Jeff Sessions

[Baron23]

Jeff Sessions’ drug policies will expand black market, not reduce crime
Washington Post op-ed: If Sessions had his way, weed dealers in legalized states would go back to collecting debts “by the barrel of a gun”


By Radley Balko, Special To The Washington Post

Attorney General Jeff Sessions took to the pages of The Washington Post recently to write an op-ed. Sessions is rescinding an Obama administration policy that instructed federal prosecutors to avoid seeking mandatory minimums in some drug cases.

In Sessions’ defense, he did get one thing right, although he seemed to utterly miss the significance of it. And then he got a lot of things wrong. So many, in fact, that only a line-by-line review will do the whole thing justice.So let’s get to it. Sessions begins:

“Drug trafficking is an inherently violent business. If you want to collect a drug debt, you can’t, and don’t, file a lawsuit in court. You collect it by the barrel of a gun.”​

So this is the thing Sessions got right. Drug trafficking is violent. It is violent because courts and other traditional nonviolent means of settling disputes aren’t available to anyone involved. And it isn’t just debts. Where purveyors of legal products compete for customers by offering a better product, a cheaper product or better service, drug traffickers win customers, or “turf,” by killing one another. This has always been true – of drugs, and of every other product sold on the black market.

It’s encouraging that Sessions realizes this. What’s puzzling is how Sessions can (a) acknowledge that black markets cause violence, (b) claim to worry about said violence, and yet (c) work behind the scenes to expand black markets. Sessions not only opposes legalizing drugs, but he also wants to return states that have already legalized recreational marijuana – and who seem to be doing just fine – to the days when marijuana was available only on the black market. Or to put it as Sessions does: If pot retailers in Colorado, Washington and the other legalization states need to collect on a debt today, they do what any other retailer does. They use the legal system. If Sessions had his way, pot dealers in these states would go back to collecting debts “by the barrel of a gun.”

Why does Jeff Sessions want people in Washington, Colorado, and the other states that have legalized marijuana to experience increased violence – violence that he himself acknowledges would be inevitable if he were to get his way? Is it really that important to make it more difficult for people to get high? What for Sessions would be an appropriate “dead bodies”-to-“euphorias prevented” ratio?

“For the approximately 52,000 Americans who died of a drug overdose in 2015, drug trafficking was a deadly business.”​

About 18,000 of those deaths involved prescription opioids, which are legally available. About 8,000 involved benzodiazepines, which are also available legally. Both of those types of drugs are made by pharmaceutical companies, prescribed by doctors and sold by pharmacies. Does Sessions believe those are all inherently violent industries? The Journal of the American Medical Association estimates that 88,000 people die each year from alcohol-related deaths. Does Sessions believe that Anheuser-Busch, Diageo and E & J Gallo run “deadly businesses”? What about the 480,000 people who die each year from smoking? Is tobacco a “deadly business”?

Moreover, there’s solid and mounting evidence that marijuana may be an effective substitute for opioids when it comes to treating pain. States that have legalized marijuana have seen a drop in hospitalizations for opioid addiction and overdose, suggesting that if it’s easily available, people prefer to treat pain with marijuana rather than with opioids. Which means that under Sessions’ preferred policy of pot prohibition, we’d almost certainly see much higher numbers of opioid addiction and overdose deaths.

“Yet in 2013, subject to limited exceptions, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors not to include in charging documents the amount of drugs being dealt when the actual amount was large enough to trigger a mandatory minimum sentence. Prosecutors were required to leave out objective facts in order to achieve sentences lighter than required by law.”​

This isn’t an accurate characterization of the memo issued by former attorney general Eric Holder. The memo states only that in cases in which a defendant was in possession of enough drugs to trigger a mandatory minimum federal sentence, federal prosecutors should decline to charge the crime that would trigger that sentence if the defendant meets a number of criteria, including not having committed an act of violence in association with the crime, not being the leader or organizer of a trafficking organization, not having ties to cartels or major drug traffickers, and not having a significant criminal history.

I suppose in some sense the memo required prosecutors to “leave out” facts in that it asked them to charge less than what federal law permits. But prosecutors have always had the discretion to bring lighter chargers than what they could conceivably bring. Moreover, when you consider the unfair, irrational way in which federal authorities measure drug quantities for the purpose of charging and sentencing, the Holder policy at best made the playing field slightly more level.

“This was billed as an effort to curb mass incarceration of low-level offenders, but in reality it covered offenders apprehended with large quantities of dangerous drugs. The result was that federal drug prosecutions went down dramatically – from 2011 to 2016, federal prosecutions fell by 23 percent. Meanwhile, the average sentence length for a convicted federal drug offender decreased 18 percent from 2009 to 2016.”​

There are any number of reasons the number of federal drug prosecutions might drop. But note the range of years Sessions chooses here. The Holder memo was in 2013. Why go back to 2011? Because that’s when federal drug prosecutions peaked. But there was a big drop between 2011 and 2012, which wouldn’t have been affected by the Holder memo at all. There’s also a big drop between 2013 and 2014. You might argue the Holder memo played a role there, but the memo wasn’t issued until August of 2013. And between 2014 and 2016, the number of prosecutions dropped, but only slightly. I don’t see a handy table for average sentence length by year, but I’ll guess that Sessions chose 2009 as his baseline for that statistic.

Of course, if the Holder memo did reduce drug sentences for nonviolent offenders, good. That’s exactly what it was supposed to do. The evidence for this isn’t overwhelming, but the Sentencing Commission did report in March of 2016 that federal prosecutors were focusing less on low-level offenders, and more on serious and violent offenders. One would think that this is a positive trend, too.

For Sessions to show that this was somehow detrimental to public safety, he needs to show a link between lenient sentences and crime. And here his argument falls to pieces.

“Before that policy change, the violent crime rate in the United States had fallen steadily for two decades, reaching half of what it was in 1991. Within one year after the Justice Department softened its approach to drug offenders, the trend of decreasing violent crime reversed. In 2015, the United States suffered the largest single-year increase in the overall violent crime rate since 1991.”​

A two-year uptick after a 20-year decline isn’t exactly a sign that the trend “reversed.” The crime rate was never going to keep falling forever. Sessions’s sentence about 2015 is technically true – but only because in 20 of the 24 years between 1991 and 2015, crime didn’t rise it all; it dropped. The murder rate in 2016 was up over previous years but it puts us back only to where the murder rate was in 2008, which at the time was a 40-year low.

But even if crime were up significantly, there’s simply no research whatsoever to suggest that federal prosecutors not charging mandatory minimums in drug cases would have anything to do with it. By one estimate, about 530 federal defendants in 2012 would have received shorter sentences had the Holder memo been in effect. If that’s true, it probably wouldn’t vary much from year to year. And it’s rather doubtful that 500 or so people are somehow responsible for the increase in crime in places like Chicago and Baltimore. It’s just as doubtful that drug dealers are suddenly more brazen and violent because they know that if they get caught, there’s a chance they may not get the maximum sentence allowed under law. (This argument is particularly inept given that the Holder memo specifically exempts drug offenders who have a history of violence, or who committed a violent act along with the drug offense in question.)

“And while defenders of the 2013 policy change point out that crime rates remain low compared with where they were 30 years ago, they neglect to recognize a disturbing trend that could reverse decades of progress: Violent crime is rising across the country. According to data from the FBI, there were more than 15,000 murders in the United States in 2015, representing a single-year increase of nearly 11 percent across the country. That was the largest increase since 1971.”​

This is a picture-perfect example of how to lie with numbers. I wrote about that “largest increase since 1971” talking point last year. Instead of re-writing the same arguments, I’ll just re-post a relevant excerpt:

“One of the problems with measuring crime as a rate is that rate increases tend to loom larger as the base number falls. For example, let’s say the murder rate in City X was 20 murders per 100,000 people in 1994. If the rate went up by one murder per 100,000 the following year, that would amount to a 5 percent increase. Now let’s say that City X saw a steep drop in crime over the next 15 years, and dropped to a murder rate of, say, just 5 people per 100,000 in 2009. After bottoming out, the rate then went up by 1 murder per 100,000 the following year. That would make for a 20 percent increase. Measuring crime by its rate in the population will always be infinitely better than using raw numbers. But it isn’t without its limitations.​

“These problems then get magnified when headlines frame them in ways such as, “U.S. sees largest crime increase in 30 years.” That may be true. But that’s only because (a) crime was falling for 25 or more of those years, and (b) any increase from a historic low is going to look larger than increase from a period when crime was more common. …City X isn’t less safe now than it was then. It’s quite a bit more safe. But context and long-term perspective are harder to fit into a headline.”​

In that same post, I noted that others had pointed out that the murder rate in 2015 was actually the sixth lowest in a half-century, and the overall crime rate was the third lowest since 1971. So yeah, it’s all about how you use the data. You have to have a pretty dim worldview – or a pretty strident agenda – to take the year with the third lowest crime rate in 45 years and portray it as an ominous sign of trouble ahead.

“The increase in murders continued in 2016. Preliminary data from the first half of 2016 shows that large cities in the United States suffered an average increase in murders of nearly 22 percent compared with the same period from a year earlier.”​

Perhaps this is the place to make a concession: There is good data suggesting that some of America’s cities are in the throes of a surge in violent crime. There are lots of theories as to why, many of which we’ve explored here at The Watch. But as far as I know, no one has suggested that the reason violent crime has risen in these cities is that . . . federal prosecutors no longer seek mandatory minimum sentences in some drug cases that meet Holder’s checklist of criteria. Jeff Sessions would appear to be the first and only person to make that connection.

“As U.S. attorney general, I have a duty to protect all Americans and fulfill the president’s promise to make America safe again. Last month, after weeks of study and discussion with a host of criminal-justice participants, I issued a memorandum to all federal prosecutors regarding charging and sentencing policy that once again authorizes prosecutors to charge offenses as Congress intended. This two-page guidance instructs prosecutors to apply the laws on the books to the facts of the case in most cases, and allows them to exercise discretion where a strict application of the law would result in an injustice. Instead of barring prosecutors from faithfully enforcing the law, this policy empowers trusted professionals to apply the law fairly and exercise discretion when appropriate. That is the way good law enforcement has always worked.”​

The Holder memo wasn’t really a departure from that. It, again, was a pretty minimal effort at de-carceration that affected only a small percentage of drug cases. It didn’t eliminate prosecutorial discretion. It didn’t set violent offenders free. Its most important effect was likely symbolic. It stated that the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the country had finally recognized what has been apparent to most of the rest of the country for a long time – that the drug war had grown excessive, and that its excesses were counterproductive. Likewise, Sessions’ revocation is also largely symbolic. It states that the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the country still thinks the drug war is a right good fight. We’ll lick drugs for good any day now.

“Defenders of the status quo perpetuate the false story that federal prisons are filled with low-level, nonviolent drug offenders. The truth is less than 3 percent of federal offenders sentenced to imprisonment in 2016 were convicted of simple possession, and in most of those cases the defendants were drug dealers who accepted plea bargains in return for reduced sentences.”​

Fair enough. It’s true that most federal drug prisoners aren’t in for simple possession. It’s also true that it’s preposterously easy to rope minimal offenders in on conspiracy, racketeering and money-laundering charges associated with drug trafficking. Sessions isn’t wrong that some people doing time on possession charges plea bargained down from more serious charges, but it’s also true that federal prosecutors stack charges against defendants – charges for which there may not be much evidence – in order to get them to plead guilty, or to give up bigger fish.

“Federal drug offenders include major drug traffickers, gang members, importers, manufacturers and international drug cartel members. To be subject to a five-year mandatory sentence, a criminal would have to be arrested with 100 grams or more of heroin with the intent to distribute it – that is 1,000 doses of heroin.”​

True, but other mandatory minimums can kick in for far smaller quantities. Use of a firearm while committing any drug crime, for example, brings a five-year minimum. (And “use” of a firearm can simply mean having one on you, or even having one in your car.) Importing or exporting any quantity of drugs – or being part of any conspiracy to do so – also brings mandatory minimums. There are plenty of horror stories about girlfriends or siblings getting roped into conspiracy charges after minimal participation. And if you happen to have sold or given someone an illicit drug that results in death or serious injury of a user, you’re also looking at a 20-year minimum, regardless of the quantity.

“The truth is that while the federal government softened its approach to drug enforcement, drug abuse and violent crime surged.”​

And–again–the truth is that there’s zero evidence that the former had anything to do with the latter. The overwhelming majority of drug prosecutions take place at the state and local level, not the federal level. Which means that even if there were some link between not seeking mandatory minimums and an increase in violent crime, that still wouldn’t do much to bolster Sessions’s argument, because the Holder memo had no bearing on the vast majority of drug prosecutions in America.

“The availability of dangerous drugs is up, the price has dropped and the purity is at dangerously high levels. Overdose deaths from opioids have nearly tripled since 2002. Overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids rose an astonishing 73 percent in 2015.”​

It depends on the drug. It’s largely true that heroin purity and potency have increased. It’s also true that we’ve seen some particularly toxic combinations, like heroin laced with fentanyl. These are also byproducts of prohibition. During alcohol prohibition, black market booze was notoriously potent, and often toxic. Deaths and hospitalization from alcohol poisoning soared. No one drinks bathtub gin or wood alcohol anymore – because no one has to.

As for the overdose deaths, again, a large percentage of those deaths involved legal prescription drugs.

“My fear is that this surge in violent crime is not a ‘blip,’ but the start of a dangerous new trend – one that puts at risk the hard-won gains that have made our country a safer place.”​

So far, there’s no reason for this fear. The rise in violent crime seems to be driven by large upticks in about a dozen large cities. That in itself is worrying, and it is something that needs to be discussed. It is not a reason to abandon efforts to make federal drug sentencing fairer, more just and more proportionate.

“Some skeptics prefer to sit on the sidelines and criticize federal efforts to combat crime. But it’s not our privileged communities that suffer the most from crime and violence. Minority communities are disproportionately impacted by violent drug trafficking. Poor neighborhoods are too often ignored in these conversations.”​

Studies by academics such as Bruce Western have shown that low-income neighborhoods have been absolutely devastated by mass incarceration. Imprisonment imposes consequences on not only the incarcerated but also their children, families, friends, extended networks and even entire neighborhoods. Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to be depressed, to drop out of school and to commit crimes of their own.

It seems doubtful that the 500-plus people who may have benefited from the Holder memo are going to wreak havoc on poor communities in the years they’d otherwise have been in prison. It seems probable that the status quo is going to be far more detrimental to those communities – continuing to incarcerate at the levels we have been, continuing to make people in those communities unemployable because of arrest and prison records, continuing to make jobs in the illicit drug trade the only potential source of income for those people, and so on.

“Regardless of wealth or race, every American has the right to demand a safe neighborhood. Those of us who are responsible for promoting public safety cannot sit back while any American communities are ravaged by crime and violence.”​

Doing anything is often worse than doing nothing. There’s zero indication that the policies promoted by politicians such as Sessions have done much to make those communities safer. In fact, as noted earlier, Sessions himself concedes that black markets create violence – which means his continued advocacy for marijuana prohibition would likely make many communities more dangerous. But at risk of being repetitive, there’s still no basis for connecting the Holder memo to any increase in violent crime. Stating over and over again that there is doesn’t make it true.

“There are those who are concerned about the fate of drug traffickers, but the law demands I protect the lives of victims that are ruined by drug trafficking and violent crime infecting their communities. Our new, time-tested policy empowers police and prosecutors to save lives.”​

Returning to the old policy will only enable prosecutors to “save lives” if you believe that (a) the drugs the defendants were distributing were ending lives, (b) the defendants would have returned to distributing drugs in the years the Holder memo took off their sentences, and (c) the people who would have ruined their lives by ingesting drugs they obtained from the defendants wouldn’t have or couldn’t have simply found another dealer to supply them with the very same drug.

(a) may well be true for some people. (b) seems less certain. (c) would be contrary to basic economics, everything we know about human behavior, everything we know about black markets and just about all of human history.

Certainly, drug trafficking lowers the quality of life in a community. Turf wars between drug gangs can make those communities more dangerous. But again, Sessions himself concedes that prohibition itself creates these problems. It’s pretty rare that liquor store employees erupt in gun fights over turf. And if prohibition begets violence, the only way the solution to an increase in violence can be more prohibition is if the new prohibition wipes out drug trafficking entirely. Otherwise, more prohibition usually just means more violence. Knock out one major dealer, and new dealers will emerge and go to war to take his place.

We all know that rescinding the Holder memo isn’t going to end drug trafficking. It isn’t going to affect the opioid crisis. It isn’t going to move the needle either way on the violence in Chicago or Baltimore. The most likely outcome is that a few hundred more nonviolent offenders spend a lot more time in federal prison than they otherwise would have. I suppose it will also give Sessions the satisfaction of having rolled back one of the few substantive criminal-justice reforms of the Obama administration. But the crime rate and the violence in America’s cities will rise or fall independent of the Holder memo.

The one thing we can all depend on – the one sure thing: Illicit drugs will continue to be available to pretty much anyone who wants to use them.


Wow, lot of space on the editorial page for WoPo. Well, take that, ole' Jeffy!

 

[turk]

...nice post baron23..
...I do NOT believe that Jeff Sessions gives one shit about what is detrimental to minority communities ....it's a dog and pony show using drugs as a pretext for incarceration ...believe me if they didn't have drugs...there would be another reason given...for mass incarceration ...that's....what jeff session is about....

 

[ataxian]

...nice post baron23..
...I do NOT believe that Jeff Sessions gives one shit about what is detrimental to minority communities ....it's a dog and pony show using drugs as a pretext for incarceration ...believe me if they didn't have drugs...there would be another reason given...for mass incarceration ...that's....what jeff session is about....

Let us see what the future holds?

The OLD GUARD needs to change soon.
EVOLUTION of the MIND takes time!

CANNABIS is not the problem. (logically)

 

[turk]

...you always contribute wonderful insights my man...I sincerely wish....there were more folks with who had your perspective and experience....sadly Im afraid...you are very...unique...

 

[ataxian]

...you always contribute wonderful insights my man...I sincerely wish....there were more folks with who had your perspective and experience....sadly Im afraid...you are very...unique...

Can't we just get along?
Live and let live!

Can we FREE THINK?

I don't want to be told how to think!

ORWELL wrote a book 1984 that talk's about thought crimes?

CIVILIZED = ONE DAY?

 

[Baron23]

Marijuana market at ease after possible Jeff Sessions' way out
When it comes to marijuana stocks in the U.S., of course you need to be watching the markets to stay abreast of what’s happening in terms of stock prices. But something that can have an equal impact on shares is political news.

While this applies in one form or another to most products in the U.S., it is perhaps most pronounced in the marijuana market, and for good reason. After all, in many states, the drug is still totally illegal, and the majority of states still don’t allow pot as a legal recreational substance. And this makes U.S. political news of particular importance.

Consider Canada, which sent stock prices surging for a brief period after it announced that it would be legalizing all forms of marijuana by July 2018. Of course, the finer details still need to be worked out, but the move was still heralded as a great win for marijuana producers and the marijuana stock market in general.

Should the U.S. government come out and do something similar, we should expect to see an even more massive uptick in stock prices, and probably a fair bit of newcomers in the market as well.

This is why this particular rumor about a high-ranking official in the U.S. could portend a big shift in the marijuana stock market.

Is Jeff Sessions on the Way Out?
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made no bones about his feelings towards marijuana, once going as far as to claim that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” (Source: “Trump’s pick for attorney general: ‘Good people don’t smoke marijuana’,” The Washington Post, November 18, 2016.)

nd his May 1 letter, which was recently made public, was an appeal to basically allow the U.S. federal government to interfere with state-made regulations regarding the legality of marijuana. Below is an excerpt from said letter:

“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.”

(Source: “Sessions Asks Congress To Undo Medical Marijuana Protections,” Scribd, May 1, 2017.)

So Jeff Sessions doesn’t like marijuana—now what?

The thing is that President Donald Trump hasn’t really come out one way or the other regarding marijuana, and it’s probably low down on his list of things to tackle as he has many other promises to fulfill before he gets to marijuana legislation. Which make Sessions the most ardent public marijuana opponent in the administration. So if Sessions leaves, that would be good news for marijuana stock markets.

Which brings us to the latest rumor: Sessions may be on the way out.

Sessions is rumored to potentially eyeing the door as the investigation over Russia intensifies and the situation in the White House becomes more dire.

If that does happen, and marijuana is no longer a focus of the person who replaces Sessions, then expect marijuana stocks to rise.

Of course, this is just a rumor and by no means a guarantee that the new attorney general would be any better, but it exemplifies the types of moves you want to be watching for on the news, because they could end up giving you an edge when you play the marijuana stock market.

Yeah, political rumors are a dime a dozen here in the D.C. area, but this is a rumor I like to dwell upon....really, a great fantasy day dream of Jeff Sessions going back to AL (where I don't think he's in step with that population either). Do you think ole' Jefferson is the most disliked politician in the USA right now? I mean, we got Pelosi, Cruz, McConnel, Schumer, and of course Trump....the competition for most disliked is intense...but I do think Jeffry is leading the pack right now.

 

[ataxian]

Marijuana market at ease after possible Jeff Sessions' way out
When it comes to marijuana stocks in the U.S., of course you need to be watching the markets to stay abreast of what’s happening in terms of stock prices. But something that can have an equal impact on shares is political news.

While this applies in one form or another to most products in the U.S., it is perhaps most pronounced in the marijuana market, and for good reason. After all, in many states, the drug is still totally illegal, and the majority of states still don’t allow pot as a legal recreational substance. And this makes U.S. political news of particular importance.

Consider Canada, which sent stock prices surging for a brief period after it announced that it would be legalizing all forms of marijuana by July 2018. Of course, the finer details still need to be worked out, but the move was still heralded as a great win for marijuana producers and the marijuana stock market in general.

Should the U.S. government come out and do something similar, we should expect to see an even more massive uptick in stock prices, and probably a fair bit of newcomers in the market as well.

This is why this particular rumor about a high-ranking official in the U.S. could portend a big shift in the marijuana stock market.

Is Jeff Sessions on the Way Out?
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made no bones about his feelings towards marijuana, once going as far as to claim that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” (Source: “Trump’s pick for attorney general: ‘Good people don’t smoke marijuana’,” The Washington Post, November 18, 2016.)

nd his May 1 letter, which was recently made public, was an appeal to basically allow the U.S. federal government to interfere with state-made regulations regarding the legality of marijuana. Below is an excerpt from said letter:

“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.”

(Source: “Sessions Asks Congress To Undo Medical Marijuana Protections,” Scribd, May 1, 2017.)

So Jeff Sessions doesn’t like marijuana—now what?

The thing is that President Donald Trump hasn’t really come out one way or the other regarding marijuana, and it’s probably low down on his list of things to tackle as he has many other promises to fulfill before he gets to marijuana legislation. Which make Sessions the most ardent public marijuana opponent in the administration. So if Sessions leaves, that would be good news for marijuana stock markets.

Which brings us to the latest rumor: Sessions may be on the way out.

Sessions is rumored to potentially eyeing the door as the investigation over Russia intensifies and the situation in the White House becomes more dire.

If that does happen, and marijuana is no longer a focus of the person who replaces Sessions, then expect marijuana stocks to rise.

Of course, this is just a rumor and by no means a guarantee that the new attorney general would be any better, but it exemplifies the types of moves you want to be watching for on the news, because they could end up giving you an edge when you play the marijuana stock market.

Yeah, political rumors are a dime a dozen here in the D.C. area, but this is a rumor I like to dwell upon....really, a great fantasy day dream of Jeff Sessions going back to AL (where I don't think he's in step with that population either). Do you think ole' Jefferson is the most disliked politician in the USA right now? I mean, we got Pelosi, Cruz, McConnel, Schumer, and of course Trump....the competition for most disliked is intense...but I do think Jeffry is leading the pack right now.

SESSION is a GOOFBALL. 23,000,000 kick off insurance?
U.S.A. are we done for?

 

[Baron23]

Jeff Sessions’ new war on drugs won’t be any more effective than the old one
Op-ed from leaders in the ACLU and the Sentencing Project


By David Cole and Marc Mauer, Special To The Washington Post

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is right to be concerned about recent increases in violent crime in some of our nation’s largest cities, as well as a tragic rise in drug overdoses nationwide (“Lax drug enforcement means more violence,” op-ed). But there is little reason to believe that his response – reviving the failed “war on drugs” and imposing more mandatory minimums on nonviolent drug offenders – will do anything to solve the problem. His prescription contravenes a growing bipartisan consensus that the war on drugs has not worked. And it would exacerbate mass incarceration, the most pressing civil rights problem of the day.

Sessions’ first mistake is to conflate correlation and causation. He argues that the rise in murder rates in 2015 was somehow related to his predecessor Eric Holder’s August 2013 directive scaling back federal prosecutions in lower-level drug cases. That policy urged prosecutors to reserve the most serious charges for high-level offenses. Holder directed them to avoid unnecessarily harsh mandatory minimum sentences for defendants whose conduct involved no actual or threatened violence, and who had no leadership role in criminal enterprises or gangs, no substantial ties to drug trafficking organizations and no significant criminal history. (Mandatory minimums can lead to draconian sentences, as in the case of Ramona Brant, a first-time offender sentenced to life imprisonment for her part in distributing drugs at the direction of an abusive boyfriend). Individuals who met the stringent criteria of Holder’s policy would still be prosecuted, but they would be spared overly long mandatory minimums. Sessions offers no evidence that this policy caused the recent spikes in violent crime or drug overdoses. There are three reasons to doubt that there is any significant connection between the two.

First, federal prosecutors handle fewer than 10 percent of all criminal cases, so a modest change in their charging policy with respect to a subset of drug cases is unlikely to have a nationwide impact on crime. The other 90 percent of criminal prosecution is conducted by state prosecutors, who were not affected by Holder’s policy.

Second, the few individuals who benefited from Holder’s policy by definition lacked a sustained history of crime or violence or any connections to major drug traffickers.

Related stories

• Sessions: Softened approach to drug enforcement led to surge in drug abuse and violent crime
• Jeff Sessions could have power to unilaterally write federal drug policy, say critics of new bill
• Trump administration’s cannabis obsession in face of opioid epidemic is absurd
• Battling the racial roadblocks to joining the legalized cannabis industry
• Georgia students file civil rights suit after physically invasive drug search

Third, the increases in violent crime that Sessions cites are not nationally uniform, which one would expect if they were attributable to federal policy. In 2015, murder rates rose in Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore, to be sure. But they declined in Boston and El Paso, and stayed relatively steady in New York, Las Vegas, Detroit and Atlanta. If federal drug policy were responsible for the changes, we would not see such dramatic variances from city to city.

Nor is there any evidence that increases in drug overdoses have anything to do with shorter sentences for a small subset of nonviolent drug offenders in federal courts. Again, the vast majority of drug prosecutions are in state court under state law and are unaffected by the attorney general’s policies. And the rise in drug overdoses is a direct result of the opioid and related heroin epidemics, which have been caused principally by increased access to prescription painkillers from doctors and pill mills. That tragic development calls for treatment of addicts and closer regulation of doctors, not mandatory minimums imposed on street-level drug sellers, who are easily replaced in communities that have few lawful job opportunities.

Most disturbing, Sessions seems to have no concern for the fact that the United States leads the world in incarceration; that its prison population is disproportionately black, Hispanic and poor; or that incarceration inflicts deep and long-lasting costs on the very communities most vulnerable to crime in the first place. As of 2001, 1 of every 3 black male babies born that year could expect to be imprisoned in his lifetime, and while racial disparities have been modestly reduced since then, African Americans are still a disproportionate share of the prison population. Mass incarceration has disrupted families, created even greater barriers to employment and increased the likelihood that the next generation of children will themselves be incarcerated. Advocates as diverse as the Koch brothers and George Soros, the Center for American Progress and Americans for Tax Reform, the American Civil Liberties Union and Right on Crime agree that we need to scale back the harshness of our criminal justice system.

Rather than expanding the drug war, Sessions would be smarter to examine local conditions that influence crime and violence, including policing strategies, availability of guns, community engagement and concentrated poverty. Responding to those underlying problems, and restoring trust through consent decrees that reduce police abuse, hold considerably more promise of producing public safety. Sessions’s revival of the failed policies of the past, by contrast, has little hope of reducing violent crime or drug overdoses.

 

[Baron23]

Former acting AG Sally Yates: Sessions’ drug policy unjust, dangerous
"It's fiscally irresponsible and undermines public safety," says Yates

By Sally Q. Yates, Special To The Washington Post

In today’s polarized world, there aren’t many issues on which Democrats and Republicans agree. So when they do, we should seize the rare opportunity to move our country forward. One such issue is criminal-justice reform, and specifically the need for sentencing reform for drug offenses.

All across the political spectrum, in red states and blue states, from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and the Koch brothers to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and the American Civil Liberties Union, there is broad consensus that the “lock them all up and throw away the key” approach embodied in mandatory minimum drug sentences is counterproductive, negatively affecting our ability to assure the safety of our communities.

But last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rolled back the clock to the 1980s, reinstating the harsh, indiscriminate use of mandatory minimum drug sentences imposed at the height of the crack epidemic. Sessions attempted to justify his directive in a Post op-ed last weekend, stoking fear by claiming that as a result of then- Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.’s Smart on Crime policy, the United States is gripped by a rising epidemic of violent crime that can only be cured by putting more drug offenders in jail for more time.

That argument just isn’t supported by the facts. Not only are violent crime rates still at historic lows – nearly half of what they were when I became a federal prosecutor in 1989 – but there is also no evidence that the increase in violent crime some cities have experienced is the result of drug offenders not serving enough time in prison. In fact, a recent study by the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission found that drug defendants with shorter sentences were actually slightly less likely to commit crimes when released than those sentenced under older, more severe penalties.

Contrary to Sessions’ assertions, Smart on Crime focused our limited federal resources on cases that had the greatest impact on our communities – the most dangerous defendants and most complex cases. As a result, prosecutors charged more defendants with murder, assault, gun crimes and robbery than ever before. And a greater percentage of drug prosecutions targeted kingpins and drug dealers with guns.

During my 27 years at the Justice Department, I prosecuted criminals at the heart of the international drug trade, from high-level narcotics traffickers to violent gang leaders. And I had no hesitation about asking a judge to impose long prison terms in those cases.

But there’s a big difference between a cartel boss and a low-level courier. As the Sentencing Commission found, part of the problem with harsh mandatory-minimum laws passed a generation ago is that they use the weight of the drugs involved in the offense as a proxy for seriousness of the crime – to the exclusion of virtually all other considerations, including the dangerousness of the offender. Looking back, it’s clear that the mandatory-minimum laws cast too broad a net and, as a result, some low-level defendants are serving far longer sentences than are necessary – 20 years, 30 years, even mandatory life sentences, for nonviolent drug offenses.

Under Smart on Crime, the Justice Department took a more targeted approach, reserving the harshest of those penalties for the most violent and significant drug traffickers and encouraging prosecutors to use their discretion not to seek mandatory minimum sentences for lower-level, nonviolent offenders. Sessions’s new directive essentially reverses that progress, limiting prosecutors’ ability to use their judgment to ensure the punishment fits the crime.

That’s a problem for several reasons. First, it’s fiscally irresponsible and undermines public safety. Since 1980, the U.S. prison population has exploded from 500,000 to more than 2.2 million, resulting in the highest incarceration rate in the world and costing more than $80 billion a year. The federal prison population has grown 700 percent, with the Federal Bureau of Prisons budget now accounting for more than 25 percent of the entire Justice Department budget. That has serious public safety consequences: Every dollar spent imprisoning a low-level nonviolent drug offender for longer than necessary is a dollar we don’t have to investigate and prosecute serious threats, from child predators to terrorists. It’s a dollar we don’t have to support state and local law enforcement for cops on the street, who are the first lines of defense against violent crime. And it’s a dollar we don’t have for crime prevention or recidivism reduction within our prison system, essential components of building safe communities.

But just as significant are the human costs. More than 2 million children are growing up with a parent behind bars, including 1 in 9 African-American children. Huge numbers of Americans are being housed in prisons far from their home communities, creating precisely the sort of community instability where violent crime takes root. Indiscriminate use of mandatory minimum sentencing has caused many Americans to lose faith in the criminal-justice system, undermining the type of police-community relationships that are so crucial to making our streets safer.

While there is always room to debate the most effective approach to criminal justice, that debate should be based on facts, not fear. It’s time to move past the campaign-style rhetoric of being “tough” or “soft” on crime. Justice and the safety of our communities depend on it.


I live in the DC area and know that there are NO appointments at the level of Ms. Yates most recent positions (Dep AG) that are not political. Yes, she was a career prosecutor earlier in her career, but that was earlier. I just think its important to know the back story and motives of all of these public pronouncements. With that said, I agree with her absolutely that ole' Jefferson is going in a very wrong direction informed by ignorance and his personal bias. I have no problem with this editorial...far from it, actually. One more straw on old Jeffey's back.

 

[Baron23]

Jeff Sessions Stridently Ignores Cannabis Science at Our Collective Peril

By Maureen Meehan June 28, 2017




Opioid overdoses killed in excess of 33,000 people in 2015 and continue to ruin millions of lives, while our ill-equipped government dawdles with absurd and punitive solutions.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions refuses to view the situation as a public-health crisis but rather insists on criminalizing, penalizing and filling jails—the exact wrong path to take.

Sessions’ stubborn insistence on disregarding scientific consensus regarding the role cannabis can play in stemming the opioid epidemic actually threatens to make it worse.

While the Justice Department clings to the irrational classification of cannabis as a Schedule I drug, therefore hindering scientific research (not to mention filling up prisons), the rest of the world moves forward.

Earlier this year, the National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine (NASEM) published a rigorous review of scientific research that included more than 10,000 peer-reviewed studies, which supported conclusive evidence that cannabis is clinically effective in treating a number of illnesses and conditions—from epilepsy and mental health disorders, to injuries and pain.

Dr. Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, laments the fact that the U.S. government continues to obstruct important cannabis research.

“I understand the cautious nature of the government… but it is disappointing that marijuana continues to be included on the DEA’s list of the most dangerous drugs,” said Hurd, who studies the effects of marijuana on the brain.

It is especially disappointing in view of the opioid crisis, because cannabidiol (CBD) reverses some of the brain changes that occur with heroin use, according to Hurd’s own studies published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Hurd says that CBD is the more important compound when it comes to marijuana as a treatment for addiction. In terms of the wider scope of medical marijuana research, she points out that it is the “same cannabidiol being looked at for the kids with epilepsy.”

It has already been reported that the clinical use of cannabis could mean enormous savings for government health insurance programs, currently a national obsession as the Trump administration tries to strip half the country of healthcare so billionaires can have even bigger tax cuts than they already enjoy. But that’s another story.

The biggest savings would come from reduced prescriptions for pain medications, a large amount of which are opioids.

This explains why states that have approved MMJ are experiencing fewer opioid-related deaths.

While the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) tepidly acknowledged the evidence in the NASEM study, it still noted, “medical marijuana products may have a role in reducing the use of opioids needed to control pain.”

Therefore, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, isn’t it abundantly clear that a war on marijuana is a war on those who need it most: people already suffering from pain and people whose opioid addictions where brought on by that very pain?

Isn’t it abundantly clear that medical marijuana is just that—medical?

Jeff Sessions and other lawmakers really need to get off their high horses and stop moralizing about drugs.

Read the damn literature and let people have their medicine. The entire country will thank you.

 

[ataxian]

Jeff Sessions Stridently Ignores Cannabis Science at Our Collective Peril

By Maureen Meehan June 28, 2017

Jeff Sessions and other lawmakers really need to get off their high horses and stop moralizing about drugs.

Read the damn literature and let people have their medicine. The entire country will thank you.

CANCER of CIVILIZATION

 

[Baron23]

CANCER of CIVILIZATION

Ole' Jefferson is getting it from all sides this past week or so....like the old Batman TV series....POW, WAM, BANG!!

Couldn't happen to a nicer fella. LOL

 

[Baron23]

97% of Medical Marijuana Patients Use Fewer Opioids Thanks to Cannabis

A new study led by a UC Berkeley researcher in conjunction with HelloMD has found that an overwhelming majority of medical marijuana patients use less opioid-based pain medication as a result of their ability to substitute cannabis for pain management.

Based on survey data collected from nearly 3,000 patients in HelloMD’s database, researchers found strong evidence to support the growing belief that cannabis can be an effective tool in combating the global opioid crisis.

Key Findings:

• 97% “strongly agreed/agreed” that they could decrease their opioid use when using cannabis
• 92% “strongly agreed/agreed” that they prefer cannabis to treat their medical condition
• 81% “strongly agreed/ agreed that cannabis by itself was more effective than taking cannabis with opioids. The results were similar when using cannabis with non-opioid based pain medications.

(cont)

I'm posting this here as I believe this goes directly to refuting some of the incredibly ignorant statements that our current AG has made regarding the relationship of MJ and our current narcotic addiction epidemic. Take that, ole' Jefferson.

 

[howie105]

The opioid epidemic is now getting pushed into covering the role of evil marijuana in the never ending war on drugs. As a bonus it helps cover the fact that many opioid abusers are just folks in pain who really need medical care but can't get it.

 

[Baron23]

How Jeff Sessions Made an Argument for Drug Legalization
After his late winter and spring of fear, it’s been some time since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said anything in public about marijuana legalization.

This could be because he has been unable to do much aside from issue vague and ultimately empty threats, in no small part thanks to the fact that his political prestige has fallen so far that even backbenchers in Congress won’t take his calls.

Or it could be because he has since turned from his existential hatred of cannabis and inability to conceive of a world where adults consume drugs in peace towards other longstanding personal hobbyhorses, like voter suppression.

In any event, it’s a good thing Sessions hasn’t said much about marijuana legalization—good for him.

Almost every time he does, he ends up inadvertently making the opposite case. Plato would absolutely love this guy, as one of Socrates’s hapless sophist foils.

The most recent example of Sessions’s illogic at work can be found in the Washington Post, which, perhaps out of sheer magnanimity, decided to throw Sessions a bone and print his words under a June 16 op-ed. As the Cato Institute’s Jeffrey Miron pointed out in a response last week, all the problems Sessions identified—the drug trade is violent! Drug dealers don’t use the courts! Mayhem! Hysteria!—are solved when drugs are no longer illegal.

But since Sessions works for Donald Trump, the attorney general also went ahead and presented some alternative facts, as well as trotting out exhausted, Reagan-era arguments that purport to tie, without even the feeblest attempt at a causal link, a slight uptick in crime in America to relaxed drug laws.

At the heart of Sessions’s argument is that a harder line on criminal justice is required, with more police on the streets and more prosecutors in the courts—and, subsequently, with more people in prison—because drug-dealing is inherently dangerous and violent.

“If you want to collect a drug debt, you can’t, and don’t, file a lawsuit in court,” wrote the attorney general in his opening lines, possibly in between binge-watching episodes of Narcos. “You collect it by the barrel of a gun.”

This was true for Pablo Escobar and his ilk. It was true for El Chapo Guzman. It is not true for weed businesses, who absolutely do file lawsuits in court when a dispensary or grower is short. Do you know who else would, if they enjoyed the protection of the law, rather than living in fear of bellicose lawmen like Sessions? Everyone working in weed in the states where it is not legal.

“The solution is trivial,” Cato’s Miron wrote. “Legalize drugs.”

Sessions also brings up the 52,000 Americans who died of drug overdoses in 2015, the most ever.

For them, “drug trafficking was a deadly business.” Left unsaid are the facts that the opiate crisis has its genesis in legal prescription pain medications, like the more than one billion pain pills shipped to the heart of Trump Country in Ohio and West Virginia, and that in places where the economics are similar but marijuana is widely available, such as California’s Central Valley, there is nothing remotely close to the epidemic of deaths plaguing the Rust Belt.

Sessions blames Obama-era policies, including the 2013 sentencing memo and other reforms such as the end of the 100-to-1 sentencing ratio for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine meant to reverse the tide of nonviolent drug offenders into prison, for an increase of violent crime.

He does not present any evidence to support this claim aside from pointing out the two events happened at roughly the same time. He also claims that federal drug prosecutions dropped—and this is blatantly false. Drug prosecutions still constitute almost a third of the federal caseload, even with the bleeding heart liberals in charge of the Justice Department.

Sessions also tries to claim that prisons aren’t full of nonviolent drug offenders, since “less than three percent of federal offenders” sent to prison in 2016 “were convicted of simple possession.”

Here is an attempt at misdirection. As Cato’s Miron notes, almost half of the country’s 200,000 federal inmates are in prison for drugs. And it is stupendously easy to be in prison for nonviolent drug sales charges, as the 76 percent of drug offenders doing time for a crime that did not involve a weapon can attest.

There are other false statements and untruths in Sessions’s op-ed; please do read the whole Cato Institute post for yourself. As if it needed repetition, it is abundantly clear that Jeff Sessions’s philosophy of law enforcement has nothing to do with public safety or the public good. He is motivated by a warped and hateful ideology.

Ole' Jeff is getting the what-for again. Great, IMO.

 

[nosmoking]

Me personally...I am loving Jeff Sessions. The best way to get rid of a problem is to bring it to the front and make everyone face it together. Getting people to stand up for Marijuana will never be easier when you have opponents like Sessions who refuse to accept facts or research. His best argument is I still don't believe the truth...so how can we lose against this guy? The more fowl attemps he makes at revamping the failed war on drugs and specifially marijuana the closer we get to full on legalization IMO.

 

[Baron23]

Jeff Sessions’ (Unfounded) Love Letter to DARE

On Tuesday afternoon, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stood before a crowd at DARE America’s 30th International Training Conference in Grapevine, TX, and told the organization how grateful he was for its support of the war on drugs.

“No doubt about it. It helped turn the tide.”
Jeff Sessions, US attorney general
When the anti-drug group was founded in Los Angeles in 1983, the nation’s inner cities were on the precipice of a crack epidemic. “The nation rose to the occasion, and we successfully reversed those trends,” recalled Sessions, who was the US attorney for Georgia at the time.

“DARE became fundamental to our success,” he claimed. “No doubt about it. It helped turn the tide.”

One problem: Contrary to Sessions’ recollections, DARE didn’t work. Not according to the federal government, at least. In 2003, the US Government Accountability Office found “no significant differences in illicit drug use” as the result of the program. Numerous other studies supported that finding, reporting “no significant differences” between DARE students and others.

That didn’t stop Sessions from singing DARE’s praises on Tuesday—or even offering an endorsement from President Donald J. Trump himself.

“We know it worked before, and we can make it work again,” Sessions told the audience. “I support you, the president supports you, and we are determined to see if we can make a big difference in America today—and I believe that we can.”


Since taking office as Trump’s attorney general, Sessions has pushed hard to restart the drug war, urging tough prosecutions and severe criminal penalties. And although much of his rhetoric has focused on the opioid epidemic and cross-border drug cartels, he’s taken aim at legal cannabis, too.

In February, he claimed there’s “more violence around marijuana than one would think.” In April, his Justice Department began reviewing cannabis enforcement and the so-called Cole memo, which set an unofficial DOJ policy of respecting state cannabis laws. And in May, he sent a letter to congressional leaders asking them to remove a federal spending provision that prevents prosecutors from interfering with state-legal cannabis.

Over the course of his roughly 20-minute speech Tuesday, Sessions again spoke primarily on the scourge of opioids—both those prescribed by doctors and sold on the street. When he did bring up cannabis, however, he lumped it in with other dangerous drugs.

Substances are “now more powerful, more addictive, and more dangerous than ever. Even marijuana THC content is up several times,” he said. “They’re not just dangerous for users. Even being accidentally exposed to just a few grams of fentanyl can kill a police officer or a paramedic.”

The nation’s ongoing opioid epidemic kills nearly 100 Americans each day. Prescription drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death in the United States.

Sessions is right to draw attention to the tragedy of opioid abuse. (“I’m so pained,” he said. “It hurts me so badly, to see the trends we’re on today.”) But he’s wrong to see cannabis as part of the problem. In fact, there’s good reason to believe legal cannabis has saved more lives than DARE has.

In 2014, a study found that states with medical marijuana laws saw 25% fewer deaths from opioid overdoses than states without. And early evidence suggests that cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound produced by the plant, could actually help treat addiction. A few drug-rehab clinics have started using cannabis to help wean addicts off harder drugs, and some states have even considering adding opioid addiction as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana.

Moreover, the popular myth that cannabis acts as a so-called gateway drug to harder drug use has largely been disproven. Even Sessions’ predecessor, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, said in September 2016 that “It’s not as though we’re seeing that marijuana is a specific gateway.”

“When we talk about heroin addiction, we usually, as we have mentioned, are talking about individuals that started out with a prescription drug problem, and then because they need more and more, they turn to heroin,” she said. “It isn’t so much that marijuana is the step right before using prescription drugs or opioids.”

That might be news to Sessions—at least if he’s siding with DARE. When Leafly called the organization in February 2016 asking if it still saw cannabis as a gateway drug, DARE didn’t know. “To be quite honest, I really don’t have an answer,” a spokesperson said.

So why is the attorney general telling DARE things like, “We need you. We really need DARE”?

Apparently because so many people still remember the program from when they were kids.

“Whenever I ask adults around the age of 30 about prevention programs and what they remember, they remember the DARE program,” Sessions said Tuesday. “They consistently do.”

It’s not entirely clear what that’s supposed to prove. A lot of us remember Australia’s Stoner Sloth, too—as a joke.

I’m 31. I was in a DARE program in elementary school. I even sang a solo in my class’s DARE musical. (I’m pretty sure it was this song.) Now, almost 20 years later, I work for a cannabis publication. I’m all about responsible use, but I’ve long abandoned “just say no.”

If Sessions is serious about wanting to save lives and improve communities in his role as AG, he’ll need to improve his appreciation for nuance. Public policies based on harm reduction sometimes seem counter-intuitive at first. Treating drug addiction with another drug? At first blush, that’s outlandish. But evidence suggests it might work—if not for everyone, at least as well as a largely defunct anti-drug organization born of drug war dogma.

 

[Baron23]

Jeff Sessions wants police to take more cash from American citizens


By Christopher Ingraham July 17 at 3:32 PM

Attorney General Jeff Sessions introduces Vice President Pence at the Justice Department's National Summit on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, in Bethesda, Md., on June 21. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday said he'd be issuing a new directive this week aimed at increasing police seizures of cash and property.

“We hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers,” Sessions said in his prepared remarks for a speech to the National District Attorney's Association in Minneapolis. "With care and professionalism, we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures. No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime. Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate as is sharing with our partners."

Asset forfeiture is a disputed practice that allows law enforcement officials to permanently take money and goods from individuals suspected of crime. There is little disagreement among lawmakers, authorities and criminal justice reformers that “no criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime.” But in many cases, neither a criminal conviction nor even a criminal charge is necessary — under forfeiture laws in most states and at the federal level, mere suspicion of wrongdoing is enough to allow police to seize items permanently.

Additionally, many states allow law enforcement agencies to keep cash that they seize, creating what critics characterize as a profit motive. The practice is widespread: in 2014, federal law enforcement officers took more property from citizens than burglars did. State and local authorities seized untold millions more.

Since 2007, the Drug Enforcement Administration alone has taken more than $3 billion in cash from people not charged with any crime, according to the Justice Department's Inspector General.

The practice is ripe for abuse. In one case in 2016, Oklahoma police seized $53,000 owned by a Christian band, an orphanage and a church after stopping a man on a highway for a broken taillight. A few years earlier, a Michigan drug task force raided the home of a self-described “soccer mom,” suspecting she was not in compliance with the state's medical marijuana law. They proceeded to take “every belonging” from the family, including tools, a bicycle and her daughter's birthday money.

In recent years, states have begun to clamp down on the practice.

“Thirteen states now allow forfeiture only in cases where there's been a criminal conviction,” said Robert Everett Johnson, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that represents forfeiture defendants.

In 2015, Eric Holder's Justice Department issued a memo sharply curtailing a particular type of forfeiture practice that allowed local police to share part of their forfeiture proceeds with federal authorities. Known as “adoptive” forfeiture, it allowed state and local authorities to sidestep sometimes stricter state laws, processing forfeiture cases under the more permissive federal statute.

These types of forfeitures amounted to a small total of assets seized by federal authorities, so the overall impact on forfeiture practices was relatively muted. Still, criminal justice reform groups on the left and the right cheered the move as a signal that the Obama administration was serious about curtailing forfeiture abuses.

In his speech Monday, Attorney General Sessions appeared to specifically call out adoptive forfeitures as an area for potential expansion. “Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate,” he said, “as is sharing with our partners.”

“This is a federalism issue,” Johnson said. “Any return to federal adoptive forfeitures would “circumvent limitations on civil forfeiture that are imposed by state legislatures … the Department of Justice is saying 'we're going to help state and local law enforcement to get around those reforms.'”

The Department of Justice did not return a request for comment.


So, how do we get rid of this fascist bastard? Asset seizure, particularly with profit sharing with local police, is an outrageous un-American taking that has been used to abuse by law enforcement agencies across this country to take and keep money of people never convicted of a crime. This guy is a horror show...I mean, he's almost a caricature of some Nazi bastard.

 

[herbivore21]

So, how do we get rid of this fascist bastard? Asset seizure, particularly with profit sharing with local police, is an outrageous un-American taking that has been used to abuse by law enforcement agencies across this country to take and keep money of people never convicted of a crime. This guy is a horror show...I mean, he's almost a caricature of some Nazi bastard.

The way to avoid these dastardly anti-cannabis Republican old boys is not to vote Republican. I have many dear friends who are conservative leaning in the MMJ community, but putting myself in their shoes; even if I were the most right wing cannabis user out there, I would never vote for a Republican party that has any senators/congressmen with track records like Sessions. It is simply self interest: don't vote for the guy who would have people like ourselves locked up ;)

As a medical cannabis user, no political issue is more important to me than access to cannabis free from intrusion by authorities.

To my mind: The only way to prevent these kinds of politicians getting into office is if those of us who believe that cannabis should be allowed to be used start considering that primarily when we vote. This can send the strong message that we the people are not interesting in voting for any party - even if it mostly aligns with our other politics - if they have anti-cannabis fascists among their most influential senior figures.

Please understand that this is not a post that is instructing anybody to alter their personal politics in terms of whether they are 'conservative' or 'progressive' or however you wanna identify your politics. This is very much about reminding cannabis people that if we want freedom for cannabis users, we need to ensure that we do not allow the parties that represent most of our non-cannabis related political views to have our support, in the event that their members act to limit our cannabis freedoms.

Anybody who is passionate about MMJ and is a card carrying Republican could also consider contacting the powers that be in the local Republican establishment to voice your intentions to vote with your feet when it comes to cannabis too. I am strongly of the view that change must come from within on this one.

Sadly, getting rid of this guy now will be a whole other ball game. I truly hope that something can be done to stop him though!

 

[Baron23]

consider contacting the powers that be in the local Republican establishment to voice your intentions to vote with your feet when it comes to cannabis too.

And I have indeed done that...multiple times (hey, if you are going to piss into the wind, may as well do it a few times...the breeze feels good. LOL)