Description
Over the past decade, global cannabis regulation has undergone rapid yet uneven transformation, from decriminalisation and medical use to the full legalisation of recreational markets. These processes pose profound questions for the future of governance and global capitalism: how are new markets for a once-prohibited substance being shaped, regulated, and integrated into the global economy? What do these dynamics reveal about the evolving relationship between state, market, and capital?
Uruguay’s state-controlled model, the U.S.’s fragmented commercial systems, and Canada’s hybrid framework illustrate contrasting approaches to market formation and state intervention. While law, public health, and economics have generated substantial analysis (e.g. Crick et al., 2013; Fischer et al., 2020; Goldstein & Sumner, 2021), these literatures rarely address the deeper political-economic logics driving legalisation. Political economists, conversely, have tended to overlook the significance of drug policy and prohibition within broader structures of accumulation and regulation.
In analysing the USA and Canada through a historical materialist framework, this paper argues that cannabis legalisation represents a critical frontier for international political economy (IPE), offering insight into how new commodities emerge through the intersection of global prohibition regimes, national policy reform, and capitalist expansion. The research analyses cannabis legalisation as both a moment of regulatory transformation and an instance of commodification within late capitalism.
By rethinking drug policy through critical political economy, the paper invites International Studies scholars to consider how emerging markets like cannabis challenge conventional understandings of global governance, moral regulation, and capital accumulation—and to ask whether the discipline is prepared to engage with these new frontiers.
