U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently wrote a letter to congress asking them to eliminate federal medical marijuana protections that have been in place for nearly four years.
In the May letter, Sessions urged lawmakers to ditch a ban on the Department of Justice going after legitimate medical marijuana suppliers in states where its consumption for medical purposes is legalized.
In the letter, obtained by MassRoots.com, Sessions suggests the legislation would “inhibit” the Department of Justice’s “authority to enforce the Controlled Substance Act.”
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In 2014, Congress passed an amendment prohibiting the Justice Department from using money to prevent states “from implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”
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But Sessions’, according to the letter, believes that amendment stops the federal government from enforcing the law.
“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,” Sessions stated in the letter. “The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.”
Sessions went on to write “drug traffickers already cultivate and distribute” pot in the U.S. “under the guise of state medical marijuana laws.”
As the Washington Post points out, America’s “historic drug epidemic” is an opioid epidemic, not a pot problem.
According to a recent study by Drug and Alcohol Dependence hospitals in states where pot is legalized treated fewer people for opioid abuse.
Hospitalization rates for opioid painkiller dependence and abuse dropped an average of 23 per cent in states where medical pot was legalized, according to the April study. Hospitalization rates for opioid overdoses dropped 13 per cent on average.
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Sessions has been outspoken in the past about being anti-marijuana referring to it as being “dubious” and outright “not good for folks.”
In the letter sent to Capitol Hill, the attorney general cites pot having “significant negative health effects” which can be linked to “an increased risk of psychiatric disorders such as psychosis, respiratory ailments such as lung infections, cognitive impairments such as IQ loss, and substance use disorder and addiction.”