lot bigger than we thought. and i think already we are seeing, even operating costs alone for combined cycle gas plans beaten by wind and solar in many places. so then you add to that the price volatility of gas that probably gets worse downstream if you have abundant cheap wellhead gas, that volatility you can reduce from the market is worth enough to roughly double the gas price. it's really not that cheap. and in the geology is generally a good deal worse in other countries, so i'm not very sanguine about what that's going to go. >> if i can just say in one sentence, the shale gas is not a transition to anything but hell. [laughter] the fatal flaw of the clean power program and the great failure of our president and the current administration is not to

recognize that methane, for a 20 year period, is whether times as bad as carbons. they don't count methane. if you switch from coal to natural gas, mother nature doesn't notice the difference. so it's a big lie that it's a transition. it is just as bad. we are not making progress if we switch from coal to natural gas. we need to outlaw both of them for the future if we are serious about listening to the climatologists. i think the bad guys that don't believe in climate, i can forgive them, they are just dumb. it's the folks that make the eloquent speeches and claim that they believe the climatologists and then engage in hypocrisy, and essentially lied about not recognizing that it's not just carbon. that methane is a very, very serious thing. if it's only 1% leakage, it's about as bad as -- we don't know

but i can tell you from experience that some of these distribution systems and all week five, seven, eight, 10%. we just need to give people the facts. we are not doing that. >> i don't have a got a good answer to the institutional obstacle question the first of all, either very differently you. there's a commercially infinite part of gas in north america. and i think it really depends, water issues, the leakage issues, i'm not sure i'm with dave on 10% blowing up autonomous if it was 10% but i think this is one of the three or four great questions come is a transition if you or is that they -- if i were a gas company i would be in it for the love i would be very focused on what is the vision i'm articulate for how this is an actual transition fuel and investing around the?

but on the power markets, i think this'll effort to treat electrons differently is going to be a disaster. it's going to make it harder for markets to work. what we really want our markets to function in particular with demand response. if there's one thing i would focus on is to not do this crazy stuff with treating electrons differently but to get demand response in the picture. in a world we have a lot of demand response, integrating renewables and less storage requirements in the world we don't have demand responses that are different, the hard, very hard energy path world, i am not persuaded right now that most of the regulators are going down that world. it really concerns me. >> so i just want to rephrase something david freeman said because i think it's stupid and needs to be perhaps a little softer. i think there's a misconception among many people in energy

world that we can burn it all. and we can't. if you want to stay within climate constraints, you can't burn it all. and so if you have and all-of-the-above energy strategy, that include supporting fossil fuels, either domestically or internationally with the loans for coal plants or anything else, you are not facing the real problem. the real problem is that huge fractions of current proved reserves will have to stay in the ground if we are to meet climate constraints. so all of the above is incoherent. it makes no sense. and that's, there's a kind of, people are reluctant to believe this but the literature is very clear. and so i think this is what, this is the essence of what dave is saying is that you can't keep building more infrastructure that's going to burn fossil fuels company made carbon, in the natural gas for leakage, because we don't have the

climate. climate, we don't have enough climate for that. i think that's something that really the policymakers have failed to face. you can make these incremental changes but you really by mid century to get off of fossil fuel. >> we are technically at a time but we'll try to go another five minutes so let's take another three questions and i'm sorry, those of you that we may miss. the front. >> brent, friends of the earth. cautioned that it was mentioned the southern part of the u.s. is on the hard path, and we note some of the utilities are really fighting to kill any advances in renewables. so what would the panel suggest for an approach to change the energy? >> we have a question all the way in the back, the gentlemen. >> good morning. i'm a lawyer, indian lawyer.

i work with tribal government. i first met amory in 1983 at wilson college. my question is, considering that we have 567 federally regulated tribes in the u.s., which has sovereign powers roughly comparable to state that any given thought to tribal governments can play roles in bringing about the transition that needs to happen? and the follow-up question is, are there any of you would like to help with my book project on the subject? [laughter] >> yes, sir, in the middle. >> resources for the future. an important sort of source of efficiency has been the advent of marginal cost pricing, and now we are seeing come to a convergence of zero marginal cost technology.

so reformation to love for the partisan have a few changes in wholesale markets or should be looking to distribution system changes and the way they are organized? >> okay. simple set of questions. >> the tribal question has had some very creative attention from bob at intertribal to, utility policy in boulder. and there was a time in the previous which administration when he was preparing an open letter to the president saying dear mr. president, from watching wind talkers you know we native americans have stepped up with our nation needed us. we are doing it again. were offering to meet the obligation no cost to the united states by building x. gigawatts of wind power in the high plains, financed by european carbon credits and the transmission will be financed at

our sister tribes that have $11 billion a year in casino income. but if they put in the stock market they don't await its and it's not really invested according to their values. and all we ask is you get out of her way and let us do it, what do you say? it turned out a lot of that is happening and tried to some very interesting opportunities because they are not somber enough to sign kyoto or paris agreement -- soft -- but there are sovereign enough not to be the united states that backed away from kyoto. it's a very interesting zone and, of course, many impoverished people off the grid, so the our sufficiency renewable produce, to indian country that are a great example to all of us and building a lot of important capabilities. there are very, very talented people in those communities. i understand, for example, one of the most impoverished

reservations in the country has the highest concentration of any community of certified aircraft mechanics trained in the air force. a lot of interesting pockets of expertise which can contribute for us all. speed quickly -- is. there's big effort in some states, new york, california to try to do more on the distribution side. i think we make some progress. i'm skeptical that would put a big most of the progress there and instead would give up on the wholesale markets. it seems to be right now we've been able to ignore the effect of zero marginal cost energy sources because he had spoken of to be not be material in the market. amory's arch enemies in the nuclear industry have been doing this. we've got to find a way to get the ancillary services markets functioning properly.

otherwise we will find ourselves with a real nightmare on her head in terms of a liability. what's holding the whole thing together right now is utilities and other operators who have reliability obligations are keeping the grid functioning but you continued at scale with more zero cost source i think it's not so obvious. >> i should just add there are four european countries with modest or no hydro that are getting about half the electricity from renewables and, indeed, the ultra- reliable former east german utility was 49% powered last year i affordable run ovals. the last high-voltage power that was 35 years ago. so these operators without adding bulk storage cover to run their grades the way to conduct elites the symphony orchestra. no instrument plays all the time, but the ensemble continues creates beautiful music. if you asked 15 years ago they

would've said that's impossible but as they get covered and experience they realize they can do it and they can go much higher than 50%, and they are saying so. >> stay within the frame of amory the article, you all want ideas not words, words are just kilowatt hours, the carriers. and there aren't a lot of good ideas about how to change the southern utility culture out there. i've testified in the number of proceedings in florida, georgia, the carolinas, with a singular lack of success. obviously, there are different interpretations one can put on that, but the one i prefer is that it's just a very difficult culture. it's a hard path. culture, red state culture. days and to obviously would work, pass laws and the country complies but those are the

states that will bite you and obstruct the passage of the laws as well. i think in the end what will make some difference is that as the technologies evolve and the costs come down elsewhere, there are plenty of attitude customers come industrial, commercial, residential customers in that region who will ultimately insist on the adoption of these technologies. but i just don't see any political steamboat that is going to change those. >> i do have a softer answer. >> well, you are from that region. >> the federal government owns the big utility called the tennessee valley authority. the next president could require that utility to do something in the national interest, a federally owned utility, and show the way to a big utility

going down to zero greenhouse gases over the next 30 years. so assuming that one particular person becomes president, she can order the tennessee valley authority to become her green yardstick. and i think it would have a powerful impact on the rest of the south. >> and the greening of the co-op movement is important, too, even set in florida. i would just point out in the sunshine state where a lot of solar power is effectively outlawed, wind power is now cost-effective to it is in everyone of the united states now, because higher towers and higher salinity roaders with low wind speed have made wind power of cost-effective, not just in the high plains but everywhere, including the entire southeast which was thought to be a windy desert. the whole u.s. wind resources increased by two-thirds in the

last seven years. that's continuing and it therefore becomes harder and harder for utilities to block that kind of competition with their legacy assets. the smart ones already starting to switch over. we are seeing some of that with duke and north carolina. and customers can also install the stuff of themselves. they are just prohibited in states like north carolina and georgia from third party finance with theirs a bizarre interpretation that if i financed solo on your roof, i'm not selling you money, until you electricity so i am a utility. sooner or later the course or the legislature will fix that. watched the north carolina gubernatorial election. >> johnny can't get the last word. >> a quick point on the logjam in the south. many of the rural electric co-ops are tied to gold debt. their coal plants will keep operating until their debt is retired. one of my former students is working on a way to do a kind of

debt forgiveness, debt swap, something that would freedom up -- free them up. support of it is not just culture, i think it's also that they are tied to these assets. if we can figure a way to free them, then change can happen faster. >> in other words, there's an issue not just there but all over the country, all over the world of stranded assets and trappetrapped equity that needsy to relocate into the good, new stuff. the capital markets already be capitalizing the oil and electricity industries because if you are interested for the toaster, they sniff that out very quickly and they don't wait for the toast to get done. they shifted to the new thing. i think the capital markets can be our friends here. >> i want to thank amory and all of our panelists. it's good to know that we -- [applause] it's good to know that we've

come a long way from john sununu's famous victim that real men don't save energy, they build dams and nuclear power. thank you all very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> this forum on renewable energy will be available later today in the c-span video library. go to c-span.org. road to the white house coverage live on c-span. president obama campaigning for hillary clinton at the university of north carolina at chapel hill again at 2 p.m. mr. trump holds a rally today in

orlando, florida, that starts at 4 p.m. eastern. polls show a very close race with him slightly ahead in several national and state polls. >> on election da day november , the nation decide our next president in which party controls the house and senate. stay with c-span for coverage of the presidential race including campaign stops with hillary clinton, donald trump and their surrogates. anthology house and senate races with our coverage of the candidate debates and speeches. c-span, where history unfolds daily. >> this article from the hill, the libertarian party's vice presidential candidate said yesterday that he is vouching

for hillary clinton in the face of attacks in donald trump and he said i think it's high time somebody did and i'm doing it based on my personal experience with there. i think she deserves to have people vouch for other than members of the democratic national committee so i'm here to do that. he also defended hillary clinton over into fbi review of e-mails related to her private server investigation saying there's nothing there. you can read more about that in thehill.com today. more on the liver during part of an election later today as the cato institute asks, should libertarians about ?-que?-que x that starts live at 5 p.m. eastern. coming up next state solicitor general and legal experts discuss u.s. drug policy and the impact of legalization on law enforcement and the economy in neighboring states. colorado and other states decriminalization of marijuana for medical and recreational use as an impact on other states.

>> i'm really pleased to have a chance to introduce you to our next session which is current and emerging issues of legalized marijuana. when i was thinking about this panel, i thought what in the world am i doing moderating a panel on marijuana? i think my wife said you probably drew the short end of the joint. [laughter] just to clarify things, unlike our mindless ashwood yesterday this will not be an interactive session. [laughter] it's undeniable over the last decade we've witnessed a tremendous shift in the legalization of marijuana in various forms among the states. as of today, four states, colorado, washington, oregon and alaska and the district of columbia have legalized the recreational use of marijuana.

another 25 states permit medical marijuana or have decriminalized marijuana possession. it's a testament of the timeliness of this session, voters in at least nine states will decide the various measures of legalization this november. arizona, california, maine, massachusetts, nevada are considering legalizing the recreational use of marijuana as well. arkansas, florida, montana, north dakota are considering medical marijuana. our fascination with marijuana is no new phenomenon. marijuana's existence dates back over 10,000 years and came to the united states over the american revolution. in fact, early revolutionaries actively drew various strands of cannabis. posted on colorado became a state in 1876, both hemp and marijuana were legal and have multiple uses. it in 1917 as part of a growing movement colorado criminalize

the use of marijuana as a misdemeanor and later made it a felony. that situation lasted 40 years and nobody over the age of 60 knows that the use of marijuana hit a stride in the late 1960s, especially on our college campuses. i'm only 59 and a half so not sure what we are talking about. in 1970 recreational possession was downgraded in colorado to a misdemeanor, and in 1975 we may possession and private use of less than an ounce of pity of it. as to the legalization movement colorado is the leader in the united states. in the late 1970s and early 1980s colorado past several measures to legalize medical marijuana but those efforts never got off the ground due to a federal law classifying marijuana as a schedule one controlled substance in 1970. that brings us to the current state of the law in colorado. in 2000 colorado passed an

amendment 20 which amended the state constitution to allow for the medical use of marijuana. then in november 2012 colorado approved an amendment 60 for making colorado along with washington one of the first states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. now for a few quick statistics. in 2015 marijuana sales in colorado came in at nearly $1 billion, which is up from nearly $700 million in 2014. i'm sure our panelists will confirm it but i think we're on track for $2 billion in sales this year. that's produced over $135 million in tax revenues so far. currently there are 698 marijuana dispensaries or storefronts in colorado. to put that in perspective is more than the number of mcdonald's, starbucks and seven elevenths combined. notably legalization is an opt in policy meaning individual

cities can decide or not to allow or not allow marijuana businesses in their city limits. of the 331 jurisdictions in colorado, 71% advanced medical or recreational marijuana businesses. so with that overview of like to recognize our very distinguished panel of speakers. panel members represent both academia and the bar so i hope you can walk away from both a theoretical and practical understanding of their experiences. our first speaker is professor -- law professor at vanderbilt university where he teaches constitutional law, federalism and marijuana law and policy. the professors an expert on marijuana policy and is written, despite and lectures specific of states constitutional authority to legalize marijuana. federal preemption of state marijuana reforms. and is in the process of

completing a textbook on marijuana law policy to be published later this year. at my alma mater is textbook will probably be in the classroom next fall. is a former clerk to chief judge michael boudin of the first circuit and welcome him here. our second speaker is well known, professor of marijuana law and policy at the university of the college of law. the professors an expert on marijuana law reform and was a member of the colorado governor spending the 64 implementation task force. he has published over a dozen scholarly articles on the subject of marijuana law, reform and co-authored a series of states inside colorado's marijuana economy, full "slate" magazine. the next speaker is general michael, the attorney general of the state of wyoming. prior to becoming attorney general who was a chief deputy

attorney general and was also the senior assistant attorney general supervising the natural resources division of the wyoming attorney general's office and he succeeded our own greg phillips who was the wyoming attorney general before that. and continuing the law clerk, he was quick for chief justice of the wyoming supreme court. our next speaker is a special introduction, fred yager. fred is the solicitor general of the state of colorado and this is a treat because he's one of my former clerks. solicitor general he supervised and determines the legal strategy for appeals as well as select constitutional litigation. before becoming solicitor general fred was an assistant solicitor general and work at gibson dunn in denver. is a graduate of dartmouth college of the university chicago la law school. in addition to courting for me

fred accord or judge mark phillips and his district court for the northern district of illinois. and i might add that fred has a rare treat this year in addition to speaking at his first bench and bar conference for it as an argument in the supreme court coming up in october. the blood, fred. -- good luck, fred. spit our next speaker is the deputy solicitor general in oklahoma. at major litigates appeals issues on behalf of the state. prior to joining bill, attorney general's office, he worked for gibson dunn in washington specializing in appeals and administrative law cases. he's a former clerk to judge jerry smith on the fifth circuit, and we welcome your attendance today. with those introductions let's get started. >> thank you for the kind introduction. in queue to the conference for inviting me out here. is quite a privilege.

there is a rich and fascinating body of law that's developed over the last 20 years. i think to understand these laws we need to understand the constraints that have been imposed on the states by the federal government. because many features of state law are really quite peculiar and they represent efforts by the states to work around those federal constraints, what i call workarounds. i'm going to talk about three examples of these workarounds to illustrate the point and then i want to briefly discuss why some of these workarounds may be problematic from both a federal and state perspective. but before doing that i want to give a very good overview about the states have been doing over the last 20 years. this is really the 20,000-foot view. center in colorado springs maybe a 25,000-foot view of the last 20 years of state marijuana

reform. this all started back in 1996, these modern reforms with california's passage on the left hand side of the chart, california's passage of proposition 215 which is what i call medical marijuana law. that was a flaw that permitted some people did use marijuana for medical purposes. that particular type of reform proliferator across other states in the ensuing years, as depicted in the chart. you see the red bar growing, represents the red portion of the park come back home represents those medical marijuana states. it picked up a bit in 2009, 2010, and then you also saw new reforms emerge as well. perhaps most notably here in colorado and washington state in 2012, those two states started to allow people to use marijuana

for recreational purposes as well, really any purpose they might have wanted. those state reforms are represented in green of on the ground. and in 2014, it's also noteworthy that you saw a number of more big conservative states jump into the fray. they were reluctant to legalize even medical marijuana, but these states did legalize cd which is one chemical found in the marijuana plants. they legalize it for certain medical purposes. they are represented up there in black. it's a little hard to tell them really from the prohibition states. but one remarkable thing that you see on the chart is that as of today, as a 2016 to 43 states that allow some people to use marijuana legally. in other words, defcon beyond mere decriminalization. that allow certain people to use and possess the drug legally.

even though throughout this entire period the content of federal law has remained unchanged. .. for other drugs, four other controlled substances they commonly use positions as gatekeepers for example, if you

want get percocet, a controlled opioid painkiller, you need a doctor's prescription for your queue can't just walk into walgreens or cvs to buy it, but the states couldn't do that for marijuana and that's because the federal dea took-- said the position-- physicians cannot prescribe any drug on federal one. if they do, but dea threatened to yank their authority to prescribe other drugs. in other words, the dea will yank their registration to prescribe controlled substances. medical marijuana programs that require a physician to issue a prescription would be a nonstarter. no physician will risk their registration with the dea, their medical practice, their livelihood to prescribe marijuana. in fact, the state already knew this when california passed

proposition 215 in 1996. i put up here, on example of a law passed almost two decades prior to california's medical marijuana law. this one was passed in virginia, in 1979. a medical marijuana law that allows people to possess and use marijuana free of state sanctions so long as they get a physician prescription to use the drug, but laws like this, like virginia's law did not have any effect. no physician would follow through, so they are still on the books, but they did not have any practical effects. but, california at least the proponent-- proponents of proposition 215 pound a work around. proposition 215 only required a physician to recommend, not to prescribe marijuana. now, that may seem like semantics, like the state was

playing word games and that was the dea position, but let-- california leaders convince the ninth circuit that it made a difference that when a doctor simply recommends marijuana all that entails is having a conversation with the patient where you declare you might benefit from the use of marijuana. the ninth circuit declared that was protected speech under the first amendment and is a practical matter, that meant the dea could not punish doctors for issuing a recommendation even though it could punish them for issuing prescriptions, so every state following california's adoption of proposition 215, every other state that adopted a marijuana law has followed california's path and now requires only a recommendation or could they call it different things. they do not require a prescription. a second way that the states work around federal law, the states have found ways to

diffuse the threat of federal crackdown on marijuana supply. state marijuana reforms would be hollow if people could not actually gets marijuana. it's like me telling my 5-year old son, you can have an alligator as a pet. it you can buy it the next time we go to pet smart. he will be happy with me and happy that i allowed him to get an alligator as a pet. he will be sorely disappointed and probably mad at pet smart when he discovers they don't offer one. in the past 20 years the states have tried to provide marijuana in two basic ways, at least provide two basic ways for people to legally obtain marijuana under state law. one, to be grown with themselves, something i call personal cultivation and is normally considered under most states to be a trafficking offense, but these state said you can grow yourself. another way is a commercial

model where states said you can buy this drug from some commercial operation with a big shop that you see in colorado today and today, in fact, the states had mixed and matched these two different forms of supply. their regulations appoint one or the other of these two models and they can basically fall into -- we can pipes-- typecast eight regulation one of four types. what is that there are some states that allow you to get marijuana, but only if you grow it your self or if you have a caregiver do it. this is recruit-- increasingly rare and michigan may be one of the few states that follow this route, but the only way to get it is to grow it yourself. there is no commercial operation. second model the states have followed usually have commercial operations. you can grow it-- can't grow it yourself. you have to buy it from a highly recommend as regulated shop. a third model, similar to the one here in colorado is a mixed

supply model. you can grow it yourself if you want or you can go into one of the hundreds of dispensaries in business across the state. there is a fourth model that is similar to the second one, where they prefer commercial cultivation. arizona, massachusetts are two examples. those states they go to a store to buy marijuana. if the store is too far away from your house, you can grow it yourself. if it's a hardship, in other words. this next graph depicts the popularity of these four regulatory models over time. the red on this chart the pics those chase that had personal cultivation only. in other words, if you wanted marijuana you had to grow it yourself. blue is the states that say you can only get it from a big store. purple is a commendation of the two things. you can choose to get it from a

store or grow it yourself and the bluish color after the solid blue, the middle one are the states that prefer commercial cultivation, but makes exceptions for personal cultivation. accu-- as you can see with this chart, think of 1996 as early days or longer ago, personal cultivation was the only game in town. in other words, states or exclusively almost exclusively read. and there were operating in california and elsewhere, but the shops were illegal under state law at least until 2003, when a couple states started experimenting with this. there was really only until around 2009, that states started to embrace that commercial distribution model. in other words, creating or allowing these commercial stores to sell marijuana.

those early states, those early adopters in red, turn purple and allowed people to grow it themselves and it started to allow people to buy from stores and interestingly, every states that has passed marijuana reform since 2009, every single one of those states is a blue state or one of those mixed blue states. that is they want you to go to a store to buy it rather than grow it yourself. so, why the early reluctance to embrace commercial cultivation? why the sudden shift in commercial cultivation in other states since 2009? it goes back to federal enforcement. those laws with commercial suppliers are more vulnerable targets for the federal enforcers that are the little guys, the person growing a handful of plants in their basement for their own needs or the needs of someone they are taking care of. in the early days the federal

government's was willing and able to try to shut down those large commercial suppliers, but it's of the could not arrest the little guy. it could not collect or individual patients and caregivers, growing only a small number of plans because there were far too many of them, hundreds of thousands in the state. the thing with the early adopters that did the federal government would crackdown, those states embrace cursed-- personal cultivation at least in part because it's the only way that they could ensure qualified patients would actually have a supply of marijuana that wouldn't be interrupted by the federal government. in 2009, of course, you see this big shift when federal enforcement priorities started to change. that was the first year that the department of justice issued one of its enforcement memoranda. although, this memoranda was quite cautious if you actually read it, many people perceive it

as giving the green light to commercial cultivation. essentially the federal government saying it's okay to set up these stores that will sell marijuana to patients. that spurred the traumatic shift in state law and that's why states started to legalize commercial cultivation following this memoranda. you saw, of course, state license orders proliferate. this is a map of colorado. of the green dots represent state licensed stores, stores licensed by the state to sell marijuana. circa 2004. there are actually hundreds of these estate licensed in colorado and another state as well, but even as this commercial supply has caught on, there is something that the states haven't done. again, it is surprising only

until you consider federal law. lets me give you my final example here. where are the state run marijuana source? to this day, note-- no state has directly owned and operated a marijuana store, a commercial marijuana store. this isn't surprising to me. in light of this experience following the repeal of alcohol prohibition and with the states repeal any decided to and operate a piece of the alcohol distribution market. they thought of this as a way to curb illegal sales of alcohol and also a way to curb private for-profit enterprises to grow their market. that model has lost some popularity today, but even today a third of the states continue to directly control some aspect of alcohol distribution.

of this is, i think, a state alcohol story new hampshire. so, why haven't these states done this for marijuana? why are there any state owned and operated marijuana stores? this is an instance where the states haven't been able to work around federal law and in particular they have not been able to work around preemption concerns. if a state were to own and operate a marijuana distro vision center, a marijuana store , it's arguable that someone could come up, file a lawsuit arguing the state operation was preempted and get an injunction to block the operation. the same thing could be done with a private licensee because a private licensee of the state isn't necessarily state active. as you will hear later there might be suits products-- a good state regulation of the private sector, but even if you eliminate those relations it

doesn't stop that person from operating the store. they may just do so free and clear of state restrictions, so even if these preemptions are out there, they are much more resilient for state owned and operated stores and i think they are the reason why the states haven't gotten into this business. lets me briefly conclude and give my thoughts on whether it's a good thing. i think these three examples show how federal law has influenced the development of state law, but in a large way it's really distorted the development of state law. i think for the last 20 years the federal government has really been playing a high risk strategy. in other words, the federal government was betting that the state wouldn't soon be willing to repeal their own prohibition, scale back prohibition if they couldn't get doctors to issue prescriptions and use of prescription monitoring program that they had, if they could go out there and create these large

highly regulated commercial operations and the federal government got it wrong to work the states were willing to do that, but the results that we have is less than ideal, both from the perspective of the state and from that that her government. what we end up with is a system that isn't quite when the any state in isolation is left-- if left to its own but devices would have to adopt. to the back to the example of personal cultivation, that was hardly the ideal model for the states in the early years. to a 70-year old cancer patient to say you could use a-- you can use marijuana legally, just grow it yourself. not everyone has that green thumb or access to friends, even in california, so from their perspective it did not make sense to adopt the model. this is not necessarily you

would want the model for the state to choose. because the states chose it to evade federal law enforcement and new the federal government could not crackdown on these personal cultivation operations, yet for the same reasons to stop the personal cultivation operation it was up to the states to supervise them. difficult for the states to monitor the 50000 or 100,000 patients who may be growing a few plants in their basement to make sure they are not selling on the side or that they are not using it recreationally. ultimately, think this example of marijuana goes to show how a hardball strategy or take no prisoners strategy pursued by the federal government at least in the early days as it was that works out well for either party in the end. >> thank you so much and thank you, judge, for the invitation. i am thrilled to be here to talk

with all of you about this important issue. i'm sort of going to take a word from rob here and talk about a stalemate over marijuana law. rod has given us a sense of how we got to this place i went to talk about where we are now on what the implications are going into the election in 2016 and policymaking in 2017 and beyond. rob mentioned the 2009 memo and this was replaced in 2011 by another more cautionary memo from the department of justice and finally 2013, we have the memo we are all living under today, which most of you have heard the:-- memorandum. this states the obvious that the state government through most of the work of drug law enforcement in this country that while the federal government prohibits marijuana continues to prohibit marijuana, the foot soldiers and no one drugs.

marijuana should be no different from that even as states experiment with alternatives to prohibition. the memorandum of 2013, deference to the state are willing to let states engage in experiments. it set for the federal criteria with the principal one i'm sure our friends to the north and east will have something to say about charlie is diversion of marijuana-- authorized by state law. another is the sale of marijuana minus other things such as the involvement of organized crime, other drugs, guns in the distribution of marijuana prohibited, but the-- so long as the federal government-- excuse me, so long as state government does a good job along the metrics the federal government

would defer to the policymaking choice. other memoranda from the department of treasury and the financial crime memo which was purported to encourage banking, the separate memorandum on the capacity of indian tribes and nations to produce and sell marijuana and private by president obama and attorney general holder were all in the same direction that is we see what the states are doing and we see how this is now the view of strong plurality of states to either a majority or super majority of states and we are going to see how that experiment plays out. so, it's important-- [inaudible] >> this is on enforcement priority being stated. this is not the legalization of marijuana. it is simply a matter of

enforcement. this was written into law the forbearance was written into law albeit in a slightly obscure way through the enactment of an amendment to various federal spending provisions. if you haven't heard about these, don't beat yourself up. this was paragraph 542 of a very long spending bill that was enacted by congress in 2014, 2015, that stated the funds made available to the department justice may be used with respect to an interested 34 different states to prevent such states from implementing their own state law that authorized the use of distribution, or-- or cultivation of medical marijuana. that is we are not authorizing the funds authorized by congress may not be used to prevent such states from implementing their own state law. that's the language of the statute. it was a number of criminal

defendants in california and elsewhere that said this meant that the justice department was now prohibited from enforcing criminal marijuana laws in those states for the conduct was authorized by state medical loss. they took this section 542 as a prohibition on prosecution and just three weeks ago now the ninth circuit court of appeals in california agreed. it said we can prove that section 542 prohibits the department justice from spending funds from a probation act for the prosecution of individuals who engage in conduct permitted by state medical marijuana laws and fully complied with such laws. this is amazing. this says that if you are acting with state law you may not be prosecuted under federal law and also creates some odd circumstances where in a federal

prosecution it becomes relevant where you are in compliance with state law. there are some examples of federal court doing that, but i think this will lead to quite a bit of litigation over who exactly is in accord with state law to what the state laws account if a state were to say we think all you sub marijuana is medical use. does that mean all people are insulated from federal prosecution? even if it were to me not and it's too soon to know exactly what that means, what we would have now is a truth and not a peace between the state and federal government. i say that because as the memoranda made clear in the macintosh decision from the ninth circuit did not disturb, marijuana remains the legal under federal law and to help any lawyer who speaks to a client on any legal matter

concerning marijuana those are the first words out of his or her mouth. marijuana remains illegal under federal law and the reason it's important to state that even if the justice department said it won't prosecute in the ninth circuit has now said it can't, there are lots of what i called collateral consequences of marijuana's continuing federal legality. best-known of these these is that banking problem. no bank will consistently or for long make marijuana industry and that means in colorado last year marijuana was a 1 billion-dollar cash business. that's a spectacularly bad idea. it's a bad idea for people in that business who have to pay their employees in cash and it's bad news for those employees who have to go home with their paycheck in cash. more than that, it's bad news for state regulators because one of the things the federal government has charged the states with his keeping organized crime out and one of the things regulators are try to

do is regulate marijuana and a cash business is hard to regulate. there is no paper trail. we are talking literally about bags of cash that hampers lots of different state goals as well as putting citizens at risk. taxation is another issue that is hampered by the continuing federal prohibition. if you are in the business of violating the controlled substances act, rule 280 the exiled deductions except the cost of goods sold unavailable and makes the tax rate for a lot of marijuana businesses something north of 70% and also creates perverse incentives for the marijuana industry. if they have revenue the only way that can protect it from caches to turn it into cost of goods and that's to make more. of the only detection they can get is if they increase the cost of goods sold by producing more marijuana and again that may not

be the best public policy outcome. contract is another one. we normally think of businesses as relying on the use of contracts and their enforcement. that has been a mixed reality in the time since the states have begun legalizing marijuana. i always see the hammer against today's healthcare, thc. a case out of arizona, really great one for any first year contract class. the two arizona individuals have lent money to a colorado dispensary in the colorado dispensary stopped paying and of the arizona individual suit in arizona state court thinking this is great we would get home field advantage on these nasty colorado drug dealers. the colorado showed up in state court and said your honor, this contract is unenforced bill. we are drug dealers and they

knew we were drug dealers when they lent us the money and that judges said go and sin no more trick you don't have to pay this in the contract is avoid on public policy ground. while that may at that time have seemed like a win for the marijuana industry, the unwillingness of people to pay their debt probably is not the best thing for the growth of an emerging industry. also, a great case of greeters wellness verse eight insurance case that judge krieger had in the district of colorado. the greeters wellness had crops damaged by smoke and a fire in the spring and they brought a claim under their insurance policy, which covered growing crops, but had an exclusion for contraband. sort of another classic and statutory interpretation question like we heard about in our last panel. what do you do with this contract and judge krieger, it can, said if you know what you

are ensuring when you took the premium. if you knew you were ensuring marijuana i don't see why you shouldn't have to pay out on this claim and in doing so said some things that were quite remarkable. she said, well, why do we think the federal government has a strong public policy against marijuana. it's illegal, but they don't seem to be acting like it's illegal and there's what a language to indicate her view that marijuana now has a closet -- the case may clear the bankruptcy protection. even though debts they hold can be erased in bankruptcy if the person holding them can gain access to bankruptcy court. those the marijuana business cannot. finally, in terms of employment, we saw the case handled by our colorado supreme court where the court unanimously determined that mr. coates was a merit-- medical marijuana user in compliance with state law and could not be fired under the

lawful off-duty conduct policy because he was violating federal law. even though his conduct was clearly sincere medical use, it was not lawful conduct because his conduct continued to be prohibited by federal law and enclosing i will say a few words about something that could be of interest, which is access to law and lawyers. every state has some version of federal conduct 1.2d which say lawyers shall not engage counsel or clients to engage in conduct that a lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulence. while all marijuana conduct remains illegal under federal law, a clear question rises about whether a lawyer may do anything to facilitate that contact-- conduct. if it's criminal conduct in the lawyer knows its criminal conduct, a plain reading of this seems to say that the boy or may

not assist in any way and the colorado supreme court in comments to parallel to 1.2d stated this does not preclude attorney from assisting conduct permitted under state law in most states have a great, but the district of colorado has not that is while adopting all or nearly all of the colorado ethics rule the district court did not adopt that comment. attorneys may counsel regarding the meaning of colorado state law, but they may-- may not assist a client evening conduct that the lawyer recently believed was permitted by such law. i could get more examples and go into depth. i went to get to our other panelists, so i would be happy to take any questions when we are done. >> thank you. >> think you, judge. it's great to be here. three years ago i was at a conference and that the phone call from the governor to be acting attorney general and it's been a very fast-paced three

years since then that was when judge phillips was confirmed by the u.s. senate to be the 10th circuit judge and i stepped up from his chief deputy spot to be attorney general and i have learned it turns out that attorney general also has an appointment immediately called commissioner of drugs and substance abuse, so i'm in charge of that and i have learned a few things in three years. first, one thing i've learned is that this marijuana debate is very-- people are very poco with strong opinions. we have a former united states attorney at a panel i was on a committee with a lengthy report earlier this year on the possibility of legalization in wyoming. i will talk in a minute about a little bit of the legalization we have. it's very tiny, but we had a committee and open public forms and some of the folks would come in and speak and they were adamant about their views on

marijuana one way or the other, so it's a very-- people have strongly held beliefs and one of the things i thought i would do before i talk about some of the things i see, more from a law-enforcement perspective, maybe from a scientific perspective, a crime lab perspective this the whole idea of where i'm coming from. i think people in this debate actually identify a bit their background, where they're coming from because everyone gets a chance to-- should have a chance to see what our biases are as we come into a debate that is so highly charged as this one is and let me just go through the things that i see on a daily basis to give you some of my perspective. one of the things i do with commissioner controlled substances is i recommend scheduling-- the federal government will identify brand-new molecules-- we adopt

that as an illegal substance. the other thing i do in this is very controversial right now, but it does give me an insight into it's happening out there in the drug trade. in wyoming, we have asset forfeitures like most states do. very hot topic over the last several years and we have had amendments to our laws and one of the things i do is i approve the get phone calls in the middle of the night sometimes approving a seizure of guns, money, mostly money to people trafficking drugs and that's not the-- these are people transporting money across wyoming. that is something i get a pretty good view up what's going on. i had a call yesterday and won the day. i probably get 20, 25 a year where i'm asked to approve probable cause for a seizure of assets from what is believed to be drug traffickers. that's the beginning of the

process. that's a long process to actually forfeit those assets. another thing i do is that wyoming attorney general's office does all their criminal appeals. we had one step just to the miami supreme court being the smallest in the union. im in charge of our attorneys have heavily involved, spicy was happening in the drug trade in terms of cases, mostly felonies and that appeals are generally felonies. a big one i do is within the wyoming attorney general's office is the division of criminal investigation, so our office has 2150 folks in over a hundred are in the division of come on this occasion and that the operations division of that group and what they do is mostly

to wiretaps, investigations, all the things done statewide with our division of criminal investigation and with that division you also have a crime lab and hopefully i will have the time to talk about challenges we are having in the crime lab with marijuana. so, i get to see that up close. difficult issues including to try to fund a good crime lab to do the things that need to be done in this area. all of this are affected by legalization. whether wyoming legalizes or even colorado's legalization. one thing i don't do, so it can't really comment about this is that in wyoming the attorney general does not-- is not in charge of criminal prosecution of the local level. we have elected county prosecutors, so most of the drugs mentioned earlier and most of the drug enforcement in the

us is done by states, but in wyoming because the attorney general's office does not run the local prosecutions we don't actually engage in the prosecutions until they come up on appeal. then we deal with the appeals. really does do a lot of that. i don't have a history. i don't have that experience. i get a pretty good viewpoint to see was going on at there in the drug trade and we keep statistics. one final thing i will mention that i do is in order to get wiretaps for investigations, i had to review those personally and so judge renken for example receives wiretap applications as his role as a federal magistrate judge and also our local judges receive applications. we have to have strong probable cause before we listen to people's conversations on the telephone, so that is something

that i personally do, so i get a good handle on what's going on around the state of wyoming with our investigations. now, wyoming is-- [inaudible] >> we only have 600,000 or so people, so a lot of what you see is a little different than what you see a larger areas that have larger mock appellate-- metropolitan areas, but i think it's worth paying attention to. with him went to mention briefly and then i will move on a bit to my general observations about where i think things are heading and some of the challenges we are facing in law enforcement is we do actually have a valid initiative in wyoming. in wyoming right now only thing

that is legalize hemp extract with a low thc content, so that has really not become an important market in wyoming. that lies new. it was passed in 2015, so we have very little experience with legalize marijuana. what we do have is a ballot initiative and it's a little interesting. it has not gone on the ballot because the commissioners did not get enough signatures. you need 3000 signatures to get on the ballot and they did not collect enough signatures. is for medicinal use, but it's one of those was that like colorado law which was a very liberal and were 18 -year-olds can claim they have fibromyalgia and get a certificate from the doctor and they are down the street getting there marijuana.

our ballot initiative is liberal in terms of the physical conditions that could lead to receive a marijuana, legally in wyoming. it is not on the ballot this time. it could potentially get on the ballot in 2018. signatures would have to be collected by 2017. so, it may not make it on the ballot, but if it does i think there are problems with it that i think maybe problematic to be voted on by the majority of the voters. the biggest one is that there is no local opt in or opt out and wyoming has a pretty strong tradition of people being of local communities whether it's educational or other areas believing in local control and i don't-- i think wyoming voters may have difficulty accepting in the position of marijuana in every community in the state and not having an opt out, so i think that might be a fatal slot-- flaw in this ballot

initiative. anyway, because of the ballot initiative the governor did appoint a commission and we spent a lot of time, many meetings and a lot of work led by excellent professors at the university of wyoming and produce a 247 page report that actually had some good information about various issues, policy issues probably more than legal issues about legalization in various places from talking that paris models, liberal models versus for very restricted models. what do i see as coming issues and things and challenges that we face? i will mention first come i think there is difficult scientific issues that will be face to. to some extent whether marijuana is legal or not, but in the law enforcement area we have a

problem in wyoming where we had a statute that says a certain amount of plant material in possession over a certain amount and also in liquid form. we don't have one that deals with brownies. we have a recent district court decision that the law does not restrict a quantity of owning brownies, cookies and chocolate. he had all kinds of stuff when he got caught, but that has not gone before the wyoming supreme court. we have issues in terms of what is it, you know. marijuana is-- in brownies is extracted into oil and the oil is used in cooking, i guess. that's what i'm told. so, is that a liquid, solid, what is it? we have issues like that, i

guess. we have quantification issues. it's more difficult to figure out quantities of marijuana. we have in our crime lab graph technology. to really find out without changing the quantity of thc and that's what you want to know your q1 to know how much teach season the sample and in order to do that if you use a gas chromatograph you have to basically oxidize the material, burn the material. that creates more thc from thc acid. now you have disrupted your sample and you can't tell what the quantity is, so to do this you have to buy other equipment. you have to buy liquid matter graph and they're very expensive and you have to change your protocols and how you do it. there's not shoot-- another issue that comes up and that is how do you get material to calibrate your equipment.

we know for example we go to the gas station and at the gas station we know there are inspectors that go around and make sure the flow coming out of the gas pump is the right amount of gasoline so we are not being cheated. well, they also had to calibrate equipment in a crime laboratory. to calibrate that equipment you have samples of material and you have to obtain it legally through a us mail somehow from a lab that says this is how much thc is in our equipment and please calibrate your equipment using this material. the thc in the sample would be great over time. you have continued shipments of calibration material. there is a lab in mississippi where there has been some of that work done. that's going to be an issue for crime labs and four other laboratories where the quantities. i found out through research for this panel that there is an

article about the miscible marijuana and they did a study, recent study, 2015, in seattle and los angeles involving medical marijuana and looking at the dosages put on the packages. the doses were wildly inaccurate there was only less than 25% of the dosage on the packages within 10% accuracy of the amount of thc in the samples, so there are significant scientific issues and just going about regulating marijuana and regulating thc content. i think what we are seeing and what the statistics are showing lec and wyoming in terms of what's seen trafficking in the state is that the direction of marijuana use is in the direction of edibles. it seems to be where it's going and not cease to be where some of the biggest scientific challenges are, in edibles.

there might be an increase in the 18, so that will be a challenge for legalization is that apple issue and we see that already. a couple quick points provide 01 want to take everyone else's time. from my perspective we have statistics over the last several years and wyoming did not join series-- or the by nebraska and oklahoma against colorado on the federalism case, but we did engage and begin taking statistics about coming into wyoming under state law that's purchased in colorado and makes its way in wyoming. we found and i think these statistics are pretty reliable. there has been an increase in terms of the amount of marijuana

in wyoming, coming from colorado legal products having it's easy to tell they are in packages with labels and we know where they came from. we have the labels, so we know where they came from kirk a couple of quick statistics, marijuana incident reports from 2014, 127. 881 were from colorado took the next year, 2015, it was up from 127 to 1506 and out of the total numbers it was down by 100, so in 2014, 127 of 881 and in 2015, 156 of 73, so significant increase were coming from marijuana purchased in colorado. also, we seen an increase in some parts of wyoming with the

amount of marijuana instance has gone down over the last five years. in northern and northwestern wyoming, but in southern wyoming which is on the colorado border we have seen a large increase, so it's clear that being a neighboring state that we have more marijuana coming into our state from colorado, much of it purchased from legal dispensaries in colorado than we have had in the past, so it does have a impact on a neighboring state. i don't think it's all that debatable, actually. but, let me just close. i think i have been around long enough and it turns out my father was a school principal in pennsylvania, back in the 1960s and 70s, and in those days marijuana was debated and also there are big issues about smoking and cigarette smoking and we had in those days-- it's hard to believe now, there was a

time when all of the high schools in pennsylvania started to allow smoking's-- smoking in schools. everyone that the wave of the future that everyone would be smoking in the classroom. today, no one would think of having smoking areas in schools and i think the same thing happened with marijuana. there was a. not in the 70s where there seemed to be momentum for legalization and then we get away, but now the momentum has shifted back again. in these areas of substances you have ads and flow in the public thinking about these things and wouldn't be surprised with the next and then flow. one last thing, which is in preparing for this also in doing our report for the state, for governor meade on marijuana legalization one of the things that is so striking about marijuana, for example, compared

about what we know about tobacco today is the long-term effects, the medical knowledge of what i have seen is not that good about what the long-term effects are on for example heavy use by people that start using marijuana in their teens. so come i don't think the last word has been spoken. it's affected whether america-- marijuana has been available for clinical studies, so it has been in europe, obviously, but there is a wealth of knowledge out there still scientifically about the long-term effects of marijuana on health and so, you know, for example the attorney general of the united states led a huge education effort to reduce use of tobacco and it's been very successful. the amount of kids started tobacco use in their teens is

going down dramatically in this country and yet here we have the opposite. i know colorado i guess they can hold at their finger and say we are number one because they are now number one in marijuana use among i think all demographics, but again it is an ab and flow over time. appreciate your time and i hope maybe i have thrown a few ideas out there that might be interesting. >> thank you. like it or not it is legal in colorado at least at the state level. fred yarger, what are the challenges you and your office face and representing an enforcing state marijuana laws. >> i think general michael is right that you have to understand where a person comes in terms of their perspective to the debate and i'm kind of like in that regard. with all of the controversy and difficult issues surrounding marijuana camp that aside and represent the state very

important and terribly fast-- fascinating legal issues, so the perspective i bring to it and the challenges i face are wrestling with questions of preemption are coming one knows that when you walk into a marijuana storing colorado, you are breaking federal law becoming a felon, at least you could be prosecuted as a felon. what do you do with that? what's remarkable is despite 20 years of a legalized marijuana in a very significant way starting with california, the lot and preemption is pretty and clear. courts can even agree what method of preemption to use and they have only just scratched the service of the preemption provision in the controlled substances act, so we don't know if it is an obstacle preemption standard which measures the effect of the law and how it operates in practice against the goals of this controlled substance act or a more narrow persian where if there's a way

for someone to comply with both there is no preemption. so, we wrestle with that. we have been obviously defending a number of lawsuits on the prevention front. so far, successfully. essie's progress we still don't get much by way of clarity on the law because most of these cases have been kicked on standing issues were limitary issues about whether or not someone has the ability to step into the shoes of the federal government can control the controlled substances act. the only other thing i would add before i turned back over is how interesting it is that the federal government is of multiple minds about this with the enforcement guidance which presumably tells us what we have to do to stay in the federal government's good graces, but we don't know how they view those enforcement priorities and what they look at to determine whether or not those priorities are being met.

we don't know how they would go about enforcing against the state that they believe are not holding up their end of the bargain in terms of those priorities. they could use the blunt instrument presumably of a lawsuit to get rid ball of our laws on the subject and in letters to the state of colorado and the state of washington general holder preserved that option and said they won't stick to enforce the prevention provision against the state of colorado, at least not at this time. here we are, four years later heavily and commercialized wreck racial marijuana and they have not done so. the other option is that they could enforce on an individual criminal prosecution pieces. that does that seem satisfactory either because it doesn't get to the root of the problem which presumably would be with the states regulatory framework. of the other side of the coin is congress and congress had been both broader and narrower. broader in the sense that the

spending legislation does not work with forced priorities. it just says as long as someone is in compliance with the doj you can't spend any money on a prosecution or doing anything to interrupt the states rigorous toward process. it's more narrow in the sense that it only covers medical marijuana. oddly, we know that in some cases like race doesn't matter what you are doing with marijuana is a scheduled one substance and illegal under the controlled substances act. i think the professor is correct, it's a truce and the outlines of the truths has been drawn, but the very specific ways that they might play out if we had situations where is outlines were tested are not entirely clear and so far it's really been up to the states to regulate to the best of their ability, keeping in mind the will of the people in the loss that put in our prostitution to implement a regulatory structure that survives challenges like

the ones we are litigating against. >> before i turned to oklahoma. is colorado seen-- seen in the empirical effect on law enforcement? has there been an increase or decrease in crime activity related to drug trafficking and have you seen any impact on the social services? to the other panelists also, but i want to start from your perspective from the colorado attorney general's office. >> i am not as heavily involved in the social services aspect or criminal enforcement aspect. i get to keep my head in the clouds with the preemption stuff. i can say we have had major law-enforcement initiatives coordinated by this office, by my office prosecuting individuals that were attempting to use the state that you clearly the medical law as shielded to cover up interstate trafficking and those stories

catch headlines. what's difficult for me to a pine on is at a very granular level how you measure whether or not illegal as asian is increasing in use from a baseline that might have been hard to measure before. surly, the numbers we are getting from the federal government, which covers the rocky mountains suggest that there is an increase. suggest there's an increase in trafficking, so i think there is some compelling arguments that that is a side effect of serling not unanticipated one, but i don't know if i have enough information to really speculate about how accurate that is or how that plays out. >> let's turn to oklahoma. oklahoma suit colorado. tell us about that. [laughter] >> it's a bit awkward.

surrender by colorado ends. the us supreme court has original jurisdiction between states, but they have interpreted that there is discretionary and they can decide whether or not to hear the case much less its merits and in this case they decided they would exercise their jurisdiction, so now, we are left to have intervened with the 10th circuit right now. real edging our production claims. i want to talk about what general michael sort of already covered, which is that affects on states that border colorado, but then i will get to the bigger issue about what marijuana, recreational marijuana legalization or authorization, legalization is still able weird term because it's still illegal. with that meets for the nature of our federal system and our constitutional order. as far as the affects from a

bordering state, we know and everyone recognizes that interstate trafficking is a reality in a reality that is increasing. and 2014th it was one of the first years of preparation zero legalization marijuana. we had several thousand pounds go to 36 different states coming from colorado and i'm sure that number has increased even more in 2015 and 2016. there are not a lot of mechanisms that are in place to prevent known drug dealers from other states to come into colorado and by marijuana, so we had a case in oklahoma, where he known sex offender went from oklahoma to colorado, bought marijuana and came back to oklahoma and was scott trying to sell it in high school. in addition to the trafficking outside of colorado, it's also true that there are lots and

lots of people coming into colorado as tourists to participate in the marijuana market. the retail demand for marijuana in colorado, is primarily driven by visitors and not from people in the state. surveys show as many as half of the visitors to colorado are motivated in part to this because of marijuana, but i'm sure that attendees of this conference are that exception. if you look at a map of the dispensaries in colorado, you will notice the concentrations of the dispensaries in colorado are into areas, one major metropolitan areas and that other along the colorado border, kansas and oklahoma, new mexico, oklahoma and utah. as fred said, it is not able surprising result. we would expect it to naturally occur, interstate trafficking is

that inevitable and foreseeable consequence of a state authorizing the industrialization of marijuana. no less unpredictable than eight state-- [inaudible] >> i was on a flight here and explaining these things to the lady sitting next to me and she burrowed her brow and asked me, don't you think there should be some federal policy coordinating drug laws so these differences between states don't cause problems. [laughter] >> i looked at her and said well, ma'am, whether there should be a policy or not i don't know, but the reality is that there already is in at this point it dawned on her that congress passed a law making marijuana illegal nationwide in that law has never changed, but we sit at and audit time in history where states are pursuing their own policies regarding marijuana as if the federal consult-- controlled substance act did not exist. indeed, can't think of another situation to the current status

quo marijuana. either now or anytime in history -- history since the notification days before the civil war. federal law completely prohibits it not to yet individuals states enact and enforce laws authorizing that activity in a matter that causes proliferation. i think this unique situation creates issues about the role of our federal court that we'll have to wrestle with. marijuana is a subject that raises questions much larger issues than profound questions than marijuana policies are at stake. what's approach to looking at this issue is to look at the supremacy clause. as well as the purposes of the federal court established by the constitution. with the premise in our constitutional system that states have the ability to set their own policy to address the social ills, but certain problems with public policy are inherently interstate nature and

for those problems the constitution provides the solution with state representatives representatives in congress getting together and vote to pass a law to set national policy on the interstate issue agreed to give up a measure of their own solvency in favor of the uniform system. what happens when a state attempts to go back on that bargain by implementing a different policy thereby imposing externalities on other states? @examiner hamilton-- alexander hamilton said to solve this problem was the great and radical bias of the articles of federation. ..