc. – will remain by far the largest security threats to South American nations.

Nearly a decade after its inception, momentum behind China’s sweeping Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) appears to be slowing as lending slumps and projects stall—forcing Chinese President Xi Jinping to again rethink a floundering initiative that he once hailed as his “project of the century.”

After doling out hundreds of billions of dollars, experts say China’s lending for BRI projects has plummeted, largely a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s own economic slowdown. Support has also waned as partner countries drown in debt and fractures emerge—literally—in projects, fueling uncertainty about the future of the sprawling initiative. In 2022, 60 percent of China’s overseas lending went to borrowers in financial distress, compared to just 5 percent in 2010, said Bradley Parks, the executive director of the AidData research group at the College of William and Mary.

Plenty of Americans — including senior military officers, academics, and politicians — think Chinese leader Xi Jinping sees war as the best option. Those making this argument typically say Xi is tired of waiting for unification to happen peacefully, sees a military window of opportunity, or has set a deadline for finishing the job. Some think China’s recent economic problems create an incentive for Beijing to launch a diversionary Taiwan war.

We cannot know Xi’s priorities with certainty. Nevertheless, from what we can observe, an elective war against Taiwan is hardly a compelling proposition for Xi’s government.

M. Taylor Fravel contends that the Chinese government isn’t likely to lash out militarily to distract from its domestic problems:

Since 1949, China has frequently suffered from significant ethnic and political unrest and economic shocks. But virtually no leaders have started crises or wars to distract the Chinese public—even when they should have been quite likely to do so according to the logic of diversionary war.

This finding or ‘law’ has not only been recognized by scholars of international relations, but also found its way outside academia and has influenced foreign policies to promote peace and democracy, most prominently since the 1990s. However, my book will not draw conclusions based on ‘cherry-picking’ of specific studies showing how peaceful democracies are, but on a systematic overview of studies in this field. Therefore, this book relies on my own database with hundreds of different studies, which are relevant for each chapter; the articles had to engage directly with the chapter’s main research question. The next section will provide more detailed information around the selection criteria. This overview includes both highly cited and recent articles which were selected in a systematic way.

Based on analyses of statistical studies around this topic of democracy and war, it will become clear that the overall statistical support for the democratic peace hypothesis is not strong at all. In the rest of the chapter, I will spell out four reasons why democracy does not cause peace, and why the empirical support for the popular idea of democratic peace is quite weak: (1) most studies do not find a strong correlation between democracy and interstate war at the dyadic level, and they show that there are other—more powerful—explanations for war and peace, or even that the impact of democracy is a spurious one, (2) the theoretical foundation of the democratic peace hypothesis is weak, and the causal mechanisms are unclear, (3) democracies are not necessarily more peaceful in general, and the evidence for the democratic peace hypothesis at the monadic level is inconclusive, and (4) the process of democratization is dangerous and living in a democratizing country means living in a less peaceful country.

We now turn to the results from the outcome stage, where militarized conflict initiation is regressed on democracy measures and other covariates. The univariate clog-log model 32 that ignores the endogeneity, shown in column (1) in Table 1, successfully replicates the standard, dyadic democratic peace finding that democracies are peaceful, though only toward other democracies. Note that, while individual democracy measures have either a positive or insignificant coefficient, joint democracy has a negative coefficient that overwhelms the positive coefficients of individual democracy measures in the univariate model. As a result, the univariate model produces a result that, while democracy may increase conflict against a non-democracy, it decreases conflict against a democracy.

To illustrate this, we calculate the average treatment effect of joint democracy for the challenger and for the target based on the univariate model. These effects are calculated by comparing the predicted probabilities of conflict initiation when changing the regime type of self (challenger or target) from non-democracy to democracy, holding constant the regime type of the other (target or challenger) as democracy. 33 Gray, hollow circles in Figure 4 show the treatment effects of challenger’s and target’s democracy. We can see that both effects are negative and statistically significant at the 95% confidence level.

The democratic peace—the observation that democracies are less likely to fight each other than are other pairings of states—is one of the most widely acknowledged empirical regularities in international relations. Prominent scholars have even characterized the relationship as an empirical law (Levy 1988; Gleditsch 1992). The discovery of a special peace in liberal dyads stimulated enormous scholarly debate and led to, or reinforced, a number of policy initiatives by various governments and international organizations. Although a broad consensus has emerged among researchers regarding the empirical correlation between joint democracy and peace, disagreement remains as to its logical foundations. Numerous theories have been proposed to account for how democracy produces peace, if only dyadically (e.g., Russett 1993; Rummel 1996; Doyle 1997; Schultz 2001).

At the same time, peace appears likely to foster or maintain democracy (Thompson 1996; James, Solberg, andWolfson 1999). A vast swath of research in political science and economics proposes explanations for the origins of liberal government involving variables such as economic development (Lipset 1959; Burkhart and Lewis-Beck 1994; Przeworski et al. 2000; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Epstein et al. 2006) and inequality (Boix 2003), political interests (Downs 1957; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), power hierarchies (Moore 1966; Lake 2009), third party inducements (Pevehouse 2005) or impositions (Peceny 1995; Meernik 1996), geography (Gleditsch 2002b), and natural resource endowments (Ross 2001), to list just a few examples. Each of these putative causes of democracy is also associated with various explanations for international conflict. Indeed, some as yet poorly defined set of canonical factors may contribute both to democracy and to peace, making it look as if the two variables are directly related, even if possibly they are not.

The global footprint of criminal groups from China1 has expanded along with China’s economic and geopolitical presence around the world. North America’s fentanyl crisis thrust China-linked criminal networks and their expanding international connections, such as with the Sinaloa Cartel, to U.S. policy forefront.

However, the scope of organized crime from China extends far beyond global drug trafficking and money laundering. Internationally, Chinese criminal groups engage in poaching and wildlife trafficking, cybercrime, and elaborate fraud and scams, also featuring people trafficking and enslavement. Long experienced in illegally bringing people to the United States and Canada, criminal networks from China have intensified activities at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The legal market and the illicit market thrive off of each other, creating a positive feedback loop with no indication of slowing down. The markets in legalized states are essentially fueling the black market in non-legalized states.[xxvii] The relationship leads to increased black market presence in non-legalized states, and also in legalized states. Black markets thrive when demand for a product is not met by the legal market. Differences in regulations across states motivate participants in the market to smuggle marijuana across state borders. Legalization of marijuana has actually increased the black markets in surrounding states because access is far easier than before marijuana was legalized.[xxviii]

Currently, black markets in the United States for marijuana thrive due to the imbalance of regulations across the country. If legalization were to occur on a federal level, black markets would not disappear. Black markets will thrive as long as they are making money. Since a goal of legalization is to make money off taxes, illicit markets will persist because their product is cheaper. If taxes increase gradually, however, more black markets will likely be eliminated because consumers are willing to pay a premium for safer marijuana.