A bill introduced this week by Democratic U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon would regulate marijuana like alcohol if it becomes federal law. The bill would take marijuana off the federal controlled substances list and establish a nationally regulated industry overseen by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The bill number is H.R. 420, a tongue-in-cheek nod to 420, the frequently used slang term for marijuana.
The nation's largest legal marijuana market opened for business in January of this year with California's new law regarding recreational pot.
Californians may buy legal buds from San Diego to San Francisco, and thousands of growers have state licenses.
But the market is dogged by thousands of illegal operators that undercut legal shops.
Because of rules that vary from city to city, whether you can buy marijuana products depends on where you are.
State regulators get credit for beginning the massive job of transforming the longstanding illegal and medicinal marijuana markets into a unified, multi-billion-dollar industry. But the results have been mixed.