Attorney General Jeff Sessions is set to roll back an Obama-era policy that allowed marijuana to be legalized at the state level without federal intervention.
Obama’s Deputy Attorney General, James M. Cole, announced in 2013 via a memo that the Justice Department would not sue states pursuing pot legalization.
It was a move heralded by pro-pot supporters as ‘an important step toward ending the prohibition of the drug.’
The New York Times reported, “Marijuana advocates praised the decision as a potentially historic shift in the federal government’s attitude toward a drug it once viewed as a menace to public health.”
Sessions is rescinding the memo.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is rescinding Obama-era Justice Department guidelines that aimed to not interfere in states that had legalized marijuana. The new change in policy was confirmed to NPR’s @relucasz.
— NPR (@NPR) January 4, 2018
Sessions, unlike his Choom Gang-loving predecessor, has been a strong proponent of fighting illegal drugs and combatting the opioid crisis in our nation.
“I reject the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store,” Sessions told law enforcement officials in March. “And I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana – so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that’s only slightly less awful.”
BREAKING: Here’s the Jeff Sessions memo rescinding Obama-era marijuana guidance to U.S. Attorneys. Impact still unclear. More to come. https://t.co/m0jOVcPvBl pic.twitter.com/jzShLt9j3c
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) January 4, 2018
Naturally, Democrats responded to the move with level-headed reason. Just kidding, they lit their hair on fire and vowed to fight for pot legalization until their dying breath.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, whose own vivid hallucinations led him to create a fictional drug-pusher named T-Bone on the campaign trail, said combatting the drug problem is “morally bankrupt” and “on the wrong side of history.”
Sessions’ determination to revive the failed War on Drugs is fiscally wasteful, morally bankrupt, unjust—and won’t make us safer. This backwards policy is wrong for America, and on the wrong side of history. https://t.co/KgoEtz3MrK
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) January 4, 2018
California Rep. Ted Lieu, whose Twitter feed is practically a PSA for kids on why they shouldn’t use drugs, said “anything” is more important than fighting drug use.
Dear Attorney General Jeff Sessions and @TheJusticeDept: Let me give you a list of things more important for federal prosecutors and federal law enforcement to pursue other than marijuana:
1. Basically anything. https://t.co/ctyJui7g4c
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) January 4, 2018
The memo Sessions has rescinded allowed the pot industry to thrive under Obama.
“Marijuana has since been legalized in eight states and the District of Columbia for recreational use,” after the Cole Memo, according to the Daily News, “and the weed business has bloomed into a booming multimillion-dollar industry.”
That’s not a good thing in Sessions’s mind.
“It’s my view that the use of marijuana is detrimental and we should not give encouragement in any way to it, and it represents a federal violation, which is law and is subject to be enforced,” he said in November.
Looks like the Choom Gang is about to see a slow down in business.
Do you agree with Sessions’s battle to fight marijuana legalization? Or do you support it being legal? Share your thoughts below!
