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The Strange Career of the Transnational Legal Order of Cannabis Prohibition

Ely Aaronson


Abstract

Over the past two decades, central pillars of the transnational legal order of cannabis prohibition have been dismantled. Various countries have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Others allow the use of medical cannabis by registered patients, and a growing number of legal systems, including Canada, Uruguay, and nine states in the US, have introduced new policies legalizing the recreational use of cannabis. This paper places these recent developments in the context of the broader historical evolution of the transnational legal ordering of cannabis prohibition. It also examines the implications of this historical analysis for our understanding of the causes and consequences of the decline of TLOs. I argue that the conventional tendency to interpret cannabis liberalization reforms as precipitating the end of the war on drugs tends to underplay the extent to which the political underpinnings of cannabis prohibitions remain operative in various sites of international, national and local politics.