Congress, let the states set marijuana policy

Sessions rescinded an Obama-era policy that discouraged federal prosecutors from pursuing marijuana-related charges in states where pot had been legalized. An additional 21 states allow medical use of marijuana.

The orders left plenty of people grasping for answers. ONLY reason to rescind the memo is because the AG wants to target patients & businesses that are COMPLIANT with state laws.

When Sessions recused himself last March, Trump “erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him”, according to the Times.

President Donald Trump said Saturday that “everything I’ve done is 100 percent proper” regarding the special counsel’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 USA election and he insisted that his campaign didn’t collude with Moscow or commit any crime. They should not be overruled by the Justice Department.

“If we want to change a law, we should have a discussion about changing a law”, he said Friday. Ann Rivers during a news conference Thursday. “I believe it may be time for him to step aside”.

Other issues, however, have come to the forefront in recent days. In other words, the feds may have the ability to disrupt legal marijuana markets and states’ ability to tax and regulate them, but not to make weed illegal again in California or any of the other states that have or will legalize it.

“The reality is, all he is saying is US attorneys have the same discretion they had today, and they had yesterday, and they had the day day before, and there don’t need to be special guidelines for medical marijuana”, Blau said.

“He should not have recused himself from the Russian Federation investigation nearly immediately after he took office, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me prior to taking office, and I would have quite simply picked somebody else”, Trump said at a news conference on July 25.

He also noted that Sessions’ instructions – emphasizing the use of federal resources to thwart major crimes like money laundering and organized crime – is something most federal prosecutors say they’re already doing. And Sessions’ announcement doesn’t mean he has ordered an immediate crackdown; instead, he has signaled to federal prosecutors that they are free to move forward against legal marijuana if and as they wish. And in many states that enacted medical marijuana laws, voters backed the measures through referendums. Is the medical marijuana industry vulnerable?

McGahn proceeded to carry out Trump’s demand by lobbying Sessions – a move slammed by former Office of Government Ethics head Walter Shaub as an attempt to convince Sessions to “break the law” – but the effort ultimately failed.

Two distinct possibilities seem obvious. “I think the focus on this action is on states that have very broad and very open legal recreational market, and that’s not us”.

For states like Washington, the latter would obviously be the preferred outcome.

Public attitudes toward marijuana have been trending toward legalization for years, and it is widely expected that within the next five or 10 years, support for legalized recreational marijuana will top 60 percent nationwide.

“He represents something that is so un-American, as far as I’m concerned”, the Texas Libertarian told CNN’s Michael Smerconish.

(4/4) I’m now fighting to include my amdt in the final omnibus Approps bill so we can protect patients and law-abiding businesses. “That might not be full legalization, but I could see this leading to the passage of legislation that explicitly blocks the feds from taking action against state-legal operations”.