I stopped speaking for the United States a few years ago, and I haven't regretted it since.
There are three international treaties—1961, 1971, and 1988—that most countries are signatories to around the world. The drug business doesn't know state borders or provincial or national borders. Obviously, it doesn't know any borders, and that's part of the international global aspect of this whole problem.
I can't speak about the United States, given the fact that in eight states we have allowed the legalization of marijuana. Again, it was a very different process. These are processes by ballot initiative, where Andrew and his boss did not have the luxury of writing those laws or deciding what made sense or what didn't. No doubt, if they did, they would look 100 times better than the current laws do. They're written by interest groups, by the business interests, and passed because they outspent opponents more than 10:1 or 20:1 in messaging. We'll see what happens on the United States' side in terms of where we're going. I'm sure there will be some kind of announcement or discussion of the way this administration is going to be looking at marijuana.
I can tell you that from the treaty standpoint, as someone who's worked with the Commission on Narcotic Drugs for quite some time now, there is certainly room in terms of flexibility in the treaties in terms of the criminalization of possession. In other words, the treaties don't say you have to criminalize possession and people must go to prison. There's a lot of room. You have countries that are very extreme, like Saudi Arabia and some of the southeast Asian countries, that treat small-time possession in a very extreme way. That's how their culture does it. Then you have California. We've had decriminalized marijuana in California, before legalization, for 35 years, and that's not in violation of the treaties. Where it gets very tricky with the treaties is when you now have a government that is sanctioning the trade of marijuana and actually getting involved in it. Then you're talking about where, I believe, the treaties would be breached.
From the United States' point of view, the United States has been able to defend its policy to the U.N. by saying that this is not federal policy. It is a state policy, and the federal government, not the State of Colorado, is a member of the international treaties and a signatory. We're dealing with it the way we can with limited resources. From a federal perspective, though, we haven't violated anything, because we're not going there. Obviously, in the case of Canada, it's different, and I think it's going to be really mental gymnastics to try to think about how we stay within our treaty obligations if we go ahead and sanction the illicit supply of marijuana.