Sessions pushes hard line on pot
House Cannabis Caucus vows to oppose policy
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions urged the nation’s federal prosecutors Thursday to override state marijuana laws and file criminal charges in those, such as California, that have legalized sale and use of the drug.
Federal laws banning the cultivation, distribution and possession of marijuana “reflect Congress’ determination that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that marijuana activity is a serious crime,” Sessions said in a memo to U.S. attorneys. He said he was withdrawing an Obama administration policy that was intended to defer to state cannabis laws.
But it’s far from clear that his action will have much of an impact on the nation’s steadily expanding marijuana industry or its millions of users.
Since 2014, Congress has attached amendments to the Justice Department budget forbidding interference with laws in states that allow medical marijuana, a list that began with California in 1996 and has grown to 29 states and the District of Columbia, with a combined 60 percent of the U.S. population. A federal appeals court
has ruled that the amendments prohibit prosecution or other government legal action against medical marijuana suppliers who follow state laws.
Congressional supporters want to expand that protection to cover nonmedical sale and use of marijuana by adults, now legal in eight states, including California, along with Washington, D.C. They plan to add that proposal to a spending bill that is needed by Jan. 19 to keep the government operating, and said Sessions may have unintentionally helped their cause.
“The (Sessions) memo will mobilize us, mobilize the people around the country” who support legalization, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Costa Mesa (Orange County) Republican who has sponsored the budget amendments, said in a conference call by the House Cannabis Caucus. He said the federal government must “respect all of the decisions of the states when it comes to cannabis.”
“We want to let Jeff Sessions know he cannot undercut, undermine the will of the American people,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, another caucus member.
Rohrabacher wasn’t the only Republican taking on Sessions. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said Sessions’ announcement was “disruptive to state regulatory regimes.” Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, which like Alaska and California has legalized adult recreational use of marijuana, said he was prepared to hold up the confirmation of Justice Department nominees if Sessions pursued his policy.
And Colorado’s U.S. attorney, Bob Troyer, who was appointed to his office by Sessions in November, said Thursday that the attorney general’s directive would not change his policy to prosecute only marijuana operations that “create the greatest safety threats to our communities.”
Lori Ajax, chief of California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control, which oversees the state’s regulation of the marijuana industry, said California was conferring with other states to respond to Sessions’ action.
“We expect the federal government to respect the rights of states and the votes of millions of people across America and if they won’t, Congress should act,” she said in a statement.
Sessions is a longtime crusader against marijuana, a drug he has likened to heroin. In his memo to prosecutors, he said they should file charges in marijuana cases based on “the seriousness of the crime, the deterrent effect of criminal prosecution, and the cumulative impact of particular crimes in the community” — appearing to leave the door open to charging individual users as well as suppliers.
President Trump, who in other contexts has advocated “states’ rights,” provided a degree of support for his attorney general through spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The president believes in enforcing federal law,” Sanders said at Thursday’s press briefing. She said Sessions’ directive “simply gives prosecutors the tools to take on large-scale distributors and enforce federal law.” She did not elaborate.
But Henry Wykowski, a San Francisco attorney who represents leaders in the marijuana industry, said Sessions’ action would encourage lawlessness.
“If they close down regulated access to cannabis, all they are doing is opening it up to the cartels and the black market,” he said.
Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Association, an advocacy group for marijuana producers, sellers and customers, said a crackdown would prompt businesses to focus on medical marijuana and move some recreational pot sales underground.
The memo that Sessions withdrew, issued in 2013 by James Cole, a deputy attorney general in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, advised federal prosecutors to let states enforce their own marijuana laws.
U.S. attorneys in California paid little heed, continuing a campaign they had begun in 2012 to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries by suing their landlords. They had closed down several hundred before Congress intervened with budget restrictions that halted the lawsuits — one of them targeting Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the nation’s largest licensed cannabis dispensary — as well as most federal criminal prosecutions.
Marijuana advocates said the Obama administration policy hadn’t had a long-lasting effect on use or regulation of the drug, and the Trump administration probably won’t either.
“Marijuana has been under a prohibition regime entirely in the time that the industry has expanded to where it is today,” said Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, representing more than 1,500 marijuana-related businesses. “The biggest growth phase was during the (George W.) Bush administration, when we were facing SWAT team raids, and prosecutions on a nearly weekly basis in California.”
Arcview Group, an Oakland investment and market research firm that studies the cannabis industry, forecast an $11 billion U.S. market for legal marijuana this year — just over 60 percent for medical use, the rest for recreational use — and said it would continue to expand.
Wykowski said the fear of prosecution “could make investors more concerned about putting money into the industry.” But Arcview’s leader, Troy Dayton, said the industry was resilient.
“No matter what the (Trump) administration does, states will continue to hand out licenses to a long line of businesses clamoring for them,” Dayton said. “The likely impact of (Sessions’ action) is that it will inspire advocates and businesses and state governments like California to provide more protection for legal cannabis businesses.”