Jeff Sessions

[Vicki]

Is anyone else afraid Jeff Sessions and the new administration will fuck with legal states?

I thought the Republicans were all for turning things back to the states. Is that everything but cannabis? :(

 

[deep_meditation]

Something tells me that we'll have a better idea of what will happen with regards to that issue very soon... perhaps Friday of this week or shortly thereafter.

 

[Vicki]

Something tells me that we'll have a better idea of what will happen with regards to that issue very soon... perhaps Friday of this week or shortly thereafter.

Why do you say that?

 

[Baron23]

PLEASE...not a degenerate into a political discussion. Pretty please.

@momofthegoons - site having issues today? Smiley's page will not open up for me from the tool bar and when I type in @momofth.....I don't get the auto-suggestion pop-up.

 

[Vicki]

PLEASE...not a degenerate into a political discussion. Pretty please.

@momofthegoons - site having issues today? Smiley's page will not open up for me from the tool bar and when I type in @momofth.....I don't get the auto-suggestion pop-up.

Unfortunately, it is a political issue because the new politicians running things now want to fuck up what the states have done, set us back. :(

 

[momofthegoons]

PLEASE...not a degenerate into a political discussion. Pretty please.

@momofthegoons - site having issues today? Smiley's page will not open up for me from the tool bar and when I type in @momofth.....I don't get the auto-suggestion pop-up.

Looks like it is one of those intermittent deals. It's working for me now.

And please..... if we are going to discuss this we need to keep it civil. Political drama has no place on this forum. And if it starts with name calling and lot's of 'fuck this' kind of dialog it's not constructive and wont be allowed to continue.

Sessions originally stated he wasn't going to mess with the medical aspects of individual state laws, but was quite clear that he wasn't happy with recreational. I'm not feeling overly threatened since I'm a medicinal user but I think Michigan's chances of going recreational in 2018 are going to be pretty slim.

 

[CarolKing]

I'm hoping Trump will stand by his statement that he would honor state's rights.

If something does happen with our legal cannabis that we voted for I'm hoping nothing happens to our medical. It's really hard to say what will happen.

I was thinking the same thing @Baron23. @Vicki didn't visit the presidential thread elsewhere. Remember we need to be respectful, me included.

Edit
Above what mom said.

 

[Vicki]

It just worries me because Sessions is so anti-cannabis. His statements about cannabis are insane, and so from the 80's "just say no to drugs" campaign from Nancy Reagan.

 

[deep_meditation]

We can keep it civil.

Maybe I'm wrong and totally confused but my concern is with this:

Rohrabacher-Farr
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohrabacher–Farr_amendment

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_..._that_protects_state_marijuana_suppliers.html

 

[Vicki]

Your afraid they won't renew it so they can start attacking the states?

 

[CarolKing]

The only other person that would be worse would be Chris Christy as Atty Gen.

The Rohrabacher / Farr Amendment only affects medical cannabis I thought.

The Trump administration emphasized that the medical cannabis is different than recreational. What that will mean we will find out soon hopefully.

 

[Vicki]

The only other person that would be worse would be Chris Christy as Atty Gen.

The Rohrabacher / Farr Amendment only affects medical cannabis I thought.

If so, that would really hurt the medical cannabis industry.

 

[deep_meditation]

I tend to worry a lot anyway. It's a concern though.

I'm getting lots of e-mails about it from the ASA.

 

[Baron23]

Hi @CarolKing - yes, something similar to the now infamous Presidential Election thread is what I was recoiling from. And I REALLY don't want to see that degree of discord here on AS.

This is the text of the amendment:

None of the funds made available in this Act to the Department of Justice may be used, with respect to the States of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, to prevent such States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.
​

So, yes...applies to medical only and has a set of listed states. Yes, it needs to be renewed certainly and, IMO, made more broad for states with emerging MMJ programs.

Cheers

 

[howie105]

Is anyone else afraid Jeff Sessions and the new administration will fuck with legal states?

I thought the Republicans were all for turning things back to the states. Is that everything but cannabis? :(

Sessions is just another conservative place marker to keep the old school power players happy. As to MJ legalization all he can do is slow it down till the political pendulum swings back in the opposite direction. That being said I was/am not really thrilled about the way legalization was going, too many state and local regulators seeing us as cash cows. I am full of bull but I am not a cash cow.

 

[Vicki]

Personally, I am afraid this administration will do a lot of damage to medical cannabis.

 

[momofthegoons]

Exclusive: Sessions Asks Congress To Undo Medical Marijuana Protections

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is asking Congressional leaders not to renew a current federal law that prevents the Department of Justice from spending money to interfere with state medical marijuana laws.

“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,” Sessions wrote in a letter to Republican and Democratic House and Senate leadership. “The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.”

The letter, sent to Capitol Hill last month, was shared with MassRoots by a Congressional staffer.

The protections are the result of a rider — known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, after its lead Congressional sponsors — which has been enacted into law with strong bipartisan votes for the past three fiscal years, including the current one.

But when President Trump signed a Fiscal Year 2017 omnibus appropriations bill into law last month, he issued a signing statement that essentially reserved the right to ignore the medical marijuana protections.

“I will treat this provision consistently with my constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” he wrote.

And when the president made his first full budget request to Congress, he did not include an extension of the provision.

While President Obama never issued a signing statement concerning the provision, he did suggest that Congress delete it in his last two budget requests.

And the Obama Justice Department took the position that the budget rider only prevented the government from stopping states from implementing their laws and did not provide any protections to patients or providers who are acting in accordance with those policies.

But last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled, over the Justice Department’s objection, that the measure does in fact prevent federal prosecutors from pursuing cases against state-legal medical cannabis patients, growers and dispensaries.

However, the ruling only applies to the nine states and two territories that fall under the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction.

“As a result, in the Ninth Circuit, many individuals and organizations that are operating in violation of the CSA and causing harm in their communities may invoke the rider to thwart prosecution,” Sessions wrote in the new letter to Congress.

The Justice Department could appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, but has given no indication that it intends to do so.

In its second term the Obama administration took a largely hands-off policy with respect to state marijuana laws, despite its position on the budget rider. In a 2013 document that became known as the “Cole Memo,” the Justice Department laid out guidelines for how states can avoid federal interference with their marijuana laws.

President Trump repeatedly pledged during the campaign that he would respect state marijuana laws if elected, and said that he supports medical cannabis “100 percent,” going so far as to note that he personally knows people who have benefited from it. And the Cole Memo is still in place, for now.

Although the attorney general has at points described the Obama enforcement policy as “valuable” and “valid,” he and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer have also sent a number of signals that the administration may not keep it in place.

Sessions, for example, directed a task force to review possible marijuana enforcement policy changes and issue recommendations by July 27.

Sessions was long one of Congress’ most vocal legalization opponents. Last year, the then-U.S. senator from Alabama said, “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He also repeatedly criticized the Obama administration’s approach of generally respecting the right of states to set their own cannabis policies.

In the new letter to Congress, the attorney general wrote that marijuana use has “significant negative health effects,” arguing that is “linked to an increased risk of psychiatric disorders such as psychosis, respiratory ailments such as lung infections, cognitive impairments such as IQ loss, and substance use disorder and addiction.”

Congress is now considering appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2018, and marijuana law reform advocates are pushing to include the state medical cannabis protections again as well as add broader new ones that would cover full recreational legalization laws.

“I respectfully request that you oppose the inclusion of such language in Department appropriations,” Sessions wrote to the Capitol Hill leaders.

On Tuesday, relevant House and Senate appropriations subcommittees will take testimony about the Justice Department’s budget request from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Sessions was initially slated to testify but will instead appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the ongoing investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

To see Sessions’s full medical marijuana letter to Congress go to the bottom of the article in the link in the headline above.


Really doesn't look good. We can only hope that his reported continuing disfavor with Trump and the efforts of legalization teams can thwart him.

 

[Baron23]

Exclusive: Sessions Asks Congress To Undo Medical Marijuana Protections

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is asking Congressional leaders not to renew a current federal law that prevents the Department of Justice from spending money to interfere with state medical marijuana laws.

“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,” Sessions wrote in a letter to Republican and Democratic House and Senate leadership. “The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.”

The letter, sent to Capitol Hill last month, was shared with MassRoots by a Congressional staffer.

The protections are the result of a rider — known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, after its lead Congressional sponsors — which has been enacted into law with strong bipartisan votes for the past three fiscal years, including the current one.

But when President Trump signed a Fiscal Year 2017 omnibus appropriations bill into law last month, he issued a signing statement that essentially reserved the right to ignore the medical marijuana protections.

“I will treat this provision consistently with my constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” he wrote.

And when the president made his first full budget request to Congress, he did not include an extension of the provision.

While President Obama never issued a signing statement concerning the provision, he did suggest that Congress delete it in his last two budget requests.

And the Obama Justice Department took the position that the budget rider only prevented the government from stopping states from implementing their laws and did not provide any protections to patients or providers who are acting in accordance with those policies.

But last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled, over the Justice Department’s objection, that the measure does in fact prevent federal prosecutors from pursuing cases against state-legal medical cannabis patients, growers and dispensaries.

However, the ruling only applies to the nine states and two territories that fall under the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction.

“As a result, in the Ninth Circuit, many individuals and organizations that are operating in violation of the CSA and causing harm in their communities may invoke the rider to thwart prosecution,” Sessions wrote in the new letter to Congress.

The Justice Department could appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, but has given no indication that it intends to do so.

In its second term the Obama administration took a largely hands-off policy with respect to state marijuana laws, despite its position on the budget rider. In a 2013 document that became known as the “Cole Memo,” the Justice Department laid out guidelines for how states can avoid federal interference with their marijuana laws.

President Trump repeatedly pledged during the campaign that he would respect state marijuana laws if elected, and said that he supports medical cannabis “100 percent,” going so far as to note that he personally knows people who have benefited from it. And the Cole Memo is still in place, for now.

Although the attorney general has at points described the Obama enforcement policy as “valuable” and “valid,” he and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer have also sent a number of signals that the administration may not keep it in place.

Sessions, for example, directed a task force to review possible marijuana enforcement policy changes and issue recommendations by July 27.

Sessions was long one of Congress’ most vocal legalization opponents. Last year, the then-U.S. senator from Alabama said, “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He also repeatedly criticized the Obama administration’s approach of generally respecting the right of states to set their own cannabis policies.

In the new letter to Congress, the attorney general wrote that marijuana use has “significant negative health effects,” arguing that is “linked to an increased risk of psychiatric disorders such as psychosis, respiratory ailments such as lung infections, cognitive impairments such as IQ loss, and substance use disorder and addiction.”

Congress is now considering appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2018, and marijuana law reform advocates are pushing to include the state medical cannabis protections again as well as add broader new ones that would cover full recreational legalization laws.

“I respectfully request that you oppose the inclusion of such language in Department appropriations,” Sessions wrote to the Capitol Hill leaders.

On Tuesday, relevant House and Senate appropriations subcommittees will take testimony about the Justice Department’s budget request from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Sessions was initially slated to testify but will instead appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the ongoing investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

To see Sessions’s full medical marijuana letter to Congress go to the bottom of the article in the link in the headline above.


Really doesn't look good. We can only hope that his reported continuing disfavor with Trump and the efforts of legalization teams can thwart him.

29 states have medical MJ. 8 states have full recreational. That's 190 million people living in these states and are NOT pitching a fit about it. The amendment is good until 30 Sep and I predict that Congress will tell Sessions where to put it and will add it in again. Fuck Sessions, the Nazi bastard.

This is Artie Johnson of Laugh-in doing his Nazi character. Look like anybody you know?

 

[howie105]

He may not make it to the mid terms.

 

[Baron23]

From the Washington Post. The WoPo is a "politics around the clock" newspaper as are its readers. General tenor of the 1,500 or so comments now on this article indicate the betting line is hard against Sessions, that he is picking an unnecessary fight, and that its a political fight he will lose. But we will see.

Jeff Sessions personally asked Congress to let him prosecute medical marijuana providers

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is asking congressional leaders to undo federal medical marijuana protections that have been in place since 2014, according to a May letter that became public Monday.

The protections, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, prohibit the Justice Department from using federal funds to prevent certain states "from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana."

In his letter, first obtained by Tom Angell of Massroots.com and verified independently by The Washington Post, Sessions argued that the amendment would "inhibit [the Justice Department's] authority to enforce the Controlled Substances Act." He continues:

I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime. The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.​

Sessions's citing of a "historic drug epidemic" to justify a crackdown on medical marijuana is at odds with what researchers know about current drug use and abuse in the United States. The epidemic Sessions refers to involves deadly opiate drugs, not marijuana. A growing body of research (acknowledged by the National Institute on Drug Abuse) has shown that opiate deaths and overdoses actually decrease in states with medical marijuana laws on the books.

That research strongly suggests that cracking down on medical marijuana laws, as Sessions requested, could perversely make the opiate epidemic even worse.

In an email, John Hudak of the Brookings Institution characterized the letter's arguments as a "scare tactic" that "could appeal to rank-and-file members or to committee chairs in Congress in ways that could threaten the future of this Amendment."

Under PresidentBarack Obama, the Justice Department also sought to undermine the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment. It circulated misleading talking points among Congress to influence debate over the measure, and it attempted to enforce the amendment in a way that "defies language and logic," "tortures the plain meaning of the statute" and is "at odds with fundamental notions of the rule of law," in the ruling of a federal judge.

The Rohrabacher-Farr amendment has significant bipartisan support in Congress. Medical marijuana is incredibly popular with voters overall. A Quinnipiac poll conducted in April found it was supported by 94 percent of the public. Nearly three-quarters of voters said they disapprove of the government enforcing federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized it either medically or recreationally.

Through a spokesman, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R.-Calif.) said that "Mr. Sessions stands athwart an overwhelming majority of Americans and even, sadly, against veterans and other suffering Americans who we now know conclusively are helped dramatically by medical marijuana."

Advocates have been closely watching the Trump administration for any sign of how it might tackle the politically complex issue of marijuana legalization. Candidate Trump had offered support of state-level medical marijuana regulations, including the notion that states should be free to do what they want on the policy. But Sessions's letter, with its explicit appeal to allow the Justice Department to go after medical marijuana providers, appears to undermine that support.

The letter, along with a signing statement from President Trump indicating some skepticism of medical marijuana protections, "should make everyone openly question whether candidate Trump's rhetoric and the White House's words on his support for medical marijuana was actually a lie to the American public on an issue that garners broad, bipartisan support," said Hudak of the Brookings Institution.

I would love to see him try it and get spanked by Congress. Write/email to your Federal Congressional Representatives NOW about retaining the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment in next Sep's appropriations bill.

https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

For House members, you need to look at each individual member/state's website as there seems to be no central listing of all public email addresses for them that I could find.

By the by, I just sent this email to my Senators and Representative:

Dear XXX - I write to you as my understanding from the Washington Post is that our current Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is imploring Congress to repeal, and not perpetuate, the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment preventing the DOJ from interfering in state medical marijuana programs.


I urge you to resist this terribly misguided and ignorant approach which he falsely justifies by relating medical marijuana with our current national opioid crisis. This flies in the face of all evidence, scientific and anecdotal, and is just a thin veil to disguise Mr. Sessions attempt to impose his own version of morality and good behavior on the citizens of this country despite their expressed will.


Please let me be clear, 29 states, with 190 million USA citizens, democratically elected medical or full recreational marijuana and a steep price will be paid, in my opinion, by any paternalistic and self-righteous politicians who attempt to thwart the will of the people....like Mr. Sessions.