I<\/span>t\u2019s been a week since Jeff Sessions shook the marijuana world to its core, or tried to.<\/p>\n On Jan. 4, the attorney general followed up a year\u2019s worth of open threats<\/a> and obvious fighting words<\/a> aimed at cannabis legalization \u2014 a plant which Sessions really, really does not like<\/a> \u2014 with his boldest move yet: the revocation of the \u201cCole Memo,\u201d<\/a> the Obama-era policy missive that triggered a period of even more furious growth in already-booming legal marijuana.<\/p>\n Without the Cole Memo steering prosecutors away from state-legal cannabis and giving banks some assurance that their marijuana accounts would not be seized, surely the inexorable trend towards allowing medical cannabis or outright legalization would be halted.<\/p>\n The impact of Sessions\u2019s crackdown, however, was immediate and decisive, but not in the way Sessions expected. The very next day,\u00a0Vermont lawmakers voted to legalize marijuana<\/a>, a feat followed up by legislators in New Hampshire,\u00a0who on Monday approved a plan <\/a>that would allow adults to\u00a0possess small amounts of cannabis and grow up to six plants at home.<\/p>\n Two days after Sessions\u2019s big day, commercial sales of marijuana began in San Francisco, where lawmakers all but dared him and other federal officers to do something about it, and other politicians converted the attorney general\u2019s move into a talking point.<\/p>\n The war on marijuana was a colossal, costly, racial discriminatory failure. But now, Jeff Sessions and @realDonaldTrump<\/a> want to roll back the clock to the days of mass incarceration and drug cartels. pic.twitter.com\/OAC7VgKpLF<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 10, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n In New Jersey, the state that recently gave us Chris Christie, incoming Governor Phil Murphy assured voters\u00a0that his plan to legalize marijuana within 100 days was still on<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Congress, Republican Colorado Senator Cory Gardner, a key collaborator in the passage of Donald Trump\u2019s tax bill, fumed and vowed to block passage of judicial nominees unless Sessions relented \u2014 and if he didn\u2019t, that it might be the impetus necessary for a \u201clegislative solution,\u201d Senate-speak for a federal legalization bill.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, the attorney general\u00a0was branded a \u201chypocrite\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and a traitor to conservative values<\/a>. Conservatives bashed him, liberals blasted him, libertarians wondered what got into him.<\/p>\n .@mattgaetz<\/a> on AG Sessions\u2019 marijuana policy change: \u201cIt\u2019s just incredibly heartless and mean to disrupt the delivery of medicine to people who need it\u201d@weartv<\/a> #C2C<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/QpzpWWKyqx<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 C2C Sinclair (@SBGC2C) January 10, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Sessions achieved the unthinkable: In these divisive partisan times, the attorney general has found a way to unite Americans behind a common cause. In other words, Sessions is failing, in spectacular fashion. Instead of blocking marijuana legalization in its tracks, he appears to have given it a boost.<\/p>\n This past Thursday may well turn out to be a pivotal moment in the marijuana industry\u2019s evolution as a political force: https:\/\/t.co\/uuBtPpXTAQ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 POLITICO Magazine (@POLITICOMag) January 10, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Such a backlash was predictable. Indeed, it was predicted. \u201cThis is an open-and-shut issue for liberals, for libertarians, for young people, even for a lot of conservatives and Trump voters,\u201d\u00a0Robby Soave, an associate editor at libertarian Reason magazine, told Vox.<\/a>\u00a0\u201cThey may not all like weed, but they are coming around to the position that banning it isn\u2019t worth the effort, and in any case, this should be up to the states.\u201d<\/p>\n In the new Trump White House tell-all, \u201cThe Fire and the Fury,\u201d writer Michael Wolff gave more voice to an earlier theory: The presidency was never a job Donald Trump wanted in the first place, and moves like decreasing his workday to seven hours is a way to wiggle out of it.<\/p>\n Could Sessions,\u00a0humiliated several times by the big boss<\/a> (after which he tried but failed to resign), be attempting a similar exit \u2014 a sort of suicide-by-cannabis?<\/p>\n When Trump ran for President he said \u201cI really believe we should leave marijuana up to the states.\u201d He was right, but his attorney general, by rescinding the Cole Memorandum will cause a 1920\u2019s style prohibition on marijuana. No one except Jeff Sessions likes this idea.<\/p>\n \u2014 Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) January 10, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Revoking the Cole Memo breaks a Trump campaign promise. It also makes the president look bad and unpopular, to little appreciable benefit. Trump doesn\u2019t care about the former \u2014 and gives thought to else beyond the latter. Marijuana, Jeff Sessions\u2019s b\u00eate noir, may yet prove to be his undoing.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you think Jeff Sessions should have revoked the Cole Memo?<\/p>\n The post The Sessions \u2018Marijuana Crackdown\u2019 Is Backfiring<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions revoked the cannabis-friendly Cole Memo on Jan. 4, two state legislatures have voted to legalize marijuana, a third held fast to its legalization plans, and a Republican senator hinted he\u2019d introduce a federal legalization measure. It\u2019s been a week since Jeff Sessions shook the marijuanaContinue 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":[40,50,897,80,3031,96,119],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22692"}],"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=22692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22693,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22692\/revisions\/22693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\nRead More: The Sessions \u2018Marijuana Crackdown\u2019 Is Backfiring<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"