Will Jeff Sessions go After Legal Medical Marijuana?

WASHINGTON, D.C – On December 8, the deadline for Congress to decide if their federal funding bill will include the Rohrabacher-Farr Act will arrive. The government’s bill provides funding for the subsequent fiscal year, and the Rohrabacher-Farr Act is a law that prevents the Department of Justice from prosecuting legal state medical marijuana cases with federal money.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced today that he met with other U.S. Department of Justice officials to debate changing federal policy on prosecuting marijuana, signaling the bill will not include the law.

The statement is a reversal of what Sessions said two weeks ago when he told the House that he would uphold the Obama Administrations policy on prosecuting medical marijuana in legal states. “Our policy is the same, really, fundamentally as the Holder-Lynch policy, which is that the federal law remains in effect and a state can legalize marijuana for its law enforcement purposes, but it still remains illegal with regard to federal purposes. ” He added that he now believed that marijuana was not as dangerous as opiates.

Sessions’ obsession with prosecuting marijuana is well known. He sent a letter to Congress last May aggressively requesting they lift protections, effectively permitting him to prosecute marijuana cases in legal states. He said in the letter that “I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime.” His comments today indicate that he has no plans to honor his words about upholding the Obama Administration’s policies.

credit:themaven.net