State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

Trump's Attorney General Could Scrap Rule Protecting State-Legalized Marijuana

Route Fifty: As Attorney General, Sessions could issue a directive that would give prosecutors in states with legal marijuana a freer hand to prosecute marijuana companies. The US marijuana industry’s vibrant growth in the grey area of federalism could be threatened by president-elect Donald Trump and his preferred choice for Attorney General, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. Sessions, an early backer of Trump’s presidential campaign and an outspoken critic of US immigration policy, is also an opponent of marijuana legalization. He has criticized the Obama administration’s approach to drug policy, including its tolerance of states where voters have approved the use of marijuana for medical or recreational purposes. “It is false that marijuana use doesn’t lead people to more drug use,” Sessions argued in a speech earlier this year. (Researchers are split.) “It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal.

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