The Mueller Report

62 Percent Of Americans Oppose Jeff Sessions’ War On Weed

The current U.S. administration’s stance on marijuana makes us feel like we’ve travelled back in time to the Nixon-era War on Drugs.

In fact, Donald Trump has expressed an interest in reviving the drug war, citing the Phillipines as an example of a place where strong penalties have worked to reduce the amount of drug-related crime (except it really hasn’t).

But almost two-thirds of Americans don’t agree with the position that the federal government has taken on marijuana enforcement federally.

According to the 2018 Civilized Cannabis Culture Poll, conducted with market research company PSB, 62 percent of Americans either oppose or strongly oppose Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ war on weed.

This is something that is evident when you look at the strides that individual states have made with regards to decriminalization and legalization, as the substance is still highly prosecutable under federal law.

Surprisingly, 27 per cent of cannabis users in the United States actually support the position that the federal government has taken with regards to marijuana, although it certainly seems like they’re shooting themselves in the foot there.

But it seems that Jeff Sessions doesn’t really need our permission: he’s still working at a total crackdown of marijuana usage and distribution, even though it’s not what most Americans want.

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I suggest sharing this with our elected officials in the House,Senate and even the Donald himself. Especially Trump because Trump has the power to snap Sessions back into line. The more of us they hear from the better so let's contact them right away.

Trump is getting tired of Sessions

After President Donald Trump was informed in May that special counsel Robert Mueller had been appointed to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation, Trump unleashed a torrent of insults upon Attorney General Jeff Sessions and told him he should resign, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

Trump reportedly said he believed Mueller's appointment was Sessions' fault for recusing himself in March from the Russia investigation.

Current and former administration officials told the Times that Trump accused Sessions of "disloyalty," called him an "idiot," and said his appointment as attorney general was the worst decision Trump had ever made, leaving Sessions, in the words of the Times, "ashen and emotional."

Sessions later told associates that Trump's demeaning tone during the conversation was the most humiliating experience he's undergone in decades of public life, the Times reported.

The Oval Office conversation reportedly took place on May 17, after White House counsel Don McGahn was told in a phone call with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that Rosenstein had decided to appoint Mueller. McGahn then delivered the news to Trump, who immediately began raging at Sessions.

Yet after Sessions complied with Trump's demand and submitted a resignation letter, Trump eventually rejected it. Top advisers -- including Vice President Mike Pence, then-chief strategist Steve Bannon, and then-chief of staff Reince Priebus -- had reportedly convinced Trump that dismissing Sessions would only exacerbate the public scrutiny around Trump, who at that point had also fired the FBI Director James Comey and the national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Trump has made little secret of his disdain for Sessions in recent months, publicly berating the attorney general throughout the summer after telling the Times he would not have chosen Sessions for the job had he known Sessions would recuse himself. Trump also criticised Sessions' decisions at the Justice Department and referred to him on Twitter as "weak" and "beleaguered."

Sessions later described Trump's public tirade against him as "hurtful," but added that he intended to remain Attorney General unless Trump "wants to make a change." Sessions allies told the Times he wants to remain in the position because he believes he has a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity to crack down on illegal immigration.

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From Congressman Dana Rohrabacher

Not long ago, a supporter of mine, visiting from California, dropped by my Capitol office. A retired military officer and staunch conservative, he and I spent much of our conversation discussing the Republican agenda.

Finally, I drew a breath and asked him about an issue I feared might divide us: the liberalization of our marijuana laws, specifically medical marijuana reform, on which for years I had been leading the charge. What did he think about that controversial position?

“Dana,” he replied, “there are some things about me you don’t know.” He told me about his three sons, all of whom enlisted after 9/11.

Two of his sons returned from the battlefield whole and healthy. The third, however, came home suffering multiple seizures each day. His prospects were bleak.

His medical care fell under the total guidance of the Department of Veterans Affairs, whose doctors came under federal restraints regarding the treatments they could prescribe. (Among the treatments allowed were opioids.) Nothing worked.

Finally, a sympathetic doctor advised our young hero to see him in his private office, where he could prescribe medication derived from cannabis. The prescription worked. The seizures, for the most part, ceased.

“Dana,” said my friend, “I could hug you right now for what you’ve been doing, unknowingly, for my son.”

What had I been doing? With my Democrat friend Sam Farr, the now-retired California congressman, I wrote an amendment to spending bills that prohibits the federal government from prosecuting medical marijuana cases in states where voters have legalized such treatment. The amendment passed two consecutive years, the second time with a wider margin than the first, and has been extended through continuing resolutions and an omnibus spending bill.

Surprisingly, given the Obama administration’s generally liberal approach to marijuana, its Justice Department tried to interpret the amendment in such a convoluted way as to allow counterproductive raids on marijuana dispensaries. The courts — most recently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit — repeatedly ruled that our amendment meant exactly what it said.

Unfortunately, my longtime friend Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, has urged Congress to drop the amendment, now co-sponsored by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). This, despite President Trump’s belief, made clear in his campaign and as president, that states alone should decide medical marijuana policies.

I should not need to remind our chief law enforcement officer nor my fellow Republicans that our system of federalism, also known as states’ rights, was designed to resolve just such a fractious issue. Our party still bears a blemish for wielding the “states’ rights” cudgel against civil rights. If we bury state autonomy in order to deny patients an alternative to opioids, and ominously federalize our police, our hypocrisy will deserve the American people’s contempt.

More than half the states have liberalized medical marijuana laws, some even decriminalizing recreational use. Some eighty percent of Americans favor legalization of medical marijuana. Only a benighted or mean-spirited mind-set would want to block such progress.

Despite federal efforts to restrict supply, studies continue to yield promising results. And mounting anecdotal evidence shows again and again that medical marijuana can dramatically improve the lives of people with epilepsy, post-traumatic stress disorder, arthritis and many other ailments.

Most Americans know this. The political class, not surprisingly, lags behind them.

Part of the reason is the failure of too many conservatives to apply “public choice economics” to the war on marijuana. Common sense, as well as public choice theory, holds that the government’s interest is to grow, just as private-sector players seek profit and build market share.

The drug-war apparatus will not give ground without a fight, even if it deprives Americans of medical alternatives and inadvertently creates more dependency on opioids. When its existence depends on asset seizures and other affronts to our Constitution, why should anti-medical-marijuana forces care if they’ve contributed inadvertently to a vast market, both legal and illegal, for opioids?

I invite my colleagues to visit a medical marijuana research facility and see for themselves why their cultural distaste might be misplaced. One exists near my district office at the University of California at Irvine, another at the University of California at San Diego.

Better yet, they might travel to Israel — that political guiding light for religious conservatives — and learn how our closest ally in the Middle East has positioned itself on the cutting edge of cannabis research. The Israeli government recently decriminalized first use, so unworried it is about what marijuana might do to its conscript military.

My colleagues should then return to Washington and keep my amendment intact, declaring themselves firmly on the side of medical progress. Failing that, the government will keep trying to eradicate the burgeoning marijuana business, thereby fueling and enriching drug cartels. Trust me: Hugs from grateful supporters are infinitely better.

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A setback

Yesterday, our greatest fear on the House front came true: Republican members of the House blocked Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s (R-CA) medical marijuana amendment from receiving a vote. That means the House is passing a spending bill that will fund Jeff Sessions’ annual budget while also untying his hands so that he can use that money to target patients and providers.

We’ve been shouting warnings about this from Beverley Hills to Capitol Hill for months, but few have listened. Now the enemies are at our gates, just like we always said they would be.

Only seven canna-businesses nationwide have heeded MPP's call to stand and fight instead of raising the white flag. The House/Senate conference committee is where we must make our last stand, and we have four shields in our arsenal: two Democrats in the House and two in the Senate.

The best defense is a strong offense. Please donate $25 or $1,000 today so that we can exert enormous pressure on the members of the House/Senate conference committee to include the Senate’s good medical marijuana amendment in the final bill.

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'Leave Medical Marijuana States Alone': Leahy Warns Trump Administration

Sen. Patrick Leahy is leading an effort in the U.S. Senate to prevent the Trump Administration from cracking down on states that have legalized the use of medical marijuana.

Leahy says he strongly believes that the issue of medical marijuana is a state concern and he doesn't want the federal government to take any action to block states from administering their laws.

Currently, 29 states including Vermont have approved the use of medical marijuana.

Leahy says it's a waste of time and money for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to threaten states over this issue.

“If a state has a law that allows medical marijuana we've got enough important things to do not to have Jeff Sessions or anybody else go in and try to change that," said Leahy.

The U.S. Senate Appropriations committee has voted to support an amendment, sponsored by Leahy, that prohibits the use of federal funds to interfere with the operations of state approved medical marijuana programs.

"That ensures the Justice Department actually focuses on real things,” said Leahy. “They don't have enough people to go after medical marijuana patients who are following their state laws."

"If a state has a law that allows medical marijuana we've got enough important things to do not to have Jeff Sessions or anybody else go in and try to change that." — Sen. Patrick Leahy
In Vermont, a new law went into effect last month that could double the number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the next year.

Currently, there are four licensed facilities — in Burlington, Montpelier, Brandon and Brattleboro.

The new bill adds a fifth dispensary and allows each of these operations to open a satellite facility with state approval. In addition, another dispensary can open when the number of medical marijuana patients reaches seven thousand. Right now there are roughly four thousand Vermonters who participate in this program.

Bennington Sen. Dick Sears is the chairman of the Vermont Senate Judiciary committee and a sponsor of the new law.

"It has tremendous benefit in relieving the symptoms of various illnesses,” said Sears. “The new bill also provides more alternatives for people to buy through increased number of dispensaries."

"It has tremendous benefit in relieving the symptoms of various illnesses." — Bennington Sen. Dick Sears
Sears is hoping that the new law will result in the opening of a facility in the southwestern part of Vermont.

"Right now my constituents will have to travel to Brattleboro or Brandon to find the product to buy it legally, so many are still using the black market," said Sears.

While Gov. Phil Scott has some concerns about the legalization of recreational marijuana, as a state senator he voted for the original medical marijuana legislation and he signed the new bill into law this Spring.

"I think that it's regulated and it's been beneficial for Vermont," said Scott.

The full U.S. Senate is expected to consider this issue after its August recess.

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Justice Department Marijuana Task Force fails to come up with new recommendations.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The betting was that law-and-order Attorney General Jeff Sessions would come out against the legalized marijuana industry with guns blazing. But the task force Sessions assembled to find the best legal strategy is giving him no ammunition, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, a group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials, has come up with no new policy recommendations to advance the attorney general’s aggressively anti-marijuana views. The group’s report largely reiterates the current Justice Department policy on marijuana.

It encourages officials to keep studying whether to change or rescind the Obama administration’s more hands-off approach to enforcement — a stance that has allowed the nation’s experiment with legal pot to flourish. The report was not slated to be released publicly, but portions were obtained by the AP.

Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and blamed it for spikes in violence, has been promising to reconsider existing pot policy since he took office six months ago. His statements have sparked both support and worry across the political spectrum as a growing number of states have worked to legalize the drug.

Threats of a federal crackdown have united liberals, who object to the human costs of a war on pot, and some conservatives, who see it as a states’ rights issue. Some advocates and members of Congress had feared the task force’s recommendations would give Sessions the green light to begin dismantling what has become a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar pot industry that helps fund schools, educational programs and law enforcement.

But the tepid nature of the recommendations signals just how difficult it would be to change course on pot.

Some in law enforcement support a tougher approach, but a bipartisan group of senators in March urged Sessions to uphold existing marijuana policy. Others in Congress are seeking ways to protect and promote pot businesses.

The vague recommendations may be intentional, reflecting an understanding that shutting down the entire industry is neither palatable nor possible, said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies marijuana law and was interviewed by members of the task force.

“If they come out with a more progressive, liberal policy, the attorney general is just going to reject it. They need to convince the attorney general that the recommendations are the best they can do without embarrassing the entire department by implementing a policy that fails,” he said.

The task force suggestions are not final, and Sessions is in no way bound by them. The government still has plenty of ways it can punish weed-tolerant states, including raiding pot businesses and suing states where the drug is legal, a rare but quick path to compliance. The only one who could override a drastic move by Sessions is President Donald Trump, whose personal views on marijuana remain mostly unknown.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Rather than urging federal agents to shut down dispensaries and make mass arrests, the task force puts forth a more familiar approach.

Its report says officials should continue to oppose rules that block the Justice Department from interfering with medical marijuana programs in states where it is allowed. Sessions wrote to members of Congress in May asking them — unsuccessfully so far — to undo those protections. The Obama administration also unsuccessfully opposed those rules.

The report suggests teaming the Justice Department with Treasury officials to offer guidance to financial institutions, telling them to implement robust anti-money laundering programs and report suspicious transactions involving businesses in states where pot is legal. That is already required by federal law.

And it tells officials to develop “centralized guidance, tools and data related to marijuana enforcement,” two years after the Government Accountability Office told the Justice Department it needs to better document how it’s tracking the effect of marijuana legalization in the states.

Most critically, and without offering direction, it says officials “should evaluate whether to maintain, revise or rescind” a set of Obama-era memos that allowed states to legalize marijuana on the condition that officials act to keep it from migrating to places where it is still outlawed and out of the hands of criminal cartels and children. Any changes to the policy could impact the way pot-legal states operate.

The recommendations are not surprising because “there’s as much evidence that Sessions intends to maintain the system and help improve upon it as there is that he intends to roll it back,” said Mason Tvert, who ran Colorado’s legalization campaign. He pointed to Sessions’ comment during his Senate confirmation hearing that while he opposed legalization, he understood the scarcity of federal resources and “echoed” the position of his Democratic predecessors.

But in July, he sent letters to Colorado and Washington that stirred concern, asking how they would address reports they were not adequately regulating the drug.

It remains unclear how much weight Sessions might give the recommendations. He said he has been relying on them to enact policy in other areas. Apart from pot, the task force is studying a list of criminal justice issues. The overall report’s executive summary says its work continues and its recommendations “do not comprehensively address every effort that the Department is planning or currently undertaking to reduce violent crime.”

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Congress Is Heading for a Confrontation With Sessions Over Marijuana

Congress is heading for a confrontation with Attorney General Jeff Sessions over pot.

Sessions is seeking to crack down on marijuana use while lawmakers from both parties are pushing legislation that would do the opposite.

Measures have been attached to must-pass bills in the Senate that would allow Veterans Affairs doctors to counsel patients on the use of medical marijuana, and to continue blocking the Justice Department from pursuing cases against people who use medical marijuana in states that have legalized it.


Some lawmakers are pushing to go even further. Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, this week unveiled legislation that would legalize marijuana at the federal level. In the House, Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida proposed legislation that would change the federal classification of marijuana to allow research and a range of medical uses.

Booker said the law needs to be changed because minorities and the poor are disproportionately arrested for what amounts to a minor offense.

“It disturbs me right now that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not moving as the states are -- moving as public opinion is -- but actually saying that we should be doubling down and enforcing federal marijuana laws even in states that have made marijuana legal,” he said in a video posted Tuesday on Facebook.

Eight states have fully legalized marijuana for adult use and 21 more have legalized it for medical use only. Federal law continues to ban the use and sale of cannabis. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department didn’t actively prosecute marijuana offenders, an approach Sessions has said needs to change.

Read more: Trump Casts Cloud Over Cannabis, But Money Keeps Pouring In


“I’m not sure we’re going to be a better, healthier nation," he said in February, "if we have marijuana being sold at every corner grocery store.” He later added, “My best view is that we don’t need to be legalizing marijuana.”

In April, Sessions put out a memo to U.S. attorneys about his crime-reduction efforts and said one of his subcommittees will "undertake a review of existing policies in the areas of charging, sentencing, and marijuana to ensure consistency with the department’s overall strategy on reducing violent crime and with administration goals and priorities."

Sarah Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the matter.

The president has repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with Sessions, a former senator from Alabama, for recusing himself from a federal investigation into whether there was collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. The new White House chief of staff, John Kelly, told Sessions in a phone call over the weekend that Trump doesn’t intend to fire him, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

Spending Legislation

The Veterans Administration measure, sponsored by Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana and Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, was added to a bill approved by the Appropriations Committee on July 13. The measure preventing funds from being used to crack down on medical marijuana was sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and was approved by the Appropriations Committee on July 27.

The Republican-controlled Congress is already on record supporting medical marijuana. Since 2014, the Justice Department spending bill has included language that blocks funds from being used to enforce federal law relating to medical marijuana in states where the drug is legal.

Gaetz, the Florida lawmaker who introduced his marijuana legislation in April, said at the time that pot shouldn’t be classified by the federal government the same way as heroin or LSD.

“We do not need to continue with a policy that turns thousands of young people into felons every year,” he said in a statement. “Nor do we need to punish the millions of people who are sick and seeking medical help -- from pain, from muscle wasting, from chemotherapy-induced nausea.”

Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado said Sessions told him before being confirmed as attorney general earlier this year that he planned to take a hands-off approach toward states that legalize marijuana. Gardner, whose state is among them, said he’ll hold Sessions to his comments.

“The founders of our country intended states to be laboratories of democracy and Colorado is now deep in the heart of laboratory, along with many other states now," Gardner said in an interview.

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Could Trump replace Jeff Sessions in a recess appointment?

President Donald Trump sounds like he’s intent on forcing out his “beleaguered” attorney general, Jeff Sessions, either by firing him or demeaning him until he quits. Firing Sessions might get rid of one of the president’s problems, but it could create a whole host of others.

Most urgently, firing Sessions could sever Trump’s relationship with Republicans in Congress – you know, the same Republicans he needs to approve his nominees (in the Senate) or pass bills he can sign into law (both the Senate and House).

“If Jeff Sessions is fired,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C., told reporters, “there will be holy hell to pay.”

The Washington Post’s White House team reports that if Sessions is out soon, Trump is discussing going over indignant Republicans in the Senate and bringing on a new attorney general while the Senate is on break this August.

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Why didn't A.G. Sessions replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a Comey friend who was in charge of Clinton investigation but got....
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It could happen. But it could also backfire bigly. And since Republicans control a majority of Congress, when they’re upset at the president, there’s a lot they can do to stop him – including preventing a new attorney general from taking office.

Let me explain.

Yes, Trump has the authority for a recess appointment
There’s actually a “Recess Clause” in the Constitution (Article II Sec. 2) that reads: “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”

Presidents have used it for everything from relatively obscure labor boards to filling seats on the Supreme Court. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower used that authority to appoint William Brennan to the Supreme Court less than a month before the presidential election. A few years before that, he had appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the court when the Senate was in recess. In both cases, the Senate later confirmed those justices.

But the courts have made it more difficult
Recess appointments can backfire, legally. In 2014, the Supreme Court overturned President Barack Obama’s three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, arguing that the president overstepped his constitutional authority.

The Senate can make recess appointments nearly impossible.
When it overruled Obama, the Supreme Court also gave the Senate a wide latitude to decide when it considers itself to be in recess and when it’s out. Today, a recess has to last at least 10 days before the president can legally make an appointment.

The court also okayed a loophole the Senate can use to leave town but still block a president from having free rein.

The Senate can go into “pro forma” sessions, which exist almost entirely to prevent a president from making recess appointments. In a pro forma session, the Senate can gavel into Congress – with no legislative business being conducted – and claim it has been in session. “The whole thing takes 20 seconds,” said Cornell Law professor Josh Chafetz. The Senate could theoretically gavel in/gavel out the whole time it’s gone in August.

It’s up to Republicans to decide if they want to hold the line against Trump.
If our hypothetical scenario becomes reality, this is where things get really interesting. You need a majority of the Senate to decide to go into a pro forma session. Republicans have the majority. So if Republicans decide to set up pro forma session when they go out of town in August, they’d basically be sticking it to Trump, saying they don’t trust the president not to do something ill-advised like fire his attorney general after complaining about said attorney general’s recusal from an investigation into Trump’s campaign.

Trump has one other legal avenue.
If Trump is itching to fire Sessions, Congress be damned, he could simply skip an appointment for good and just name an acting attorney general under the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act. The end result is the same: One official out, another one in.

But, Chafetz notes, the president could only appoint people who have already been confirmed by the Senate for another job, and that’s a historically thin list. Plus, there’s legal uncertainty on whether the president can use this tool if he fires someone.

“It says death, resignation or unable to perform the duties of the office,” Chafetz said. “And there’s an argument that ‘firing’ is left out of that deliberately….”

Checks and balances can be a bother.

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Senate committee, rejecting request from Sessions, keeps protection for medical marijuana states

The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved an amendment to protect state medical marijuana programs from federal interference, despite a written request from Attorney General Jeff Sessions earlier this year that they not do so.

The amendment, put forward Thursday by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), adds a clause to the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2018 that prevents the Department of Justice from using funds to prevent any “State or jurisdiction from implementing a law that authorizes the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

Twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia, and territories Puerto Rico and Guam have passed laws legalizing various forms of medical marijuana.

In May, Sessions sent a letter to Congress asking them not to extend the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment with nearly identical language, which has been added to federal budgets since late 2014.

In his letter, Sessions argued that the amendment inhibits the Justice Department’s “authority to enforce the Controlled Substances Act. … 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. 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.”

Last August, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the language of the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment bars the federal government from taking legal action against any individual involved in medical marijuana-related activity absent evidence that the defendant is in clear violation of state law.

In May, Representatives Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) introduced into the omnibus congressional spending bill a similar amendment that prevents the Justice Department from using funds to interfere with the implementation of medical marijuana laws in U.S. states and territories.

The CJS budget now moves to the full Senate. If approved, the bill and its included amendments will go to a special conference committee to reach a compromise with the House version of the budget. If no budget is approved by Sept. 30, the previous amendment will be automatically renewed for another year.

In response to the vote, Blumenauer tweeted: “No surprise! This effort has overwhelming bipartisan support. Now, it’s time for the House act.”

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No surprise! This effort has overwhelming bipartisan support. Now, it's time for the House act. https://twitter.com/NORML/status/890601987900940288 …
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Here’s a look at some of the reactions from advocacy groups on both sides of the marijuana debate:

Erik Altieri, executive director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said in a statement: “Attorney General Sessions thinks that medical marijuana patients are no better than members of illegal drug cartels. It is imperative that our elected officials remove any potential bite from Sessions’ bark by taking away his ability to use the full force of the federal government to go against the will of over 90 percent of American citizens who support medical marijuana access and, in the process, endangering the well-being of millions of medical marijuana patients.”

Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, said: “No one wants to deprive chronically ill patients of medication that could be helpful for them, but preventing the Justice Department from enforcing federal law is fueling black market activity and pushing patients toward an unregulated market proven to be hawking contaminated products as medicine.” He said efforts should be directed to fund more research on marijuana compounds that would go through the Food and Drug Administration approval process.

Don Murphy, director of conservative outreach for the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a statement: “More than half the states have taken a stand and said they want their seriously ill residents to have safe and reliable access to medical marijuana, and today the Senate Appropriations Committee listened. We strongly urge the rest of Congress to do the right thing and include this amendment in the final budget.”

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Controlled Substances Act may be unconstitutional

As an attorney, I am always disappointed that the courts in this country – both at the state and federal level – have refused to get involved in the efforts to end marijuana prohibition and end the practice of treating responsible marijuana smokers as criminals. But that is the reality.

While the courts in this country have played a leading role in ending racial discrimination, in guaranteeing women the right to obtain a legal abortion, in protecting the rights of the LGBT community, and in many other areas involving the protection of personal freedom, they have consistently rejected attempts to declare state and federal anti-marijuana laws as unconstitutional.

But that does not mean that we should give up the fight in the courts, and rely only on voter initiatives and elected officials to fix this problem. As long as there are new legal arguments to be made, and fresh and hopefully more convincing facts to be argued, we must continue to engage the courts in this struggle for personal freedom.

Washington, et.al v. Sessions, et.al

One such legal challenge, Washington, et.al v. Sessions, et.al, was recently filed in US District Court in the Southern District of New York by lead attorney Michael Hiller, with NORML Legal Committee (NLC) attorneys David Holland and Joseph Bondy serving as co-counsel. The full complaint can be found here.

Individual plaintiffs in the suit were two young children, an American military veteran, and a retired professional football player, all of whom are medical marijuana patients; and a membership organization alleging their minority members have been discriminated against by the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Seeking to overturn the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Raich, plaintiffs request a declaration that the CSA, as it pertains to the classification of Cannabis as a Schedule I drug, is unconstitutional, because it violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, an assortment of protections guaranteed by the First Amendment, and the fundamental Right to Travel. Further, plaintiffs seek a declaration that Congress, in enacting the CSA as it pertains to marijuana, violated the Commerce Clause, extending the breadth of legislative power well beyond the scope contemplated by Article I of the Constitution.

Named as defendants in the case are Attorney General Jeff Beauregard Sessions, Acting Administrator of the DEA Chuck Rosenberg, the Justice Department, the DEA and the Federal Government.

In their Complaint, plaintiffs allege that the federal government does not, and could not possibly, believe that Cannabis meets the definition of a Schedule I drug, which is reserved for the most dangerous of substances, such as heroin, LSD, and mescaline; and that classifying Cannabis as a “Schedule I drug,” is so irrational that it violates the U.S. Constitution.

Among the other claims in the lawsuit are that the CSA: (i) was enacted and implemented in order to discriminate against African Americans and to suppress people’s First Amendment rights; and (ii) violates plaintiffs’ constitutional Right to Travel.

Joseph Bondy, a federal criminal defense attorney and legalization advocate, explained he felt it was important to “question the agenda of those who continue to push for enforcement of the CSA, given its unlawful and discriminatory impact and that so few in America support such an effort.” Co-counsel David Holland, a litigator and Executive Director of Empire State NORML, noted that “the efforts to criminalize Cannabis are relatively recent and were largely underwritten by racial and ethnic animus,” referring to recent findings that African Americans and other persons of color are four times as likely to be arrested under the CSA than white Americans, even though marijuana is used equally by people of color and Caucasians.

Perhaps the federal courts will surprise us at long last and finally take a critical look at marijuana prohibition, and find the courage to declare the CSA to be unconstitutional. That would be an enormous step forward in ending marijuana prohibition altogether. But regardless of the outcome of this particular suit, it is encouraging to see the criminal defense bar continue to push the legal envelope, and to advance the best and latest legal and factual arguments. At some point, the courts will have no choice but to strike downC1_8734_r_x prohibition as a violation of our personal

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One man will decide if people are allowed access to marijuana

Michael Murray isn’t well known outside of legal circles, but that may soon change. The former Supreme Court clerk holds the fate of a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry in his hands and will make recommendations soon on whether to launch a crackdown.

People who know Murray can’t imagine the straight-laced young father of three thinking highly of marijuana use and describe him as quiet and personally conservative. But they also say he is thoughtful and independent-minded.

Murray, a 2009 Yale Law School graduate, is a counsel to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and was tasked with the review earlier this year, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a larger crime task force would have a marijuana subcommittee.

The marijuana subcommittee's work is shrouded in secrecy, with recommendations due by July 27. The outcome could be either a yawn or a jarring assault on states that have regulated seed-to-sale markets serving adults 21 and older.

Possession and sale of marijuana remain federal crimes. The Obama administration, however, allowed states broad leeway to regulate medical and recreational sales. Eight states now have laws authorizing recreational pot markets.

Among the conceivable outcomes, the subcommittee could move to pull the rug out from under the cannabis industry by withdrawing or modifying the 2013 Cole Memo, which allowed recreational pot stores to open so long as enforcement triggers – such as underage sales, interstate smuggling and public health consequences – aren’t tripped.

At least in theory, Murray is not the only person reviewing the policy. But it’s not clear who else may be serving on the subcommittee and some legalization advocates fear the fix is in, with large pot advocacy and business groups saying they have had no contact.

"They have been operating in a black box, really," says Taylor West, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association. "There has been no indication that there was an opening for any viewpoint other than those of whoever is on this committee."

West says the group is "preparing with our allies in D.C. for whatever may come from this."

Statistics from the early years of pot legalization can be manipulated to support a viewpoint, making diverse input potentially significant. For example, two recent studies came to opposite conclusions on the effects of legalization on traffic safety. And while surveys show teen pot use has not increased nationally or in the pioneering states since 2012, contrasting current rates to historical low points offers a different impression.

A closed-to-the-press June summit associated with the larger Justice Department task force featured a discussion on drug-supply reduction with Kevin Sabet, the nation's most prominent anti-legalization organizer and leader of the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Sabet has not said what interactions, if any, he has with the subcommittee.

Amplifying reformers’ concern is the fact that the larger task force is co-chaired by Steve Cook, an advocate of harsh sentences for drug crimes. And Murray’s boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is a cantankerous critic of marijuana use who in May asked Congress to drop budget language protecting state medical marijuana programs.

Murray lacks the combative style of Sessions or Cook, according to friends and former colleagues, who describe him as family-oriented and scholarly. One supporter of legalization who asked not to be identified said they trusted his judgment.

Murray joined the Justice Department after working for the Jones Day law firm, which has sent many attorneys to the Trump administration. His wife, Claire McCusker Murray, became associate counsel to President Donald Trump earlier this year.

“Michael is a brilliant young lawyer [and] he has a somewhat understated personality, especially compared to a lot of people who fill the ranks of the Trump administration,” says David Lat, who also clerked for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, a prominent conservative on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

“I would not expect anything crazy from him,” says Lat, who did not clerk for O'Scannlain at the same time as Murray but knows him socially.

Lat, managing editor of legal news website Above the Law, and others contacted for this story say they cannot recall any specific conversation with Murray about marijuana, but Lat says “my guess would be that he’s not a toker type.”

“The types of people who clerk for Judge O’Scannlain are not the types of people who smoke marijuana,” Lat says. “Judge O'Scannlain hires very proper people. His clerks are basically boy scouts and girl scouts. We are very buttoned-up people, and Michael fits that mold.”

Katherine Moran Meeks, an attorney who clerked alongside Murray for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2013-2014, says Murray is, however, “a man of his own mind.”

“He’s a person of integrity and he’s there to offer a careful legal opinion,” Meeks says. “I’m sure that’s what he’ll give, rather than something driven by partisanship.”

The Justice Department does not have an official photograph of Murray, but a picture showing the tall and fair-haired attorney among a group of Jones Day associates was circulated in 2014 and remains available online. A member of the firm’s media relations department refused to authorize reuse of the photo for this article.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to provide additional details about the ongoing review.

Robert Dunn, who overlapped briefly as a clerk in Judge O'Scannlain’s office in 2010 recalls Murray being “a smart, smart dude” who handed over case work with “a very well-thought-through reason” for everything.

“The adjective that jumps to my mind is that he strikes me as very thoughtful,” Dunn says. “He thinks before he acts."

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Jeff Sessions wants police to take more cash from American citizens

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday said he'd be issuing a new directive this week aimed at increasing police seizures of cash and property.

“We hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers,” Sessions said in his prepared remarks for a speech to the National District Attorney's Association in Minneapolis. "With care and professionalism, we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures. No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime. Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate as is sharing with our partners."

Asset forfeiture is a disputed practice that allows law enforcement officials to permanently take money and goods from individuals suspected of crime. There is little disagreement among lawmakers, authorities and criminal justice reformers that “no criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime.” But in many cases, neither a criminal conviction nor even a criminal charge is necessary — under forfeiture laws in most states and at the federal level, mere suspicion of wrongdoing is enough to allow police to seize items permanently.

Additionally, many states allow law enforcement agencies to keep cash that they seize, creating what critics characterize as a profit motive. The practice is widespread: In 2014, federal law enforcement officers took more property from citizens than burglars did. State and local authorities seized untold millions more.

Since 2007, the Drug Enforcement Administration alone has taken more than $3 billion in cash from people not charged with any crime, according to the Justice Department's Inspector General.

The practice is ripe for abuse. In one case in 2016, Oklahoma police seized $53,000 owned by a Christian band, an orphanage and a church after stopping a man on a highway for a broken taillight. A few years earlier, a Michigan drug task force raided the home of a self-described “soccer mom,” suspecting she was not in compliance with the state's medical marijuana law. They proceeded to take “every belonging” from the family, including tools, a bicycle and her daughter's birthday money.

In recent years, states have begun to clamp down on the practice.

“Thirteen states now allow forfeiture only in cases where there's been a criminal conviction,” said Robert Everett Johnson, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that represents forfeiture defendants.

In 2015, Eric Holder's Justice Department issued a memo sharply curtailing a particular type of forfeiture practice that allowed local police to share part of their forfeiture proceeds with federal authorities. Known as “adoptive” forfeiture, it allowed state and local authorities to sidestep sometimes stricter state laws, processing forfeiture cases under the more permissive federal statute.

These types of forfeitures amounted to a small total of assets seized by federal authorities, so the overall impact on forfeiture practices was relatively muted. Still, criminal justice reform groups on the left and the right cheered the move as a signal that the Obama administration was serious about curtailing forfeiture abuses.

In his speech Monday, Attorney General Sessions appeared to specifically call out adoptive forfeitures as an area for potential expansion. “Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate,” he said, “as is sharing with our partners.”

“This is a federalism issue,” Johnson said. “Any return to federal adoptive forfeitures would “circumvent limitations on civil forfeiture that are imposed by state legislatures … the Department of Justice is saying 'we're going to help state and local law enforcement to get around those reforms.'”

The Department of Justice did not return a request for comment.

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Jeff Sessions balks at state's rights concerning marijuana

NEW YORK — In a national vote widely viewed as a victory for conservatives, last year’s elections also yielded a win for liberals in eight states that legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use.

But the growing industry is facing a federal crackdown under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has compared cannabis to heroin.

A task force Sessions appointed to, in part, review links between violent crimes and marijuana is scheduled to release its findings by the end of the month. But he has already asked Senate leaders to roll back rules that block the Justice Department from bypassing state laws to enforce a federal ban on medical marijuana.

That has pitted the attorney general against members of Congress across the political spectrum — from Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, to Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, — who are determined to defend states’ rights and provide some certainty for the multibillion-dollar pot industry.

“Our attorney general is giving everyone whiplash by trying to take us back to the 1960s,” said Representative Jared Huffman, Democrat of California, whose district includes the so-called Emerald Triangle that produces much of the United States’ marijuana.

“Prosecutorial discretion is everything given the current conflict between the federal law and the law of many states,” he said in an interview last month.

In February, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said the Trump administration would look into enforcing federal law against recreational marijuana businesses. Some states are considering tougher stands: In Massachusetts, for example, the Legislature is trying to rewrite a law to legalize recreational marijuana that voters passed in November.

About one-fifth of Americans now live in states where marijuana is legal for adult use, according to the Brookings Institution, and an estimated 200 million live in places where medicinal marijuana is legal.

Cannabis retailing has moved from street corners to state-of-the-art dispensaries and stores, with California entrepreneurs producing rose gold vaporizers and businesses in Colorado selling infused drinks.

Sessions is backed by a minority of Americans who view cannabis as a “gateway” drug that drives social problems, such as the recent rise in opioid addiction.

“We love Jeff Sessions’s position on marijuana because he is thinking about it clearly,” said Scott Chipman, Southern California chairman for Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana.

He dismissed the idea of recreational drug use. “’Recreational’ is a bike ride, a swim, going to the beach,” he said. “Using a drug to put your brain in an altered state is not recreation. That is self-destructive behavior and escapism.”

Marijuana merchants are protected by a provision in the federal budget that prohibits the Justice Department from spending money to block state laws that allow medicinal cannabis. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department did not interfere with state laws that legalize marijuana and instead focused on prosecuting drug cartels and the transport of pot across state lines.

In March, a group of senators that included Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, asked Sessions to stick with existing policies. Some lawmakers also want to allow banks to work with the marijuana industry and to allow tax deductions for business expenses.

Lawmakers who support legalizing marijuana contend that it leads to greater regulation, curbs the black market and stops money laundering. They point to studies showing that the war on drugs, which began under President Richard M. Nixon, had disastrous impacts on national incarceration rates and racial divides.

In a statement, Booker said the Trump administration’s crackdown against marijuana “will not make our communities safer or reduce the use of illegal drugs.”

“Instead, they will worsen an already broken system,” he said, noting that marijuana-related arrests are disproportionately high for black Americans.

Consumers spent $5.9 billion on legal cannabis in the United States last year, according to the Arcview Group, which studies and invests in the industry. That figure is expected to reach $19 billion by 2021.

A Quinnipiac University poll in February concluded that 59 percent of US voters believe cannabis should be legal. Additionally, the poll found, 71 percent say the federal government should not prosecute marijuana use in states that have legalized it.

But marijuana businesses are bracing for a possible clampdown.

“People that were sort of on the fence — a family office, a high-net-worth individual thinking of privately financing a licensed opportunity — it has swayed them to go the other way and think: not just yet,” said Randy Maslow, a founder of iAnthus Capital Holdings.

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Congress is considering expanding the powers of the Attorney General

Complaining about how Congress has abdicated its constitutional authority in foreign policy is a major staple of my political writing career, but this habit of fecklessness extends well beyond matters of war and peace.

Right now, for example, Congress is considering a bill (the Stop the Importation and Trafficking of Synthetic Analogues [SITSA] Act of 2017) that would give dangerous new power to the attorney general, currently drug warrior extraordinaire Jeff Sessions.

The Washington Post reports:

The bipartisan legislation, sponsored by powerful committee chairs in both chambers of Congress, would allow the attorney general to unilaterally outlaw certain unregulated chemical compounds on a temporary basis. It would create a special legal category for these drugs, the first time in nearly 50 years that the Controlled Substances Act has been expanded in this way. And it would set penalties, potentially including mandatory minimum sentences, for the manufacture and distribution of these drugs.

Current policy on this subject isn’t great, but SITSA is still a big step in the wrong direction:

Under current policy, an attorney general may temporarily schedule a substance for up to two years and only after demonstrating the drug’s “history and current pattern of abuse; the scope, duration and significance of abuse; and what, if any, risk there is to the public health.”

The new bill extends the temporary scheduling duration to five years for Schedule A substances and eliminates the requirement for analyzing the drug’s abuse record and its potential risk to public health.

The federal drug war is bad enough already. It is inhumane, expensive, and a violation of basic individual liberty. Mandatory minimum sentencing is a particularly egregious part of this, subjecting people convicted of low-level, nonviolent crimes to wildly unnecessary and unjust prison sentences — and subjecting taxpayers to the enormous bill.

But one way to make this bad situation worse is to give an un-elected official authority to expand the drug war and mandatory minimums at his own discretion.

The United States is (theoretically) supposed to have “a government of laws, not of men.” This is literally government by a single, unaccountable man.

In the short term, it’s especially egregious because Sessions would be the immediate recipient of this new authority should the bill pass, and he has proved himself irrationally and dishonestly committed to escalating the drug war.

But the problem is much bigger than Sessions himself. He shouldn’t have this unilateral authority, but neither should anyone else.

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Do you like the idea of giving more power to a government official to implement failed policies? Do you favor escalating the drug war which was in reality a war on the Constitutional rights that protect us from governmental overreach? If the answer is "no" then contact your Congressional Representative and your Senators and let them know you are not a big fan of granting more powers to Jeff Sessions.

Sessions Asks Congress to Roll Back Medical Marijuana Protections

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has penned a letter to Congressional leaders requesting the Department of Justice (DOJ) be financially unshackled – allowing the federal agency use their budget to obstruct, hinder, and prosecute individuals in states where medical marijuana is legal.

Better known as the Rohrabacher–Blumenauer amendment, Session’s May 1 letter to Congressional leaders requested federal lawmakers oppose the provision. And, breaking yet another campaign promise in which candidate Trump pledged “100%” support for states that have legalized medical marijuana, the Trump administration appears to be on board with turning up the legal heat on state-sanctioned medical marijuana businesses.

Sessions noted in the letter: “I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the department to find particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime.”

The U.S. AG rationalized his archaic request to those in Congress by offering only hyperbolic innuendo, and the occasional bad actor as fact. “Drug traffickers already cultivate and distribute marijuana inside the United States under the guise of state medical marijuana laws.”

Strongly disagreeing with the AG’s philosophy, in 2016 “the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit interpreted this provision broadly to apply both to the Department actions that prevent states from implementing their laws regarding medical marijuana and to Department prosecutions of certain individuals and organizations that operate under those laws.” Concluding that, “the Department may not prosecute violations of the CSA with respect to marijuana unless the court concludes that the individuals or organizations are not in compliance with state medical marijuana law.”

Sessions, in an attempt to explain his infamous “good people don’t smoke marijuana” comment, noted, “My words have been grossly mischaracterized and taken out of context… I was discussing the value of treating people for using dangerous and illegal drugs like marijuana, and the context in which treatment is successful.”

No fan of the growing research that demonstrates marijuana’s medicinal efficacy, Sessions cited the Department of Health and Human Services and the DEA in demonizing the medicinal herb, adding, “Marijuana has a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.”

First reported by Tom Angell on Monday, this leaked letter to Congressional leaders quickly went viral.

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Wait a minute.

Rewind to here:

Sessions noted in the letter: “I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the department to find particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime.”

Sessions is criticizing Congress for ignoring the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 while Sessions himself wants to ignore the Rohrabacher–Blumenauer amendment of 2017. That reeks with hypocrisy. Also it makes the people wary of their government because they see hypocrisy coming from their government.

Congress should tell Sessions to stuff it.

Bill would expand attorney general’s power in drug war

WASHINGTON — Congress is considering a bill that would expand the federal government’s ability to pursue the war on drugs, granting new power to the attorney general to set federal drug policy.

The bipartisan legislation, sponsored by powerful committee leaders in both chambers of Congress, would allow the attorney general to unilaterally outlaw certain unregulated chemical compounds on a temporary basis.

It would create a special legal category for these drugs, the first time in nearly 50 years that the Controlled Substances Act has been expanded in this way. And it would set penalties, potentially including mandatory minimum sentences, for the manufacture and distribution of these drugs.

‘‘This bill provides federal law enforcement with new tools to ensure those peddling dangerous drugs, which can be lethal, are brought to justice,’’ said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is sponsoring the Senate version with Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa.

‘‘It also explicitly exempts simple possession from any penalties, instead targeting those who manufacture and traffic these drugs and opioids,’’ Feinstein said.

The bill, introduced last week, now moves to a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Grassley chairs and where Feinstein is the top-ranking Democrat.

Under current law, all psychoactive substances are placed in one of five ‘‘schedules’’ designating the drugs’ risk of abuse and medical potential. Schedule 1 is the most restrictive, reserved for drugs like LSD, heroin and marijuana. Schedule 5 is the least restrictive category, which includes medications like low-dose codeine cough syrup.


Illicit-drug manufacturers wishing to avoid these designations often make subtle changes to a drug’s chemistry, creating slightly different, and hence legal, substances which produce similar psychoactive effects in users.

‘‘Illegal drug traffickers and importers are able to circumvent the existing scheduling regime by altering a single atom or molecule of a currently controlled substance in a laboratory, thereby creating a substance that is lawful, but often highly dangerous, addictive and even deadly,’’ said Feinstein and Grassley in a fact sheet about the Senate bill.

The law would create a new schedule, Schedule A, for substances that are chemically similar to already-regulated drugs. The attorney general would be able to place new compounds in Schedule A for a period of up to five years. Critics say this amounts to giving the attorney general the power to unilaterally write federal drug policy.

The bill ‘‘gives the attorney general a ton of power in terms of scheduling drugs and pursuing penalties,’’ said Michael Collins of the Drug Policy Alliance, a drug policy reform group. ‘‘This is a giant step backwards and really it’s doing the bidding of Jeff Sessions as he tries to escalate the war on drugs.’’

Under current policy, an attorney general may only temporarily schedule a substance for up to two years, and only then after demonstrating the drug’s ‘‘history and current pattern of abuse; the scope, duration and significance of abuse; and what, if any, risk there is to the public health.’’

The new bill extends the temporary scheduling duration to five years for Schedule A substances, and eliminates the requirement for analyzing the drug’s abuse record and its potential risk to public health.

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You've got to be shitting me. This bill is bull. Straight up bullshit. Let's contact Our Congressional Representative and Senators and tell them that we are less than thrilled with this bill and we want them to oppose it.

Never let up

Ahead to the past

When it comes to criminal justice, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a man out of time — stuck defiantly in the 1980s, when crime in America was high and politicians scrambled to out-tough one another by passing breathtakingly severe sentencing laws. This mind-set was bad enough when Mr. Sessions was a senator from Alabama working to thwart sentencing reforms in Congress. Now that he is the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he’s trying to drag the country backward with him, even as most states are moving toward more enlightened policies.

On May 12, Mr. Sessions announced a drastic policy ordering federal prosecutors to pursue the toughest possible charges against crime suspects in all cases, rescinding an Obama administration directive that focused on reducing punishments for low-level, nonviolent offenders, mostly in drug cases, and steering more law-enforcement resources toward the bigger fish. That approach was working: The federal prison population started to drop for the first time in years, even as crime has remained at historic lows.

Instead of acknowledging these gains, Mr. Sessions has clung to the familiar myth that longer, harsher sentences reduce crime and increase public safety. The evidence shows the opposite: To bring down recidivism, a punishment’s swiftness and certainty matter far more than its length. Longer sentences may even lead to more reoffending.

Mr. Sessions’s outdated ideas have been rebuked across the political spectrum. Eric Holder, the attorney general who issued the Obama-era policy, called the new approach “dumb on crime.” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, pointed out that people of color suffer disproportionately from mandatory-minimum sentences for drug crimes, and said Mr. Sessions’s charging policy “will accentuate the injustice.” A group of 31 current and former state and local prosecutors — not people ordinarily associated with going soft on crime — signed an open letter calling the directive an “unnecessary and unfortunate return” to harmful and discredited practices. Mr. Sessions has taken a sledgehammer to this rare and fragile bipartisanship, at least on the federal level. And while it’s too soon to know how the new policy will affect sentences, prison populations, or recidivism rates, Mr. Sessions’s assertion that the justice system is not harsh enough — however isolated that view — could trickle down and affect justice reform in the states.

Fortunately, states have been moving in the other direction, as budget-conscious lawmakers saw what Mr. Sessions has not — that locking up more people for longer periods is hugely expensive with no real public-safety payoff. The states should continue with their effective, evidence-based approaches, and Congress should find a way at last to pass meaningful sentencing reform. Reducing or eliminating many mandatory minimums would be optimal, but at this point most anything would be an improvement.

A bipartisan group of senators recently reintroduced the Justice Safety Valve Act, which would give judges more flexibility to impose lighter sentences in certain cases. They were achingly close to passing a similar bill last year, until a small clot of senators blocked it. One of those senators was Jeff Sessions.

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A tribute to Jeff Sessions

Senator Rand Paul on the drug war

From Senator Rand Paul:

The attorney general on Friday made an unfortunate announcement that will impact the lives of millions of Americans: he issued new instructions for prosecutors to charge suspects with the most serious provable offenses, "those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences."

Mandatory minimum sentences have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated a generation of minorities. Eric Holder, the attorney general under President Obama, issued guidelines to U.S. Attorneys that they should refrain from seeking long sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

I agreed with him then and still do. In fact, I'm the author of a bipartisan bill with Senator Leahy to change the law on this matter. Until we pass that bill, though, the discretion on enforcement -- and the lives of many young drug offenders -- lies with the current attorney general.

The attorney general's new guidelines, a reversal of a policy that was working, will accentuate the injustice in our criminal justice system. We should be treating our nation's drug epidemic for what it is -- a public health crisis, not an excuse to send people to prison and turn a mistake into a tragedy.
And make no mistake, the lives of many drug offenders are ruined the day they receive that long sentence the attorney general wants them to have.

If I told you that one out of three African-American males is forbidden by law from voting, you might think I was talking about Jim Crow 50 years ago.

Yet today, a third of African-American males are still prevented from voting, primarily because of the War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs has disproportionately affected young black males.

The ACLU reports that blacks are four to five times likelier to be convicted for drug possession, although surveys indicate that blacks and whites use drugs at similar rates. The majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, but three-fourths of all people in prison for drug offenses are African American or Latino.

Why are the arrest rates so lopsided? Because it is easier to go into urban areas and make arrests than suburban areas. Arrest statistics matter when cities apply for federal grants. It doesn't take much imagination to understand that it's easier to round up, arrest, and convict poor kids than it is to convict rich kids.

The San Jose Mercury News reviewed nearly 700,000 criminal cases that were matched by crime and criminal history of the defendant. Their analysis showed that whites of similar situation were far more successful in the plea bargaining process and "virtually every stage of pretrial negotiation" than their African-American and Latino counterparts.

I know a guy about my age in Kentucky who was arrested and convicted for growing marijuana plants in his apartment closet in college.

Thirty years later, he still can't vote, can't own a gun, and, when he looks for work, he must check the box -- the box that basically says, "I'm a convicted felon, and I guess I'll always be one."
He hasn't been arrested or convicted for 30 years -- but still can't vote or have his Second Amendment rights. Getting a job is nearly impossible for him.

Mandatory sentencing automatically imposes a minimum number of years in prison for specific crimes -- usually related to drugs.

By design, mandatory sentencing laws take discretion away from judges so as to impose harsh sentences, regardless of circumstances. Our prison population, meanwhile, has increased by over 700% since the 1980s, and 90% of them are nonviolent offenders. The costs of our prison system now approach nearly $100 billion a year. It costs too much, in both the impact on people's lives and on our tax dollars.

I want to go the opposite way from the attorney general. That's why I've partnered with Senator Leahy and once again will be reintroducing the Justice Safety Valve Act.

This isn't about legalizing drugs. It is about making the punishment more fitting and not ruining more lives.

The legislation is short and simple. It amends current law to grant judges authority to impose a sentence below a statutory mandatory minimum.

In other words, we are not repealing mandatory minimums on the books -- we are merely allowing a judge to issue a sentence below a mandatory minimum if certain requirements are met.
We need this legislation because while there is an existing safety valve in current law, it is very limited. It has a strict five-part test, and only about 23% of all drug offenders qualified for the safety valve.

The injustice of mandatory minimum sentences is impossible to ignore when you hear the stories of the victims.

John Horner was a 46-year-old father of three when he sold some of his prescription painkillers to a friend.

His friend turned out to be a police informant, and he was charged with dealing drugs. Horner pleaded guilty and was later sentenced to the mandatory minimum of 25 years in jail.
As I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Edward Clay was an 18-year-old and a first-time offender when he was caught with less than 2 ounces of cocaine. He received 10 years in jail from a mandatory minimum sentence.

Weldon Angelos was a 24-year-old who was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling marijuana three times.
Former federal judge Timothy Lewis recalls a case where he had to send a 19-year-old to prison for 10 years for conspiracy. What was the "conspiracy"?

This young man had been in a car where drugs were found. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure one of us might have been in a car in our youth where someone might have had drugs. Before the arrest, according to news reports, this young man was going to be the first in his family to go to college.
Each case should be judged on its own merits. Mandatory minimums prevent this from happening.

Mandatory minimum sentencing has done little to address the very real problem of drug abuse while also doing great damage by destroying so many lives, and most Americans now realize it.

Proposition 47 recently passed in California, and it has spurred a cultural change in the way nonviolent drug offenders are treated, resulting in more than 13,000 fewer prisoners and a savings of $150 million, according to a Stanford Law School study.

Pew Research found that 67% of Americans want drug offenders to get treatment, not prison, and over 60% want an end to mandatory minimum sentences.

I urge the attorney general to reconsider his recent action. But even more importantly, I urge my colleagues to consider bipartisan legislation to fix this problem in the law where it should be handled. Congress can end this injustice, and I look forward to leading this fight for justice.

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