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yuiyoshida

(42,675 posts)
Fri Feb 24, 2017, 01:52 PM Feb 2017

Jeff Sessions Coming War on Legal Marijuana

Election Day, eight states voted to legalize recreational or medical marijuana, bringing the nationwide total of medical states to 29. In Florida, medical marijuana won nearly 2 million more votes than Donald Trump. Added up, 65 million people now live in states that authorize adult recreational use; more than half of all Americans have access to medical marijuana; and almost everyone else lives in a state that permits CBD, a non-psychoactive component of cannabis that helps treatment of juvenile epilepsy. It’s easier now to identify the six states that have done nothing to end the prohibition on marijuana than the ones that are breaking away from the federal law that treats marijuana the same as heroin.

There was another winner on November 8, however, and he has thrown up a serious challenge to the seemingly inexorable march of legal marijuana. By nominating Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for attorney general, President-elect Donald J. Trump is about to put into the nation’s top law enforcement job a man with a long and antagonistic attitude toward marijuana. As a U.S. Attorney in Alabama in the 1980s, Sessions said he thought the KKK "were OK until I found out they smoked pot.” In April, he said, “Good people don't smoke marijuana,” and that it was a "very real danger" that is “not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized.” Sessions, who turns 70 on Christmas Eve, has called marijuana reform a "tragic mistake" and criticized FBI Director James Comey and Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch for not vigorously enforcing a the federal prohibition that President Obama has called “untenable over the long term.” In a floor speech earlier this year, Senator Sessions said: "You can’t have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana like it is no different than taking a drink… It is different….It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal.”

Sessions has not shared his plans on marijuana enforcement, but if he chooses, he will be able to act decisively and quickly—more so perhaps than with any other of his top agenda items such as re-doubling efforts to combat illegal immigration and relaxing oversight of local police forces and federal civil rights laws. With little more than the stroke of his own pen, the new attorney general will be able to arrest growers, retailers and users, defying the will of more than half the nation’s voters, including those in his own state where legislators approved the use of CBD. Aggressive enforcement could cause chaos in a $6.7 billion industry that is already attracting major investment from Wall Street hedge funds and expected to hit $21.8 billion by 2020.

And so far, Congress has shown no interest in trying to stop the Sessions nomination, at least on this issue. Even members who are in favor of protecting states from federal interference on the marijuana issue have said they support Sessions’ confirmation as attorney general: “I strongly support Jeff Sessions as Attorney General,” said Representative Tom McClintock, Republican from California. “He is a strict constitutionalist who believes in the rule of law. I would expect that he will respect the prerogative of individual states to determine their own laws involving strictly intra-state commerce.”

Meanwhile, proponents of legalization across the country are panicking as they reckon with how quickly a Reagan-era throwback in the attorney general’s office will be able to dismantle more than a decade of progress.

more...
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/jeff-sessions-coming-war-on-legal-marijuana-214501

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Jeff Sessions Coming War on Legal Marijuana (Original Post) yuiyoshida Feb 2017 OP
Sessions is correct. Marijuana is not the same as alcohol. guillaumeb Feb 2017 #1
Remember his comment on how wonderful he thought the kkk was until Doreen Feb 2017 #2
Even conservatives like their pot, with their guns. Alaska Alice11111 Feb 2017 #3

Doreen

(11,686 posts)
2. Remember his comment on how wonderful he thought the kkk was until
Fri Feb 24, 2017, 02:13 PM
Feb 2017

he found out that they smoke marijuana? The fact that they murder and maim people and destroy peoples homes, businesses, and places of worship had no effect.

Alice11111

(5,730 posts)
3. Even conservatives like their pot, with their guns. Alaska
Fri Feb 24, 2017, 02:18 PM
Feb 2017

I Kept wondering where the mj people wre for the hearing, states that get millions in taxes, and businesses. They could have made a big difference.
This Could be what brings him down, unfortunately not in time to keep him from being AG. He has no idea how much money and serious health issues he is taking on. Really, he is in another century. Whether you enjoy or otherwise use pot, anyone can see this is a loser for him, as Obama and Holder did.

We take away their insurance and now their painkiller too.
Shut their businesses. Take their jobs. Cause huge state deficits, while withdrawing funds from the public schools, and give them vouchers, that are useless if you can't afford to pay for schools anyway. (Give them a coupon for 20pc off that 60k tuition, but if you only make 50k per year.) The states are going to need those taxes more than ever with cut backs to Medicade, Obamacare, and education.
It will take a bit, but this will be Just another war on the home front, like repealing healthcare.

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