T<\/span>he purpose of a chaos agent is to cause trouble. Through misinformation and misdirection, the chaos agent sows confusion and creates dissension. Then, under the cover of the ensuing hubbub, greater and more sinister malfeasance arrives and thrives before the rest of us can grasp exactly what happened.<\/p>\n For decades, government institutions\u00a0like the FBI have relied on provocateurs to erode movements<\/a>\u00a0they deem threatening from within \u2014 though generally speaking, official, top-level institutional actors, like the Attorney General of the United States, aren\u2019t chaos agents themselves and delegate this dirty work to henchmen on hand for the purpose.<\/p>\n But we live in a world\u00a0where U.S. senators openly accuse President Trump<\/a>\u00a0of touting seemingly incoherent policies as part of a greater strategy aimed at undermining \u201cnormal\u201d institutions. The idea that the president himself is a chaos agent is apparently\u00a0serious enough to gain traction among intellectuals.<\/a><\/p>\n This is all useful to remember when deciphering Thursday\u2019s news that\u00a0AG Jeff Sessions is revoking<\/a>\u00a0Obama-era memorandums that have given marijuana legalization and the burgeoning cannabis industry a semblance of official cover \u2014 but,\u00a0most importantly, gave otherwise leery investors and local governments the necessary encouragement<\/a> to allow legal cannabis to grow.<\/p>\n Instead of going after drug cartels, and violent crime, and major traffickers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going after recreational marijuana users. That\u2019s not being smart on crime.https:\/\/t.co\/BNlcxbTT4v<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 4, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n As the junior senator from California\u2019s aggrieved tweet above demonstrates, there\u2019s some significant confusion as to what Sessions\u2019s move does and what it\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0do. Though the move\u00a0does<\/em>\u00a0come a few days after the first sales of recreational marijuana in California, there\u2019s no massive crackdown on recreational stores coming, nor is there any roundup of users.<\/p>\n At least, not\u00a0yet<\/em>. And until there is, any panic, confusion, or misinformation that there is \u2014 like Kamala Harris\u2019s tweet \u2014 helps Sessions and hurts the cannabis industry.<\/p>\n On Thursday morning, Sessions did as several anonymous sources told the Associated Press he would do: He rescinded the 2013 Cole Memo<\/a>.<\/p>\n The memo is a nonbinding policy document that purported to give guidance to federal prosecutors working in districts where recreational or medical marijuana is legal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Everything marijuana related, from a cancer patient with a joint in her pocket to $1.5 billion dollars in annual sales, violates the Controlled Substances Act, so what was a law-and-order-loving U.S. attorney to do? According to then-Deputy Attorney General James Cole, the suggestion was: Prosecute if the cannabis-related activity violated state law, put cannabis in the hands of children, or was tied to violent crime, firearms, or other criminal activity.<\/p>\n Remember, the Cole Memo was never an official policy. It also wasn\u2019t the first Obama-era memo concerning state-legal marijuana. It wasn\u2019t even the first \u201cCole Memo\u201d \u2014 and when you read it all the way through, and discovered the parts where it declared marijuana dangerous and the marijuana industry illegal, it wasn\u2019t even all that great.<\/p>\n Also would like to take this time to remember that the Cole memo was never exactly awesome policy to begin with: it declares marijuana a \u201cdangerous drug\u201d and cannabis cultivation and distribution \u201ca serious crime.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Chris Roberts (@cbloggy) January 4, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Most importantly, it wasn\u2019t (and isn\u2019t) binding. There wasn\u2019t and there isn\u2019t anything stopping a U.S. attorney from prosecuting recreational cannabis\u2026\u00a0aside from the salient and still-present fact that the federal government lacks the resources <\/a>to wage a countrywide crackdown on cannabis.<\/p>\n \u201cThis doesn\u2019t radically change what we were and are trying to do,\u201d U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Portland), one of the members of Congress\u2019s \u201cCannabis Caucus,\u201d told reporters during a conference call on Thursday.<\/p>\n Thanks to a budget rider still in effect, Sessions\u2019s Justice Department still has no funding to prosecute medical marijuana that obeys state law. As drug-policy expert Mark Kleiman has pointed out, Sessions doesn\u2019t have enough DEA agents worldwide to crack down on cannabis \u2014 even if he didn\u2019t already have an opiate crisis killing 60,000 Americans a year to deal with.<\/p>\n Thus far, Sessions\u2019 announcement does not mean a crackdown or even a reduction is coming, but it has created enough uncertainty to hurt markets<\/a>. It\u2019s also come a day after a book excerpt<\/a> portrayed the Trump Administration as a quick-moving, McDonalds-fueled disaster, and preceded an announcement<\/a> that Trump will allow greater offshore oil drilling than ever before.<\/p>\n For now, Sessions\u2019s marijuana move is more distraction than disaster. Until it isn\u2019t, don\u2019t play into his hands.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> are you afraid of Jeff Sessions?<\/p>\n The post Marijuana Crackdown? Not Yet: What Jeff Sessions\u2019s New Memo Means For Legal Pot<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t panic \u2014 and please don\u2019t allow confusion and misinformation to fool you into doing Jeff Sessions\u2019s work for him. The purpose of a chaos agent is to cause trouble. Through misinformation and misdirection, the chaos agent sows confusion and creates dissension. Then, under the cover of the ensuing hubbub,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40,50,897,80,90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22535,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22534\/revisions\/22535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Marijuana Crackdown? Not Yet: What Jeff Sessions\u2019s New Memo Means For Legal Pot<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"