We’ve been waiting for this shoe to drop, ever since Jeff Sessions became Attorney General. He’s the old fart who told us pot is just a wee bit less dangerous than heroin—I imagine without trying either one. States that have decriminalized weed, as well as those that have sanctioned medical marijuana, are still not sure what Sessions intends to do about their violation of federal law, where marijuana still is considered a dangerous drug, lumped in the same class with heroin.
The picture may be getting a little clearer, and it’s not a pretty sight. Just a few days ago DHS director John Kelly told Chuck Todd on MTP that pot is “not a factor” in his international war on drugs. A few days earlier, however, he went to Nogales, Arizona with Sessions to talk border trash. The AG’s prepared remarks were not too different from Trump’s escalator speech, when he said immigrants were mostly rapists and murderers: “It is here, on this sliver of land [Sessions wrote] where we first take our stand against this filth.”
Sessions tried to scare the hell out of us with dangerous immigrants, and he’s doing the same with cannabis. Evidently he convinced Kelly on the Arizona trip that pot isn’t the happy, benign drug that most users experience, or the chemical that provides relief when expensive, addictive opioids don’t, but something akin to the scary stories in Reefer Madness, because today Kelly said:
“And let me be clear about marijuana. It is a potentially dangerous gateway drug that frequently leads to the use of harder drugs...”
“Frequently” leads to harder drugs?! Oh, really? Just how frequently? I’m the same generation as these three old white farts dictating drug policy (Trump, Sessions, Kelly), so like them I came of age in the ‘60s. I know few people my age who didn’t smoke pot at least a few times and some still do. And believe it or not Sessions, they are “good people.” I also don’t know a single person whose life was ruined by marijuana (booze yes), nor can I think of anyone who was steered to heroin by smoking weed.
I don’t doubt it can happen, but “frequently”? Go ahead and foul our air and water, Mr. Trump, abolish worker safety rules, eliminate healthcare, roll back food safety regulations, let Big Tobacco and Big Pharma have their way, abolish Meals on Wheels and other nutrition programs, and flirt with nuclear war, but for sure don’t let people smoke nature’s plant because that could be dangerous to their health.