Thread: [Continuation] The Trump Presidency, Part II
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Old 7th July 2017, 01:11 PM   #362
WilliamSeger
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Originally Posted by Civet View Post
You know, I'd been very worried that the DOJ under Sessions would try to go hard after marijuana including a crackdown in states that have legalized. Doesn't seem to have happened. Guess that's something I can actually give the Trump administration credit for. Looks like I was wrong about that one.
No, you were right.

Jeff Sessions personally asked Congress to let him prosecute medical-marijuana providers

Originally Posted by Washington Post
The protections, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, prohibit the Justice Department from using federal funds to prevent certain states "from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana."

In his letter, first obtained by Tom Angell of Massroots.com and verified independently by The Washington Post, Sessions argued that the amendment would "inhibit [the Justice Department's] authority to enforce the Controlled Substances Act." He continues:

Originally Posted by Sessions
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. The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.
Sessions's citing of a "historic drug epidemic" to justify a crackdown on medical marijuana is at odds with what researchers know about current drug use and abuse in the United States. The epidemic Sessions refers to involves deadly opiate drugs, not marijuana. A growing body of research (acknowledged by the National Institute on Drug Abuse) has shown that opiate deaths and overdoses actually decrease in states with medical marijuana laws on the books.
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