Federal Marijuana Policy Rescinded: Lorain Official Responds

LORAIN, OH — State Representative Dan Ramos is taking aim at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration following an announcement that Sessions would reverse an Obama-era policy that said the federal government would not intervene with states that choose to legalize pot.

"If the Trump administration isn’t interested in helping sick people who benefit the most from medical marijuana, they should at the very least get out of the way of the majority of states that want to help," Ramos said in a statement.

Sessions has said he will allow federal prosecutors to decide how aggressively they want to pursue charges against marijuana growers. There are currently 29 states that have some kind of legal medical marijuana and eight states that have legal recreational marijuana. Sessions' policy reversal will add confusion to an already muddled legal situation.

It's yet unclear how Sessions' announcement will impact Ohio's burgeoning medical marijuana market. A law allowing the sale of medical marijuana was passed in June 2016 and went into effect in Sept. 2016. For now, signs are that the installation of the industry in the Buckeye State will continue.

The attorney general has compared marijuana to heroin and said weed may be responsible for surging violence in the country, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, advocates for marijuana argue that legalizing the drug eliminates the need for a black market and would likely reduce violence, since criminals would no longer control the marijuana trade.

Ramos is only interested in the medical benefits of the drug and how it could be deployed to aid Ohioans.

"We passed a bipartisan medical marijuana law in Ohio for one specific reason: to help sick people. More than half of the states have done the same because evidence continues to show that this plant does have medicinal properties that can, and do, help people," he said. "From vets with PTSD to children with seizure disorders to people with M.S. or chronic pain, this substance provides real relief."

The state representative from Lorain said this issue is a constitutional one, suggesting Sessions and the federal government are overstepping their boundaries. He noted that Ohio's law does not permit interstate commerce so, "the federal government has no grounds to meddle in our state’s affairs. It is unconscionable when so many are dying of opioid overdoses that the federal government would waste taxpayer dollars to combat legally regulated medical cannabis."

Photo from Shutterstock