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Some of the lobbying efforts have been taken up by a new coalition which is spending big in hopes of revamping the cannabis industry’s strategy on Capitol Hill: the U.S. Cannabis Council. That group formed in 2021 with the goal of unifying the cannabis industry’s message on Capitol Hill. It spent $150,000 on lobbying last quarter and is expected to spend as much or more in the coming months, according to a spokesperson. The group has also launched a super PAC dedicated to cannabis reform.

“We want to be a big tent organization,” said David Culver, the group’s senior vice president of public affairs. “Everybody realizes that if we have a singular and unified industry voice … that we’re gonna have a lot more success.”

Cannabis lobbying, like the industry itself, has matured in recent years, and some of the biggest firms have set up practices.

The United States Cannabis Council, which represents cannabis companies as well as lobbying and law firms, dramatically scaled back its federal lobbying expenditures in the first quarter of this year, reporting $20,000, down from $220,000 for the same period last year. That decline reflects the council’s restructuring amid the legislative loss and spending will ramp back up, said David Culver, a US Cannabis Council board member.

Leading U.S. Senate Democrats reintroduced a bill Wednesday to remove marijuana from the list of federal controlled substances, following the Biden administration’s move a day earlier to significantly ease regulations on the drug.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, on Wednesday at a press conference applauded the Justice Department’s announcement it would move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Title: “The marijuana industry spent millions lobbying on legalization in 2021.”

The marijuana and cannabis industry spent over $4.2 million lobbying on a variety of issues and legislation in 2021, including the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 that was passed by the House of Representatives Friday. The MORE Act would remove marijuana from the list of federally controlled substances, create a tax on cannabis products and establish a trust fund to support communities impacted by the war on drugs.

Around nine-in-ten Americans say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use, according to a January 2024 Pew Research Center survey. An overwhelming majority of U.S. adults (88%) say either that marijuana should be legal for medical use only (32%) or that it should be legal for medical and recreational use (57%). Just 11% say the drug should not be legal in any form. These views have held relatively steady over the past five years.

All of this incarceration happens simultaneously as states collect billions of tax dollars from the blossoming industry. The hypocrisy is more damning each year. States have already collected $10 billion in taxes from legal weed, and $3 billion in 2022 alone. In cash. Legalizing cannabis will help pull the country out of any lingering recession. Economists estimate the legal cannabis industry will create 1 million jobs in America. Without federal decriminalization, the legal cannabis businesses are relegated to operating in cash, putting them at risk and forcing them into the shadows.

Every state that legalizes cannabis benefits greatly from it. California made $1.2 billion in tax money from the legal weed industry in 2021 and $269.3 million in Q3 of 2023. Egregiously high taxes (like in California’s market) are not necessary to see an economic lift: somewhat reasonably taxed markets like Colorado made over $270 million in 2023 and Washington made over $500 million in 2022.

Sales of marijuana infused knockoff brands have the potential to skyrocket. In order to protect a trademark owner’s brand and insure customers are not confused about the source, origin, sponsorship, or affiliation of the marijuana infused products, food manufacturers must now seriously consider stepping up their enforcement efforts with cease and desist letters and law suits when their brands are targeted by the edible marijuana product industry. Allowing these infringements to continue unchecked has the potential to severely injure a company’s trademark rights and dilute the strength of its marks.

Because of the similarities in trademarks and trade dress between the marijuana infused edible and the trademark owner’s marks, the trademark owner often has a variety of causes of action against the edible manufacturer including trademark infringement, trade dress infringement, and unfair competition. In addition, because the edible contains marijuana which is still illegal under federal law, a trademark owner with a well-known or famous brand may also have a cause of action for dilution by tarnishment which can be a powerful tool.

A 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting the reach of U.S. trademark law outside of the country could lead to further litigation by trademark holders looking to push back on those boundaries, says Crowell & Moring partner Preetha Chakrabarti, a member of the firm’s Technology & Intellectual Property Department and the Advertising & Brand Protection Group.

In Abitron v. Hetronic, the high court vacated $96 million of a $115 million jury award for an American manufacturer that had sued former distributors who sold knockoff versions of its industrial radio remote controls—using its distinctive yellow-and-black design—primarily in foreign countries.

The cannabis industry has grown exponentially over the past few years, bringing more jobs to local economies and creating tax revenue that often gets redistributed to programs that benefit local communities. There are many benefits to legalizing cannabis, and aside from the medical benefits, there are huge economic benefits.

Cannabis Tax Revenue

As the world gradually shifts towards legalization of cannabis, it opens up tremendous opportunities for businesses and individuals alike. With its potential to generate significant revenue and create jobs, cannabis can become a game-changer for the economy. The legalization of cannabis not only brings in a new source of tax revenue for local and state governments but also helps in saving millions of dollars spent on law enforcement and the criminal justice system. In this blog post, we will delve further into the how cannabis legalization can boost our economy and explore the potential benefits that it can bring.

Discussion on the current state of the cannabis legalization movement and the status of marijuana legalization in the US

See Lodestar Anstalt v. Bacardi & Co., 31 F.4th 1228, 1236 (9th Cir. 2022) (quoting B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Indus., Inc., 575 U.S. 138, 142 (2015)). See also Minde Glenn Browning, International Trademark Law: A Pathfinder and Selected Bibliography, 4 IND. INT'L & COMP. L. REV. 339, 339-40 (1994) (generalizing fundamental purpose of trademarks). Businesses have come to rely on trademarks as a means of establishing their reputation and distinguishing its products from a competitor. Id. at 339. U.S. trademarks are generally protected by multiple means, including state common law, federal and state statutes, and federal and state registrations. Id. at 339-40. As businesses have expanded geographically beyond national borders, the emergence of international systems of protections have sought to create a uniform system in order to simplify protections that are inherently governed by the laws of individual countries. Id. at 340.

Such considerations regarding the product's expected life are merely one area in which a trademark audit will involve the broader issue of the company's plans. Trademark protection involves a plethora of trademark laws and enforcement agencies around the world. Federal and foreign registrations are typical, but for some marks state registrations are also beneficial. 2 Additionally, many companies have a variety of marks and markets.

Second, the principled grammar of Global Constitutionalism is hard wired into a dense network of treaties, institutions and practices globally and enjoys the general support of a wide range of stake-holders. If the United States and the “West” more generally are reluctant to take a leadership role in the progressive evolution of international law, a coalition of other actors may step in. The current negotiations under way in the UN concerning a Nuclear-Weapon Ban Treaty are taking place without any of the major Western powers. It is an open question how effective the current western boycott will be and whether it can prevent the majority of the international community from establishing a legal prohibition of nuclear weapons, further stigmatizing these weapons and building momentum towards effective nuclear disarmament. But whatever the case may be, the efforts currently underway show a degree of confidence of non-western actors as stakeholders and norm-entrepreneurs within the international system – with Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa playing a leading role – that until recently would have seemed unimaginable. Furthermore the inertia and resilience of existing structures is likely to be considerable, both because they are difficult to change without consensus and because they may well become the focal point of resistance or new strategic positioning. If the US gives up on the institutional infrastructure of global trade, for example, this creates an opportunity for China to position itself as a reliable anchor, partner and leader, as Xi Jinping has tried to do at Davos this year. If populist nationalist authoritarians like Trump seek to undermine open borders and global trade, perhaps that will make it easier to forge coalitions among center right and center left political actors elsewhere to support deeper trade relations. The election of Trump has, for example, improved the chances for CETA to be ratified by European Member States as a clear statement against nationalist retrenchment. Of course it will have significant implications that major powers are increasingly led by authoritarian nationalist strongmen – not just in the Transatlantic World, but also in China, Russia and Turkey. There will inevitably be some decay and loss of relevance of international laws, institutions and practices, when powerful actors imagine international relations as zero-sum interactions between powerful leaders, struggling to define and expand their respective spheres of influence. But the story is unlikely to be the demise of Global Constitutionalism, rather than a significantly more complex story in which elements of demise and decay are complemented by resistance, reconfiguration and innovation.

Whenever a lawyer or historian describes how a particular action “violates international law” many people stop listening or reading further. It is a bit alienating to hear the words “this action constitutes a violation of international law” time and time again – and especially at the end of a debate when a speaker has no other arguments available. The statement is inevitably followed by: “…and it is a war crime and it denies people their human rights.” A plethora of international law violations are perpetrated by every major power in the world each day, and thus, the empty invocation of international law does nothing but reinforce our own sense of impotence and helplessness in the face of international lawlessness.

The United States, alone, and on a daily basis violates every principle of international law ever envisioned: unprovoked wars of aggression; unmanned drone attacks; tortures and renditions; assassinations of our alleged “enemies”; sales of nuclear weapons; destabilization of unfriendly governments; creating the largest prison population in the world – the list is virtually endless.

This storyline now appears everywhere. Consider reactions in the West to Russia’s break with international law in its invasion of Ukraine. Much of the commentary has focused on Chinese support for Russia and its implications for international law as well as developing countries’ refusal to impose meaningful sanctions on Russia beyond formal condemnation in the U.N. General Assembly. If the postcolonial world is unwilling to punish such a glaring violation of the principle of non-intervention, the argument goes, it must be because these countries don’t care for rules, because they resent the West, or because they are beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The same goes for those leaders and movements within the West who argue for suspending the current levels of support for Ukraine.

Title: "The liberal international order is slowly coming apart."

At first glance, the world economy looks reassuringly resilient. America has boomed even as its trade war with China has escalated. Germany has withstood the loss of Russian gas supplies without suffering an economic disaster. War in the Middle East has brought no oil shock. Missile-firing Houthi rebels have barely touched the global flow of goods. As a share of global GDP, trade has bounced back from the pandemic and is forecast to grow healthily this year.

Drug control and enforcement activities are prime areas for human rights abuses, not least because, as Barrett and Nowak note, the very indicators of success for drug control efforts are also indicators of human rights risk, and in many cases are actual evidence of human rights violations committed in the course of enforcing various drug-related laws.6 These indicators include the numbers of criminal offenses proscribed; people arrested and successfully prosecuted; people in detention; traffickers punished (including by execution in some states); people in drug treatment (both voluntarily and involuntarily); hectares of crops destroyed; and successful military operations against insurgents or criminal gangs.

The international drug control treaties contribute directly to this environment of human rights risk and violations.7 The drug treaties are what are known within international law as “suppression conventions.” Suppression regimes obligate states to use their domestic laws, including criminal laws, to deter or punish the activities identified within the treaty, and are therefore “important legal mechanisms for the globalization of penal norms.”8 However, while suppression treaties mandate all states to act domestically and collectively to combat crimes defined as being of international concern, they offer no obligations and little guidance on what is and is not an appropriate penal response. As a consequence, as Neil Boister notes, “the drug conventions…provide a broad framework and introduce a no-holds-barred ethos into domestic drug control.”9 Floors have been established with no ceilings. In many cases, this is an invitation to governments to enact abusive laws and policies, especially in a global context where drugs and drug trafficking are defined as an existential threat to society and the stability of nations, and people who use drugs and those involved in the drug trade are stigmatized and vilified.10

It also matters that the international cost to the United States, right now, is not off the charts at all. The body established by the treaties to monitor compliance has disagreed with the administration’s claim that it is acting lawfully, but it hasn’t gone further than that. And other nations have not publicly been making a lot of noise about the United States’ views. For those and other reasons, wait-and-see is a short-term response that makes a lot of sense.

Currently, the law regarding the production, sale, and use of recreational marijuana is in a state of tension. Despite a general prohibition under both United States federal law and international conventions, some nations and some states within the United States have begun to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The federal government refuses to extend trademark protections to businesses engaging in production or sale of marijuana against federal law even if these businesses are in full compliance with local state laws. The states, [*289] however, provide at least some level of protection for marijuana businesses under state law and common provisions for trademark protection. Because the authority to grant and protect these trademarks lies in state hands, it is theoretically possible that a state government could show favoritism to local applicants over foreign citizens in potential violation of the United States' treaty obligations under the TRIPS agreement. However, states and nations that have legalized marijuana use have cautiously crafted their laws to avoid a cross-border market. This indicates that a dispute of marijuana-related intellectual property is unlikely to grow beyond a single jurisdiction. Furthermore, because dispute settlement under TRIPS requires a state party to bring a complaint and because state parties have so far remained cautious to avoid international entanglements involving their marijuana laws, it is extremely unlikely that any state party would seek TRIPS arbitration. Inconsistent marijuana laws between state and federal governments arguably create tensions between state laws and the United States' treaty obligations. However, due to the practical realities of legalized marijuana within and outside of the United States, it is unlikely that a dispute would arise at this time.

The shift toward legalization of marijuana has gained a lot of momentum in the past few years. By a recent count, more than twenty states have enacted legislation that permits use of one form or another. Most allow only medical use, but Colorado and Washington also permit recreational consumption. For present purposes, I take no position on the policy merits of this development. I do, however, want to point out that the marijuana debate tends to overlook an important issue—namely, federal tolerance for legalization of the sort that has occurred in Colorado and Washington probably places the United States in material breach of international law.

The argument is pretty straightforward: The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs provides that parties “shall take such legislative and administrative measures as may be necessary . . . to limit exclusively to medical and scientific purposes the production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use and possession of” cannabis, among other drugs. Having joined the treaty in 1967, the United States is bound to comply. But for the most part, the Obama Administration has chosen not to enforce federal drug laws against recreational consumption in Colorado and Washington, and state authorities in those jurisdictions obviously do not have state prohibitions to enforce. Thus, the United States no longer takes “administrative measures” that are necessary to limit use to medical and scientific purposes. A comparable analysis applies under the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 Convention Against Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, both of which contain similar provisions and bind the United States as a party.