Attorney General Jeff Sessions said his department will “enforce law in an appropriate way nationwide” when it comes to marijuana, but his statement also came with caveats.
Speaking on the Hugh Hewitt Show on Thursday, Sessions went on to say, “It’s not possible for the federal government, of course, to take over everything the local police used to do in a state that’s legalized it.”
His statements come less than a week after other published reports suggested the attorney general had privately reassured some senators that his Department of Justice wouldn’t significantly deviate from the Obama administration’s approach of more or less taking a hands-off approach to states that decriminalized their own pot laws.
Hewitt insisted the attorney general could wipe out recreational marijuana in places like Washington and Colorado by filing just a single racketeering charge, but Sessions demurred.
“I think it’s a little more complicated than one RICO case, I’ve got to tell you. This, places like Colorado, it’s just sprung up a lot of different independent entities that are moving marijuana. And it’s also being moved interstate, not just in the home state,” Sessions said.
A week ago, a group of Democratic senators sent Sessions a letter asking him to “avoid disruption of existing regulation and enforcement efforts,” in states that have allowed recreational marijuana.
Sessions also noted that “neighbors are complaining, and have filed lawsuits,” apparently alluding to the lawsuit filed by his fellow cabinet member Scott Pruitt, now head of the Environmental Protection Agency. While Pruitt was Attorney General of Oklahoma, he joined Nebraska in suing Colorado. The suit alleged that legalized marijuana was harmful to neighboring states because it placed “stress on their criminal justice systems.”
The Supreme Court, however, refused to hear that lawsuit.
