cannabisnews.com: Pick for AG: Good People Don’t Smoke Marijuana
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Pick for AG: Good People Don’t Smoke Marijuana
Posted by CN Staff on November 18, 2016 at 15:06:01 PT
By Christopher Ingraham
Source: Washington Post
Washington, D.C. -- President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to be attorney general of the United States, The Washington Post and other news outlets reported Friday. Sessions is a vocal opponent of marijuana legalization whose elevation to attorney general could deal a blow to state-level marijuana legalization efforts across the country.At a Senate drug hearing in April, Sessions said that “we need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it’s in fact a very real danger.” He voiced concern over statistics showing more drivers were testing positive for THC, the active component in marijuana, in certain states.
Sessions further argued that a lack of leadership from President Obama had been one of the drivers of the trend toward marijuana legalization in recent years. “I think one of [Obama's] great failures, it's obvious to me, is his lax treatment in comments on marijuana,” Sessions said at the hearing. “It reverses 20 years almost of hostility to drugs that began really when Nancy Reagan started ‘Just Say No.’ ”He added that lawmakers and leaders in government needed to foster “knowledge that this drug is dangerous, you cannot play with it, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about . . . and to send that message with clarity that good people don’t smoke marijuana.”Opponents of legalization are cheering the news about the senator from Alabama, saying it may be a potential game-changer in legalization debates around the country. Sessions “is by far the single most outspoken opponent of marijuana legalization in the U.S. Senate,” Kevin Sabet, of the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, said in an email. “If I were betting on the prospects for marijuana legalization, I’d be shorting.”Advocates for legalization are, conversely, sounding the alarm. “Jeff Sessions is a drug war dinosaur, which is the last thing the nation needs now,” Ethan Nadelmann, of the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement. “Those who counted on Donald Trump’s reassurance that marijuana reforms ‘should be a state issue’ will be sorely disappointed.”Sessions’s anti-pot positions have been consistent throughout his career. As far back as 1986, he joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan “was okay until I found out they smoked pot,” according to the New York Times.At the Senate hearing in April, Sessions spoke approvingly of the “progress” made on drug use, starting with the harsh anti-drug policies of the 1980s. “I can't tell you how concerning it is for me emotionally and personally to see the possibility that we would reverse the progress that we’ve made and let it slip away from us,” he said. “Lives will be impacted, families will be broken up, children will be damaged.”He added, “I believe the Department of Justice needs to be clearer” on marijuana legalization.Whether an Attorney General Sessions would bring such clarity to the office is an open question at this point. President-elect Trump has said that he believes marijuana legalization should be an issue left to the states.Under Obama, the Justice Department explicitly adopted a hands-off approach to marijuana enforcement in states that have legalized the drug, allowing those laws to proceed without interference provided that a number of enforcement priorities, including keeping pot out of the hands of minors, were met. The announcement of that stance in 2013 played a key role in allowing Colorado and Washington to move forward with their marijuana markets.“A lot of people forget that [recreational marijuana markets in] Colorado and Washington were pretty much on hold until the governors there received guidance from the Department of Justice,” John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said this month.Even simply reversing that guidance could have a chilling effect in states like Maine and Massachusetts that recently approved legalization. Without a tacit green light from the federal government, governors in those states may be hesitant to move forward with legalization policies that remain at odds with federal laws on the books for more than 40 years.“I’m still hopeful the new administration will realize that any crackdown against broadly popular laws in a growing number of states would create huge political problems they don’t need and will use lots of political capital they’d be better off spending on issues the new president cares a lot more about,” said Tom Angell of the pro-legalization group Marijuana Majority.Angell pointed out that recent polls show roughly 60 percent of Americans approve of legalization and that strong majorities of voters across all parties say the federal government should not interfere with state-level marijuana laws.Asked about the senator’s approach to marijuana issues as attorney general, Sessions’s office responded that it had no information at this moment.Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center.Source: Washington Post (DC)Author: Christopher Ingraham Published: November 18, 2016Copyright: 2016 Washington Post CompanyContact: letters washpost.com Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ URL: http://drugsense.org/url/B2EYvNe3CannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml 
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Comment #10 posted by Briteleaf on December 08, 2016 at 11:16:32 PT:
Change curve
The motivational driver on the change curve is pain of one sort or more. The pain increases until we decide to look for a solution that will offer relief from the intensifying pain. We may try one remedy after another until we find a solution. Some people believe that Trump will bring positive change. Some people believe that Trump will increase our national pain. Whatever the case, our kind are always changing and looking for a better way. For those who believe that cannabis offers a better way, it will probably not be taken from us for long. 
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Comment #9 posted by Had Enough on November 24, 2016 at 14:27:54 PT
Sam Adams #2
On point...very on point...I have reminded a few of this stuff too...The horse got out of the barn and stepped on the toothpaste...They can't put the toothpaste back in the tube...Be they from the left or right...It's a done deal...no matter how they try to turn back time...It ain't gonna happen when it comes to this issue...We won...but not finished...getting closer...************Rollin'...Rollin'...Rollin'... Though the streams are swollen... Through rain an' wind an' weather...All the things I'm missin'...Good vittles, love an' kissin...'Are waitin' at the end of my ride...Happy Thanksgiving...
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Comment #8 posted by Hope on November 19, 2016 at 13:06:11 PT
Paint with light
This is probably the beginning of that offensive surge I've been expecting. It's going to be rougher than I imagined.It's occuring to me that Sessions, along with Sensenbrenner, as I recall, tried to make it a criminal offense, under RICO, to talk about this, like we do, in public. He sees a "Criminal conspiracy" to legalize an illegal drug.Oh my. I can hardly bear to think of it. I am afraid of these people. I won't lie. But I also will stand and face them. I may shake or even shed or shoot tears, but I'll face them and their evil deeds and the harm they do. We've been at this so freaking long now it's part of our lives. We couldn't lay it down if we wanted to. And again, let me remind the prohibitionists, it's not about smoking or consuming cannabis legally. It's about stopping the wickedness and harm of what you do to people and this country in the name of your ungodly prohibition of a popular and relatively harmless herb. Prohibitionists are capable of atrocities. We know that. That's why this assembling of prohibitionists in high places of power is "Scary". I think about right and wrong often. I do want to be as real as I can be and not love lies or delusions. To me, Jeff Sessions is one of the self-righteous do gooders that hurt people and take their choices and liberty like it's nothing. They do great harm to others ... unjustly. Very unjustly. They do true evil and call it "Good". Jeff Sessions judges a man by the plants and vegetation he consumes? He judges them to be bad people? He judges they should be punished or hurt in some way because of the consuming of a plant? I think Jeff Sessions is a really bad person. I think he's a really bad and dangerous person. He makes these judgements against other human beings... and he's going to be the Attorney General of our Federal Government? True evil isn't inhaling, eating, injecting, or absorbing in any way any plant or chemical. I see a serious lack of judgement in those that have their panties in such a wad over what plants other people consume.You buck-nekked emperors of something in your own mind... you're probably going to have to kill us all if you plan on shutting us up. I hope it doesn't come to that, it's been way too crazy and violent already. (Rainbow Farm just came to mind.) My hope has always been to end tragedies like that. Too many have suffered and died already.Legalization is the only way to stop them.
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Comment #7 posted by The GCW on November 19, 2016 at 06:23:48 PT
A new one
Will Legal Marijuana Lead To More People Smoking Tobacco?http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/18/502567273/will-legal-marijuana-lead-to-more-people-smoking-tobacco
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on November 19, 2016 at 05:36:08 PT
Paint with Light 
It's good to see you! I hope we can hang on!
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Comment #5 posted by Hope on November 18, 2016 at 18:49:16 PT
Thank you, Sam. You're right.
I was trying to feel better and I was thinking the Semblars or Adelson are likely too old to want to be Drug Czars... but then I thought, Calvina's not!I have never understood how their consciences can let them do the things they do and the things they approve of... and I still don't. But I do know and understand that they will indeed hurt others without mercy and turn around and somehow call it some kind of mercy. 
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Comment #4 posted by Paint with light on November 18, 2016 at 18:48:35 PT
More Sessions info
From Huffington Post.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-marijuana_us_582f58d5e4b030997bbf479cLess than half of all eligible voters voted.Around 25% of the population is all it takes to carry an election and cause turmoil like we are going to see.Can we get enough people to vote and send a message at the midterms?If this wasn't so serious it would be more interesting to watch it play out.I think eventually the pendulum will swing back the other way.This is going to be a test to see if we can hold on to the progress we have made.I made it through Nixon, three terms of two bushes, so I feel I can make it through four years of Trump if I have to.At least keep it legal like alcohol. 
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Comment #3 posted by MikeEEEEE on November 18, 2016 at 17:20:40 PT
Bottom-line
In a country with the largest prison population (2 million ), would these idiots expect to double or triple that population. The bottom-line, there are not enough prisons to house these inmates. 
Don't underestimate these morons, they might try grow the corporate prison system--to make america great again. 
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Comment #2 posted by Sam Adams on November 18, 2016 at 16:08:08 PT
don't like this alarmism
this is just more scare tactics! Nothing has really changed. Let us not forget the Democrats have been voting against medical marijuana in Congress for years. Let us not forget what the AG's under Clinton and Obama did. Clinton I tried to gag doctors in California from recommending medMJ, it took the Conant Supreme Court decision to save the doctors from being federall prosecuted by Janet Reno.Right afer Obama was elected Eric Holder launched a massive raiding offensive against legal medMJ in California and Obama's DOJ actively continued prosecutions against medMJ providers like Harborside up until a couple weeks ago!The feds are dead-set against cannabis and there's nothing they can do about state laws. The reason they let the horse out of the barn in Colorado is because federal interference in state MJ laws would open the door to fed interference in state laws on gun control, abortion, immigration and other favorites issues of the conservatives.They can never undo the votes that just occurred. This train left the station back in 2012 and it's not coming back. People like Sabet are losing their funding and salaries and are desperately trying to dupe conservative donors into giving them more grant money to keep working.
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Comment #1 posted by The GCW on November 18, 2016 at 15:35:34 PT
Sessions may not even pass scrutiny.
We're not waiting for sessions' "information at this moment."The conclusion has already has been made.Good people DO use cannabis. see: the 1st page and 1 Timothy 4:1-5.IN FACT, GOOD PEOPLE DO NOT CAGE PEOPLE WHO CHOOSE TO USE WHAT GOD INDICATES HE CREATED AND SAYS IS GOOD ON LITERALLY THE VERY 1ST PAGE OF THE BIBLE.sessions' discrepancy is not with Me but rather He who sent Me.-0-ClearWith all the issues that trumpot and associates are getting attention over, they all pale in comparison to the cannabis issue. All the other issues are distractions of the HEADLINER, which is cannabis prohibition.It is no accident that God informed Us that He created all the seed bearing plants and said they're all good on literally the very 1st page!Satan and the devil's wishes hinge on cannabis prohibition.The Green Collar Worker.
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