Attorney General Jeff Sessions may have trouble finding allies in his war against marijuana.
We have reported often on U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions’ outrageous comments on marijuana since he joined the Trump administration.
Despite the considerable pushback, Sessions does not seem deterred by how far outside of the mainstream his positions are. With close to 90% of Americans supporting medical marijuana and 60% in favor of recreational legalization, Sessions marijuana views seem to exist on an island all their own.
Even his former colleagues in Congress have not been willing to lend a helping hand. Recently, Sessions asked Congress to ignore their own policy that prevents the justice department from targeting any medical marijuana business in compliance with state law.
And now, even the conservative ruling class may be distancing themselves from Jeff Sessions.
“You are never going to win the war on drugs. Drugs won,” said Mark Holder, one of the leaders of the Koch brother’s vast political network, according to the Denver Post.
“It’s legal in a number of states, so we have to come to grips with that somehow,” Holder said.
Holder stressed that the Koch’s network is trying to deal with the reality of changing social views.
“I’m not here to say our position is to legalize drugs or anything else,” he said. “But I don’t think that we should criminalize those types of things and we should let the states decide.”
Sessions may have to rethink his priorities. The opioid crisis is ravaging the United States. Any money and resources spent on targeting law-abiding marijuana businesses may not provide good optics for the Justice Department. The lack of funding in the GOP healthcare bill to combat the opioid epidemic made it hard for Senators such as Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to support the proposed legislation. Today, the bill’s vote was delayed. This could be a really tough time to rally America to spend money on shutting down law-abiding dispensaries without guaranteeing access to healthcare for millions.
Holder also suggested that the federal strategy for decades is a “failed big government top-down approach” and that it is a policy “based on fear and emotion in my opinion,” Holder said.
