Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants protections for states’ medical marijuana programs to go up in smoke.
The nation’s top prosecutor sent a letter to top congressional leaders opposing the so-called Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which prohibits Department of Justice funds from being used against medical marijuana users and organizations in compliance with their own states’ 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 said in the letter.
He claimed that organized drug trafficking groups were using the medical marijuana system in states that have legalized the treatments to operate under the color of law.
News of the letter, dated May 1 and first reported by pot site MassRoots, comes amid a growing divide between the federal government and states over marijuana both medical and recreational.
A total of 29 states including New York, as well as the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico, have medical cannabis programs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Though the programs themselves vary in terms of conditions covered and the amount of control each state exerts, they generally require a doctor’s prescription and treat diseases such as epilepsy and inflammatory bowel disease.
Eight states and D.C. have passed laws legalizing pot recreationally, though the Drug Enforcement Administration still classifies it next to heroin as a Schedule I drug with “no medical use.”
More than 90% of American voters support medical marijuana for adults, and 60% support legalizing marijuana across the entire United States, according to a Quinnipiac poll from April.
Sessions had previously raised concerns about the future of medical marijuana — which was not aggressively pursued by the Obama administration — given his personal animus towards it.
A judgeship nomination was rejected by the Senate in the 1980s after claims surfaced that Sessions said members of the Ku Klux Klan were “OK until I found out they smoked pot.”
Sessions has claimed that the comment was a joke, and never meant to be taken seriously.
As attorney general he has also directed his prosecutors to pursue the strictest possible penalties for crimes including drug crimes, a reversal from the Obama administration.
Sessions said in his letter that he was renewing Department of Justice opposition to the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which passed in late 2014.
The department had challenged interpretations of the law, limiting its power during the tenure of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, but backed off an appeal in California last year after losing in federal court.
It was not immediately clear how aggressively Lynch lobbied Congress about the states’ rights legislation.
President Trump, for his part, said on the campaign trail that he supports states experimenting with medical marijuana laws.
However, he added a statement to a recent continuation of the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, saying he “will treat this provision consistently with my constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
