Dear Pot Lawyer,
I read some promising stuff on federal weed action. Is Attorney General Jeff Sessions finally throwing in the towel?
I hope so. Sessions made an interesting comment on weed last week to the House Judiciary Committee. The comment didn’t get the press it should have, because the big story that day was Sessions’ “clarifying testimony” as to what he claims he knew or didn’t know, or maybe forgot, about Russia contacts during campaign season. Sessions did, however, get a few sundry questions that afternoon about the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) federal pot law policy. Surprisingly, he stated that current DOJ policy is the same as Obama’s DOJ. That policy, of course, is generally not to enforce federal law.
The reason this statement was surprising, of course, is because Sessions had previously taken quite a few steps to beat back states’ progress on cannabis. Specifically, Sessions has done the following since becoming our attorney general: asked Congress for money to prosecute medical marijuana operators (and received zero dollars); commissioned a task force on weed enforcement recommendations (and was told to “stand pat”); tried to keep the “stand pat” recommendation secret (but failed); wrote to a number of state governors with “serious questions” about their state cannabis programs (and got zinged in reply); refused to meet with any of the governors he had questioned (or even acknowledge their excellent reply letters); held secret meetings about cannabis policy with state and local officials in Colorado (which everyone found out about); and, in a variety of speeches and pronouncements, disseminated bogus weed statistics far and wide. Sessions has been busy!