Jeff Sessions just doesn’t listen, man. He’s the worst. He never lets us do anything. But he’s not our real dad. We don’t have to listen to him. That’s the general response to this administration’s latest attempt to undo every single thing accomplished by the one before it. In case you missed it, America’s Meanest Stepdad has rescinded the Cole Memo of 2013, according to AP reports, with remarkably obvious timing.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has rescinded an Obama-era policy that paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country, creating new confusion about enforcement and use just three days after a new legalization law went into effect in California.
Instead of the previous lenient-federal-enforcement policy, Sessions’ new stance will instead let federal prosecutors where marijuana is legal decide how aggressively to enforce longstanding federal law prohibiting it.
The Cole Memo, in its essence, told the feds to spend their money on more dangerous things than cracking down on cannabis. While the Justice Department can’t quite yet explain what the actual impact of today’s announcement will be, Sessions’ extreme hatred of cannabis is no secret; he easily compared it to heroin in a March 2017 speech to law enforcement officials.
I reject the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store. 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. Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs will destroy your life.
Okay, we get it. He doesn’t care that the majority of Americans favor legalization. Would we jump off a building if the majority of Americans told us to? Huh? Would we?
Jeff Sessions knows we “need grownups in Washington” to tell “the truth” about marijuana. And he is ready to be that grownup.
The thing is, HE IS WRONG, AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT.
His own task force concluded that he should just leave Cole in place. In a rare moment of bipartisan unity in this Trumpian hellscape, politicians from both sides of the aisle are speaking out and fighting back (and that doesn’t even count the ones who want him to resign for other reasons).
Beyond the myriad benefits of that evil weed (more on that later), the grouchiest little guy in the DOJ is trampling on states’ rights, and we all know how much the GOP loves states’ rights! Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) is particularly fired up.
Representative Mike Coffman (R-Colorado) dropped some Constitutional action in Sessions’ lap.
California’s lieutenant governor isn’t playing around, either.
Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer is calling for unity in the fight against Sessions’s war on cannabis.
And Colorado’s Jared Polis demands Trump play, well, the trump card.
The outrage is real, and it’s everywhere, which begs the question: Is weed the only thing that can bring this nation together?
The thing is, Sessions really should have seen this coming. His own researchers told him not to do this, and as the Washington Post reported last summer, he’s doomed to fail.
On at least one front, however, Sessions’s new war on drugs is likely to fail. In taking on cannabis — particularly the medical uses of cannabis — he is staking out a position that is at odds with powerful interests and an overwhelming majority of Americans from nearly all walks of life. This tide is too strong to swim against.
That’s right. Weed has turned out to be good for us! The world didn’t end as legalization spread around the country; in fact, things actually improved in quite a few ways.
Therapeutic benefits of the plant have been identified. Multiple studies reveal a correlation between legalization and adverse outcomes in opiate prescription, addiction and overdose. Possession and cultivation arrests are drastically reduced by legalization, though it’s important to note that massive racial disparities persist.
States with medical marijuana laws see reduced Medicaid and Medicare spending on prescription drugs, and they also report fewer traffic fatalities. And not only are states saving money, they’re MAKING money. Lots of money.
Even Donald J. Trump doesn’t argue with the money trail, insisting multiple times that legalization should be left to the states—both as president, and as a candidate.
Though he hasn’t tweeted about cannabis lately, Trump even supported legalization when he was just a simple “billionaire New York developer” back in 1990.
“We’re losing badly the war on drugs,” Trump said. “You have to legalize drugs to win that war.”
While Thursday’s announcement brings uncertainty, there’s no denying Sessions will meet resistance at every step, possibly even from Trump himself. Nevertheless, he’s persisting. As the Colorado Democratic State Senator Caucus mused, “if only there was some way we could mellow him out.”