I mean… there were literally dudes with machine guns shooting at each other in the streets.
Start raid countdown.
http://thehill.com/regulation/administration/343218-trumps-doj-gears-up-for-crackdown-on-marijuana
On Wednesday, Sessions reportedly re-established a controversial criminal asset seizure program ahead of the committee’s recommendations.
Local law enforcement leaders say a crackdown appears to be next, though they argue there’s no need for it.
[…]
If Sessions ignites a fight over states’ rights, Chettiar wonders whether it will spur Republicans into a showdown with the Trump administration on criminal justice reform.Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who publicly criticized Sessions for reversing Obama-era guidelines on criminal charges and sentencing in May, said he’s not in favor of the DOJ interfering with state policies regarding marijuana.
“I will oppose anybody from the administration or otherwise that wants to interfere with state policy,” he told The Hill this week.
[…]
Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone argued this week that Trump has been disappointed in Sessions.“The president initially bonded with Sessions because he saw him as a tough guy,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.
“Now he’s saying: 'Where’s my tough guy? Why doesn’t he have my back?’ There’s a lack of aggressiveness with Sessions, unless it involves chasing people for smoking pot.”
In an interview with The Hill, Booker called Sessions “one of the greatest threats to the safety of our local communities in America.”
he would maybe make more sense combating food addiction
Last week, the Senate Committee on Appropriations – the group that determines spending legislation in the Senate – reapproved an amendment that would keep U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions far away from medical marijuana.
The committee voted to reapprove the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment, which would effectively block the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) from using any federal funds to go after medical marijuana patients and businesses.
In other words, Sessions’ mission to end legal marijuana just got a whole lot harder.
They need to just legalize it federally, and let States decide on their own if they want to criminalize it.
Yeah, but there has been ludicrous resistance to federal legalization or even relaxation of classification in both parties forever. Schedule I is just insane even if you do think it’s a harmful drug. Obviously the tobacco states have their votes locked in, and in the past social conservatism made it a hard sell for other politicians. But I admit I have no explanation for everyone else today.
I honestly don’t even get why tobacco companies would resist it at this point.
They already got the setup to grow weed on a massive scale. You’d think they would want a cut of that pie.
Really. In no time almost they are harvesting weed and selling it for more profit than tobacco. And then there’s tobacco laced with weed cigarettes. “Marlboro High” or Marlboro Edge" or “Marlboro Extra”, etc.
It’s not like they actually care about the health of their consumers. They just care about how much they will buy.
Agreed. Schedule 1 is a horrible classification for marijuana, and you could argue that NO classification on that list is needed.
As part of the push against opiods, this should be front and center as it shows promise to help in a number of test cases.
Well, it can’t be that Sessions honestly thinks it’s more harmful than tobacco or alcohol. And he doesn’t have to care about reactionary Alabama voters anymore either. So he must have been bought off by someone…
But I suppose you could say the same thing about Holder or Reno or any of them, all of whom along with their DEA buddies (and their various Presidents who could have told them what to do) refused to change the schedule, even. It’s really a puzzle.
I don’t think that Sessions has some kind of nefarious hidden patron that is pushing him to bring back the War on Drugs… I mean there are plenty of possibilities (the prison system industry for one), but I don’t really think he’s in anyone’s pocket. I just think he’s ideologically driven here – pot has always been a major bugbear for him. While the rest of the country’s attitudes have shifted, his have hardened.
I don’t think they have been bought off at all. I think it’s a deeply rooted cultural prejudice that has transcended party lines. It is often much more prevalent in older politicians, though not exclusively, and it seems to be based on an equation of marijuana with social disruption.
It’s bunk, of course. Alcohol is far far worse. Of course, we realized after Prohibition that, well, prohibition was dumb, but because it has been easy to associate weed with people who were not part of the “real” (read, white, Protestant, hetero, right-wing, capitalist) America, and because everyone has to have someone to look down on, marijuana became the near-perfect whipping boy, sort of like waving the bloody shirt after the Civil War for GOP politicians.
At this point, to take marijuana off Schedule 1 and in effect pave the way for national legalization would require so many people in power to backtrack on deeply held cultural beliefs that it’s highly unlikely to happen in this generation.
Ya, I think this too.
MJ was originally demonized by Anslinger, purely in order to give himself more bureaucratic power in government. One of the primary tactics used to demonize it was to play on racist fears, and associate weed with blacks and suggest that smoking it would lead to women having sex with THE NEGROS.
I think a lot of that shit wormed its way deep down into the psyche of a lot of the babyboomers.
Completely the case here. It appears to be mostly Jeff Sessions being one of those prejudiced people that @TheWombat refers to.
His own comments allude to that:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday said he’s “surprised” Americans aren’t overwhelmingly embracing his widely reported stance against marijuana, all the while recent polling reveals a majority of voters do in fact support legal pot.
Mr. Sessions briefly weighed in on marijuana legalization during a wide-ranging discussion held Tuesday at Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix, AZCentral reported.
“When they nominated me for attorney general, you would have thought the biggest issue in America was when I said, ‘I don’t think America’s going to be a better place if they sell marijuana at every corner grocery store,’ ” Mr. Sessions told attendees.
“[People] didn’t like that; I’m surprised they didn’t like that,” he added.
Indeed, 57 percent Americans favor legalizing marijuana, according to results of a government-sponsored opinion poll published last month, establishing a historic high point with respect to public support for pot.
It’s no coincidence that the most virulent objections to marijuana come from pampered, elite, white males who basically don’t have to engage with or deal with at all normal people on a day to day basis. Their world is genteel clubs where people drink single malt and smoke $40 cigars or what not.
I smoked a bunch of weed in college. (like, all the weed) I honestly kind of miss it. It was a nice drug that I liked more than getting drunk.
It went very well with video games.
Man, I never liked weed. And now I live in a state where it’s legal and I’m not even tempted to try it again. What is wrong with me?
It was always the smell for me. I just can’t stand it. Might actually be an allergy - makes me gag a bit.
I hate smoking in general. It messes with my runners lungs.
So I’d have no temptation either.
You don’t have to smoke it. You can ingest it. They sell it that way now in places where it’s legal.