Jeff Sessions will announce today that he is turning back the clock on America’s pot policy. He will rescind the “Cole Memo” issued by then-Deputy AG Jim Cole in 2013 outlining the Obama Administration’s decision to leave marijuana laws up to the states - with exceptions for drug cartels and minors.
We don’t know yet what Sessions decision will mean for state drug laws, or why he is taking this action. But his history offers clues.
Sessions hates marijuana. He once joked that he kind of liked the KKK until he discovered they used pot. Sessions is heir to the hysterical thinking that labeled marijuana as a Schedule 1 illegal narcotic — largely due to its reputation as a drug used by non-whites and the threat that posed to southern white womanhood.
We should also ask what kind of pressure is Sessions under — and politicians in general — from the private prison and pharmaceutical industries. And how much they feel beholden to burnish their ‘law & order’ credentials to prove they are big men to the folk back home.
However, regardless of how or why Sessions reached his decision, we must ask: “Is it a good one?” The answer is unequivocally: “Oh hell no.”
Drugs kill Americans — 64,000 in 2017. But it wasn’t pot, it was opioids and their synthetic analogs that decimated the country. Any drug policy interested in keeping Americans alive wouldn't spend a red dime on marijuana.
And what makes Sessions think this a good idea politically? Even the majority of Republicans support legalizing pot. I suppose he may believe he’s getting payback against blue states (the majority of recreational pot states are Democratic), but he will piss off the states rights, libertarians and small government types. States like Arizona, with medical marijuana laws and already turning purple, won’t react favorably.
All-in-all, in a year which has seen the Republicans try to repeal an increasingly popular Obamacare, roll out a tax ‘reform’ hated by a majority, and squash a Russia investigation that most Americans want to run its course, it is puzzling why they would want to pursue another policy that runs against the people’s desires.