With the Colorado experiment of legalization marijuana yielding lower arrests and higher tax revenues, you would think that any decent human being could—at the very least—see that there just might be something worthwhile going on with lifting the criminal tags associated with marijuana. Of course, with unpopular President Donald Trump’s attorney general choice Jeff Sessions talking about marijuana like he’s high on PCP, anyone familiar with our country’s drug war history felt uneasiness. Today comes pretty terrible but unsurprising news that the United States Justice Department has been inquiring into marijuana cases with Colorado officials. International Business Times is reporting that they got their hands on an email sent from the DOJ to Colorado’s Attorney General’s office.
“Are you able to provide me the state docket numbers for the following cases?” said the email from a Justice Department official to Michael Melito, a prosecutor in Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman’s office. “Some of our intel people are trying to track down info regarding some of DEA’s better marijuana investigations for the new administration. Hopefully it will lead to some positive changes.”
The email, dated March 6, was obtained by IBT through an open records request. The specific identity of the sender was redacted, but the email signature appeared to be from a “group supervisor” on the “financial investigations team” of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s field office in Denver.
Maybe they could just send back this new study that suggests more sensible marijuana laws may be helpful in reducing the opioid epidemic.