Sessions’ war on marijuana
For futile and confusing crusades, it’s hard to top a bid by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to eliminate legal cannabis. He’s dropping Washington’s quiet tolerance of state-adopted acceptance and allowing prosecutors to enforce a federal ban on marijuana.
How it will work is as big a mystery as why he’s bothering. A fifth of the U.S. population lives in states, including California, where marijuana is fully legal. More than half the states allow medicinal cannabis. Thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in anticipated tax revenue are at issue. If Sessions turns back the clock, then an illegal world will flourish once again.
His loosely explained outlook likely won’t work. For starters, federal prosecutors in legal-cannabis states will have a hard time winning public support in the jury box if they bring a case. As regulations take hold, charges of lawlessness won’t make sense. Tax money will be lost, infuriating political leaders and unhinging budgets. Simplest of all: Sessions is ignoring the public will that accepts a restricted market on a widely used substance. Even his boss, President Trump, sided with state-level legalization during his campaign in 2016.
The attorney general is a longtime foe of legalization, but he came into office hinting he was ambivalent about spending federal resources on a crackdown. In this case, Sessions may be throwing out a threat that appeases cannabis opponents while leaving the legal choices to regional prosecutors more dialed in to local reality.
That may be the best option in a needlessly tangled message. An anti-cannabis crusade will be unworkable and unpopular at a time when the nation is clearly moving away from his view. The attorney general is starting a war he cannot and should not win.