The people familiar with the plan spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it before an announcement expected Thursday.
The move by President Donald Trump's attorney general likely will add to confusion about whether it's OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states where pot is legal, since long-standing federal law prohibits it. It comes days after pot shops opened in California, launching what is expected to become the world's largest market for legal recreational marijuana and as polls show a solid majority of Americans believe the drug should be legal.
While Sessions has been carrying out a Justice Department agenda that follows Trump's top priorities on such issues as immigration and opioids, the changes to pot policy reflect his own concerns. Trump's personal views on marijuana remain largely unknown.
Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and has blamed it for spikes in violence, had been expected to ramp up enforcement. Pot advocates argue that legalizing the drug eliminates the need for a black market and would likely reduce violence, since criminals would no longer control the marijuana trade.
JBS III = Public enemy Number ONE? Or would that be Mike Pence? Or is there any substantial difference?
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A Republican Senator from Colorado doubts JBS III is a man of his word; per reporting by THE HILL. A little guy (like Sessions is) sure seems to want to carry a big heavy badge. Some may wonder why killer opiate pharma firm executives remain out of jail despite a trail of death. Sessions likely has reasons and explanations, yet which media outlet is asking him?
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THE HILL, in another item notes that Congress could act sensibly; without offering much hope that way, either way actually. In that sense, where is the CD6 incumbent hockey jock on the issue? With Sessions, or with good sense and reason? Should the hockey jock be replaced by one with more libertarian views within his own party, or by one more enlightened from the other party? Will Rep. Emmer side with the max-sentence privatized prison lobby, or with the people? Or third choice, will he straddle the fence until Stanley Hubbard tells him what to do?
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LA Times coverage.
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Like a weak little fish swimming upstream to spawn, JBS III is encountering a strong current against his innate will; WaPo, again:
Support for cannabis reform in the United States has grown significantly over the past 25 years. Once seen as a dangerous fantasy of college stoners and hippies, legal cannabis has gone mainstream. In the latest Gallup polling from October, 64 percent of Americans supported cannabis reform for recreational adult use, and a recent Quinnipiac poll showed 71 percent of Americans opposed a federal crackdown in legal states.
Over the past five years, eight states and the District have affirmed cannabis reform in statewide votes, reflecting this public approval. In 2012, Colorado and Washington state voters approved reform with 55 percent of the vote. In 2014, 56 percent of Oregonians, 53 percent of Alaskans and 65 percent of D.C. residents approved reform. And in November 2016, voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada approved reform.
In fact, when the first states legalized in 2012, about 50 percent of Americans supported adult-use cannabis reform. Since states began to experiment with this policy, support has grown significantly — up 14 percentage points nationwide. Cannabis reform is now supported by a majority of Democrats, independents and Republicans. Governors — including Democrats, Republicans and independents — in the states that have legalized have told the federal government to stay away because their systems are working well and reflect the will of their citizens.
Even the president has suggested that he disagrees with a policy like this. During the presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump mentioned numerous times that he supported a states’ rights approach to adult-use cannabis. He did not say he supported federal intervention, an activist attorney general or a reigniting of the drug war. He said he supported states’ rights on the issue.
So it seems that Sessions, who has spent a career as a drug warrior — putting people in jail on drug charges as a state and federal law enforcement official and voting in favor of harsh drug policies as a U.S. senator — is acting on his own accord with this policy reversal. But at the same time, Sessions has promoted a traditional, conservative ideology that opposes unchecked federal intervention, champions states’ rights and espouses free-market economics.
In many ways, the Cole Memo endorses all three tenets of this ideology. It stopped U.S. attorneys from using the might of the federal government to prosecute state-compliant marijuana operators. It did not force cannabis reform on states, instead allowing them to decide for themselves. It allowed an industry that operated in the shadows to come into the sunlight and function relatively freely to create jobs, boost investment, generate profits and grow. Ultimately, it seems, the drug warrior in Sessions undermined his other values.
There is no doubt that Sessions is perfectly within his power to rescind the Cole Memo. The Controlled Substances Act — the federal law declaring cannabis to be illegal — is crystal clear. But something else is clear, too: Sessions’s decision contradicts the president, the will of the public and much of his own ideology.
[links in original omitted] So the little guy lies about any actual belief in states rights. A surprise? To whom?