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Tag: attorney general

  • Attorney General Nom William Barr Says He Won’t Go After Legal Pot

    Attorney General Nom William Barr Says He Won’t Go After Legal Pot

    Despite the fact that Barr would respect state laws in regards to marijuana, some drug policy advocates argued that he should not be made attorney general.

    As the Senate conducted confirmation hearings with President Trump’s nominee for attorney general, most questions were focused on how William Barr would steer investigations into possible collusion between the administration and Russia.

    However, during the confirmation hearings, Barr discussed the need for changing marijuana laws and said that he would not go after states that allow the legal sale of cannabis, a marked change in policy from that of previous Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

    “I’m not going to go after companies that have relied on the Cole memoranda,” Barr said during the hearings, according to Rolling Stone. “My approach to this would be not to upset settled expectations.”

    The Cole Memorandum was signed in 2013 under President Obama. In it, United States Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole directed federal attorneys not to prosecute marijuana crimes in states that had legalized use. In essence, the memo meant that the federal ban on marijuana would not be enforced in states that had laws legalizing cannabis. However, the memo was rescinded last year by Sessions, who took a hardline stance on cannabis and wanted to stop recreational use in the states. 

    During his hearing, Barr said that it is time for the country to have a more consistent marijuana policy. 

    “I think the current situation is untenable,” he said. It’s almost like a “backdoor nullification of federal law. . . . We should either have a federal law that prohibits marijuana, everywhere, which I would support, myself. . . . If we want states to have their own laws, then let’s get there. And lets get there the right way.”

    Despite the fact that Barr would respect state laws in regards to marijuana, some drug policy advocates argued that he should not be made attorney general. Barr, in the past, has made statements against criminal justice reform and in favor of mandatory minimums that can hurt people with substance use disorder, the Drug Policy Alliance said in a press release. 

    “Trump is appointing someone who has long been a cheerleader for mass incarceration and the war on drugs. It shows the Administration’s true colors and undermines any recent criminal justice reforms,” Michael Collins, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, said. “Senators from both parties should take Barr to task for his appalling views on drug policy and criminal justice, instead of giving him an easy ride like they did with Jeff Sessions.”  

    During the hearings, Barr did acknowledge that strict enforcement of policies, like those he previously supported, “harmed the black community,” according to USA Today. 

    No matter what the outcome of the confirmation hearings, it seems likely that Barr’s policy on drug enforcement and cannabis will be overshadowed by his perspectives on the Mueller investigation, however. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • What Jeff Sessions’ Departure Means For Marijuana

    What Jeff Sessions’ Departure Means For Marijuana

    Sessions’ departure has left some people wondering if President Trump may change his stance on marijuana legalization.

    When President Trump demanded the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week many people were alarmed, but proponents for marijuana legalization saw Sessions’ departure as good news.

    “It’s a step in the right direction,” Andrew Jolley, president of the Nevada Dispensary Association, told the Las Vegas Sun. 

    Sessions was staunchly against cannabis, having famously said that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” During his tenure as attorney general he repealed the Cole Memo, an Obama-era document that acknowledged the Justice Department’s limited resources and instructed US Attorneys avoid prosecution in areas where marijuana was legal in some form, according to Forbes.

    Despite his tough stance, Sessions was not able to do much to target the cannabis industry because of The Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment, an amendment to the federal budget that specifically bars the Justice Department from spending money to enforce a ban on medical marijuana in states where it is legal.

    Following Sessions’ resignation on Wednesday morning, stocks in cannabis companies soared, with the marijuana index rising nearly 14% in two hours, according to Newsweek. 

    Sessions’ departure left some people wondering if President Trump would change his stance on marijuana, perhaps even removing the drug from the list of Schedule I substances with no medical benefit.

    “I think he’s waiting for after the midterms,” Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director, recently said.

    During the midterms, Michigan became the 10th state to fully legally recreational cannabis, and medical marijuana programs were established in Utah and Missouri. In addition, polling shows that two-thirds of Americans — including a majority of Republicans — support legalizing marijuana. 

    Sessions was replaced by his former chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker. Although it’s not clear what Whitaker’s stance on marijuana is, during his time as a U.S. attorney in Iowa, he worked to “reduce the availability of meth, cocaine, and marijuana in our communities,” according to his resignation letter from 2009.

    In 2014 when Whitaker was running to represent Iowa in the Senate, he said that he had sympathy for people who received relief from cannabidiol (CBD), and support the states CBD-only medical marijuana law. 

    “Families are going to be positively impacted by what happened in the state Senate,” he said. “And I applaud them for helping those families who need that help.”

    However, he added that the state should not establish a medical marijuana program while cannabis remained illegal under federal law. When he was asked whether Congress should legalize marijuana, Whitaker’s opinion wasn’t very clear.

    He said that the federal government “should regulate things that harm people,” like “hard drugs and the like,” but didn’t say whether he thought marijuana fit that description. However, he did talk about the dangers of a black market cannabis trade.

    “I saw the impact of marijuana on our border,” he said. “If you go to any of the counties in Texas where there’s an illegal importation of marijuana, there’s a tremendous amount of violence.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Anti-Marijuana Attorney General Jeff Sessions Resigns

    Anti-Marijuana Attorney General Jeff Sessions Resigns

    “Our hope is the next attorney general will recognize that it is not politically popular to escalate the war on drugs,” said one drug reform advocate.

    Jeff Sessions is out as U.S. Attorney General.

    The former U.S. Senator from Alabama resigned on Wednesday (Nov. 7), a day after the midterm elections.

    “At your request I am submitting my resignation,” Sessions wrote in a letter to the White House. His chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, will serve as acting attorney general until a permanent replacement is found.

    Sessions’ departure from the Department of Justice is cause for celebration for advocates of drug policy reform.

    “He’s been an absolute disgrace on drug policy. We would welcome any attorney general whose policy ideas would move beyond the 1980s,” said Michael Collins, interim director of national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance.

    The 71-year-old former Alabama senator’s opinion of marijuana in particular is perhaps best illustrated by this statement he made during a 2016 Senate hearing: “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

    He also said in February 2017, “I don’t think America is going to be a better place when people of all ages, and particularly young people, are smoking pot. I believe it’s an unhealthy practice, and current levels of THC in marijuana are very high compared to what they were a few years ago, and we’re seeing real violence around that.”

    Last year, he took aim at sentencing reform, telling federal prosecutors to stop seeking leniency for low-level drug offenders and start seeking the toughest penalties possible, as NBC News reported at the time.

    And in January, Sessions reversed an Obama-era policy—the 2013 Cole memo—that prioritized marijuana cases that presented a safety threat (involving minors, organized crime, etc.) but otherwise left alone U.S. states that have approved marijuana in some capacity. In his own memo, the attorney general called it a “return to the rule of law.”

    But despite Sessions’ anti-marijuana stance, on Tuesday, Michigan became the 10th state to legalize cannabis for adult use, and two others—Utah and Missouri—approved medical marijuana.

    Marijuana policy reform has been winning with each election, and appears more popular than ever.

    “Our hope is the next attorney general will recognize that it is not politically popular to escalate the war on drugs,” said Collins of the Drug Policy Alliance.

    View the original article at thefix.com