JEFF SESSIONS’S DANGEROUS AND DISHONEST MARIJUANA DOUBLE-SPEAK

By Chris Roberts  January16, 2017

Enumerating the vulnerable Americans threatened by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is like running the guest list for formal dinners aboard Noah’s Ark—almost everybody’s invited. Based on the attorney general nominee’s record, racial minorities, women seeking an abortion, survivors of sexual assault and many others all have something to fear from the U.S. Justice Department.

Aware of this, even if protesters in Klan hoods hadn’t crashed his confirmation hearings, the Alabama senator put on a smooth conciliatory show, assuring his detractors, one-by-one, that he would respect peoples’ rights and not use the Justice Department to carry out Donald Trump’s personal Twitter vendettas. It all sounded nice—so nice that the Washington Post wondered aloud if it was all a calculated act.

Marijuana falls below voting, racial and reproductive rights as a priority for most Americans. But it may yet become a new focus for a Sessions Justice Department—we just have absolutely no idea, and Sessions deftly and slyly avoided providing one.

On weed, Sessions managed a particularly slick two-step. Answering questions from Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sessions stated the obvious: marijuana remains illegal thanks to an act of Congress, and as attorney general, it’s his job to enforce the laws of the land. If Americans don’t like the laws, he added, they should convince their representatives in Congress to do something about it.

“The U.S. Congress made the possession of marijuana in every state—and the distribution—an illegal act,” Sessions said last week. “If that’s something that’s not desired any longer, Congress should pass a law to change the rule.”

Reaction from marijuana advocates was mixed, as is often the case when someone is asked to react to nothing and guess blindly at what that nothing means. Some were thrilled that Sessions didn’t use his confirmation hearing to declare all-out war on marijuana and put an end to the widening experiment of states allowing adults to use cannabis legally. Others noted that he didn’t say much of anything at all. That’s not entirely true, but it highlights the problem. 

What Sessions did say was deliberately disingenuous.

Americans absolutely want Congress to change the country’s outdated, punitive and politically motivated marijuana laws. They are on record saying this, clearly and without question, in every major poll and at the ballot box. In November, red state and blue state alike voted to relax marijuana prohibition or end it outright. States that helped elect Donald Trump, the man who picked Sessions to give the DEA its marching orders, also voted to allow their citizens easier access to cannabis.

So, about Congress.

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