With all the chaos coming from Washington, you’d think Attorney General Jeff Sessions would have something better to do than indulge his weird obsession with a harmless drug that most Americans agree should be legalized.
But no. Six months before sales of recreational marijuana are due to start in Massachusetts, Sessions has signaled his desire to crack down on pot and end the sensible hands-off policy implemented by Barack Obama.
On Thursday, Sessions sent a memo to regional U.S. attorneys, essentially giving them full discretion to enforce the federal ban on pot as they see fit. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Sessions has long believed that marijuana is the devil’s weed, a drug he equates in dangerousness to opiates, even though pot has never killed anyone.
“Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” he has said, which surely comes as a surprise to all the good people who smoke marijuana. He also once said this about the Ku Klux Klan: “I thought those guys were OK until I learned they smoked pot,” a comment he now calls a joke, which makes you wonder exactly what Sessions is smoking.
Both Republicans and Democrats are pushing back against the renewal of tough federal enforcement, at a time when support for legal marijuana is growing.
“The people of Colorado spoke — they spoke loudly,” said Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, a conservative member of the Republican leadership. “And I believe if the same question were asked today, they would have even more support for the decision they made back several years ago.”
Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California, whose state began the sale of legal marijuana last week, also blasted the decision.
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision bulldozes over the will of the American people and insults the democratic process under which majorities of voters in California and in states across the nation supported decriminalization at the ballot box,” she said. “Yet again, Republicans expose their utter hypocrisy in paying lip service to states’ rights while trampling over laws they personally dislike.”
Hear, hear. The irony, of course, is that if anyone needs to chill, it’s Sessions. This is a man who has been so publicly humiliated by his boss, the president of the United States, I’d almost feel sorry for him if he weren’t such an out-of-touch throwback. He has repeatedly drawn a link between marijuana use and opioid addiction, a link many experts and common sense dispute. He laughably claimed that “real violence” is caused by weed. He has also praised Nancy Reagan’s discredited “Just Say No” program of the 1980s, which spread alarm and ignorance rather than legitimate information.
In Massachusetts, the medical marijuana system has more than 43,000 registered patients, while the Cannabis Control Commission is establishing regulations and license procedures for recreational marijuana companies to open in July. Now, it appears that individual prosecutors could have the power to put the brakes on the burgeoning industry.
The new U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, Andrew E. Lelling, declined to comment on whether our state should continue to establish regulations for recreational pot. In a statement, however, he said, “Medical studies confirm that marijuana is in fact a dangerous drug, and it is illegal under federal law. As a result, our office will continue to investigate and prosecute bulk cultivation and trafficking cases, and those who use the federal banking system illegally.”
Oh, please. An estimated 30 million Americans occasionally indulge and still manage to work, tend to their responsibilities and stay alive. The same can’t be said about alcohol and prescription drugs, which cause far more suffering and social mayhem than marijuana. Besides, people can now buy pot easily on the street; legalization shifts the criminal industry to tax-paying businesses under the control of regulators.
This backpedaling on pot shouldn’t be happening, and our leaders should push back. Proponents of legal weed have fought for years to counter decades of false hype and misinformation that continues to be spread by a regressive attorney general.
The voters have voted and the people have spoken. Sessions’ latest salvo does nothing but sow confusion, squander resources and disrespect the will of the states.