Sessions has argued that cannabis is linked to violence, that the potency of cannabis today is risky and that state-level regulation leads to increased youth consumption, despite evidence to the contrary.
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Any settlement of the case, he said, should “make sure we advance good policing strategies and not undermine them”. However, so-called broken windows policing that calls for measures like stop-and-frisk have been abandoned by several major cities without any corollary spike in crime. “At this point in history, I sense that we could be at a pivotal time”, Sessions said. Jeff Sessions believes the cause of the change in the perception of law enforcement is not the actions of the law enforcement officers themselves, up to and including the extrajudicial killings of Black people, but rather the people protesting the actions of law enforcement. He also said the move-which reverses a tactic aggressively executed under President Obama-would not be “wrong or insensitive to civil rights or human rights”.
“States, they can pass the laws they chose”, he said, but “it does stay a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana”.
Sessions told a gathering of state attorneys general he’s concerned an uptick in violent crime in some large American cities was the “start of a risky new trend”, according to prepared remarks.
Almost half of federal prisoners are in custody for drug offenses, and the Bureau of Prisons budget accounts for about one-third of the department’s overall $29 billion spending plan.
On this, Sessions said “I’m definitely not a fan of expanded use of marijuana”.
In Washington, the first state with Colorado to legalize recreational use of the drug, the state attorney general vowed to defy a federal crackdown. Following Spicer’s remarks, they released this joint statement reminding the administration that more than 300 million Americans live in states with some form of legalized marijuana: “We stand ready to educate this administration on the need for more sensible marijuana policies and share the many experiences states have had with the legalization of cannabis”, the lawmakers, including Colorado Rep. Jared Polis, wrote.
Sessions, who claimed past year that “good people don’t smoke marijuana”, also baselessly claimed that “we’re seeing real violence around that”.
“You have 800,000 police in America, imagine a city of 800,000 people”, said Sessions.
A staunch conservative from the deep South, Sessions has remained a vocal opponent of marijuana legalization for much of his public life. The stats don’t necessarily bear that out: A 2014 study showed no increase in violent crime and “some evidence of decreasing rates of some types of violent crime, namely homicide and assault”. That he’s prepared to crack down on drug usage and legalization as part of his charge as attorney general. Expect justifications like “it’s just talk so far”, “he hasn’t actually done anything yet”, and “at worst, he could only shut down commercial marijuana operations; he can’t touch state-legal home cultivation or personal possession”.
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It turns out that electing a man with a history of racism to enforce this nation’s civil rights laws results in exactly the sort of “enforcement” you would expect.
