Sessions blames Obama-era policies for drug epidemic
Dallas — U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the nation’s drug epidemic “unprecedented” in a speech Tuesday in Grapevine.
“Drugs on the street are more powerful, more addicting and more dangerous than ever,” he said.
In a speech at the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE, training conference, the attorney general blamed the country’s drug crisis on bipartisan, Obama-era sentencing reform policies that he said directed prosecutors “not to charge the most serious offenses.”
“Prosecutors were required to leave out true facts in order to achieve sentences lighter than those sentences required by law,” said Sessions, who was warmly received by law enforcement officers, students and their families at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center. “This was billed as an effort to curb mass incarceration.
“What was the result? Well, it’s not going well, in my opinion.”
Violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century, according to a 2017 report by Pew Research Center. However, the FBI reported a 10.8 percent spike in the country’s murder rate in 2015, part of a nearly 4 percent increase in violent crime.
In May, Sessions issued a two-page memorandum, directing his federal prosecutors to pursue the most severe penalties possible, rolling back a policy under the previous administration that eased sentences for some nonviolent drug offenses.
“We are going to trust our prosecutors again,” Sessions said Tuesday. “This policy empowers trust in professionals to apply the law fairly and exercise discretion when appropriate.”
After Sessions unveiled the new guidance, The Washington Post reported that U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said mandatory minimum sentences would “accentuate” existing problems in the criminal justice system.
Sessions praised President Donald Trump’s vision to increase border security and keep undocumented immigrants out of the country, adding that most drugs come into the U.S. through the southern border.
“It’s why I’ve urged cities and other jurisdictions to cooperate with federal authorities and turn over criminal aliens for deportation, which is what 80 percent of American people want us to do,” he said.
Sessions was referring to a poll that Trump has cited while addressing wide support to ban so-called sanctuary cities. According to PolitiFact, the Harvard-Harris poll did not actually use the term “sanctuary cities,” but instead asked “Should cities that arrest illegal immigrants for crimes be required to turn them over to immigration authorities?” Eighty percent of respondents answered yes.
Sessions, who was a fierce anti-immigration voice in the Senate, has also applauded Texas’ so-called sanctuary cities law. The law, signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in May, allows police to question anyone they detain about their immigration status.