So Jeff Sessions rescinded the Cole Memo.
Whoopdee-flippin-doo.
I, for one, don’t think the attorney general has the stomach for a fight with the cannabis movement. Mr. Sessions, you’d have to be one dumb son-of-a-gun to pick this as your battle right now.
I don’t mean to say it’s not a big deal that Sessions wiped out any hint of federal protections for state-legal marijuana businesses — it is. If this doesn’t instill at least the slightest bit of fear in cannabis industry operators, you need a better lawyer. But it shouldn’t come as any surprise; we always knew, given enough time as the U.S. attorney general, Sessions would open the pathway for the Department of Justice to begin prosecuting cannabis cases once again.
However, timing is not on Sessions’ side: Support for cannabis is at an all-time high, while President Trump’s approval rating is a record low at the one-year mark.
Kevin Oliver, a NORML board member and co-owner of Washington’s Finest Cannabis, said it best shortly after the 2016 election: “Quite frankly, marijuana is more popular than Donald Trump,” he told the Spokesman Review.
An October 2017 Gallop Poll reported that 64% of Americans support the legalization of marijuana — an all-time high. Trump’s approval rating is somewhere in the mid-30s, according to most polls. Meanwhile, there’s probably nothing in the country Americans agree upon more than medical marijuana. A Quinnipiac University poll last August pegged support at 94%.
Thirty states, representing roughly 60% of the U.S. population, have legalized medical marijuana; at the time of the rescission, eight states allowed recreational cannabis.
Just hours after Sessions’ announcement, the Vermont House of Representatives passed a bill to legalize adult-use cannabis. On Jan. 22, the state’s Republican governor signed the bill into law, making Vermont the ninth state in the U.S. to defy federal law.
In direct response to Sessions’ action, numerous state and federal lawmakers, governors and attorneys general vowed to defend their states’ rights. The Colorado Senate Democrats won the day with their response via Twitter: “We’ll give Jeff Sessions our legal pot when he pries it from our warm, extremely interesting to look at hands.” And don’t forget that Sessions is facing a lawsuit over civil rights violations that could have massive implications regarding marijuana law.
Support for the cannabis industry has come from both sides of the fractious political aisle, and the attorney general’s move sparked a new wave of backers for various state and federal legislation that could expand protections for state-legal businesses, or legalize the long-maligned drug altogether — a much better strategy than preparing for a courtroom battle.
Michael J. Bond, a Washington attorney who began his career as a Marine Corps judge advocate, made a great point in an op-ed in the Seattle Times: “The federal law is the issue, and our federal legislators should act promptly to change the law that creates the conflict.”
He suggested that Washington’s senior senator should “propose a bill that removes cannabis from the federal law that made it illegal and, like the repeal of prohibition, leave it up to the states. The problem can be solved as simply as that.”
Simple, yes. Easy … no. Nothing has ever come easy for this industry. But fortunately, it’s full of people who are not afraid to fight. It’s full of people who won’t stand for social injustice, people who know they’re standing on the right side of history.
Garrett Rudolph
Editor