Can Jeff Sessions End Recreational Marijuana In Washington?

SEATTLE, WA – U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, doesn’t have a very high opinion of marijuana – or the people who use it.

“We need grown-ups in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it is in fact a very real danger,” Sessions said at a hearing in April.

Later in that same hearing, he said “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” More controversially, during a 1986 hearing in Congress over his appointment to a federal judge post, he joked that the “Ku Klux Klan was OK until I found out they smoked pot."

As president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Sessions would oversee policy at the Justice Department, which means he could choose to be tough on states that allow either medical or recreational marijuana (including states like California and Massachusetts, which approved recreational marijuana on Nov. 8). Under President Barack Obama's attorneys general, the Justice Department has focused on criminal use of marijuana, but not state-sanctioned use.

Because Washington was one of the first states to establish a system for recreational marijuana, Patch.com spoke to activists and local marijuana business owners about their thoughts on the potential next attorney general.

Ananda Green, manager at Seattle’s Ganja Goddess, did not comment directly about Sessions, but believes that cannabis has done a lot of good, particularly for sick people, and so she thinks it’s likely to remain legal. She highlighted the story of a customer who called her store asking for a specific strain of cannabis for her father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.

“His symptoms are typically awful and heartbreaking. Her dad is totally different now than the person she knew growing up. He is very forgetful, aggressive, and fights with anyone trying to provide care for his physical issues,” Green said. “Nothing was helping and out of desperation they tried cannabis.”

The woman told Green that using cannabis has been “a miracle” for her father, making him calmer and able to accept care. In many ways, medical use of marijuana paved the way for recreational use today, showing non-users that it has benefits outside of just getting high.

Opinions about marijuana have changed greatly over the years. An October Gallup Poll found that a record-high 60 percent of Americans think that marijuana should be legal. In 1985, for example, only about 20 percent of Americans felt that way.

But some on the political side of marijuana legalization are aghast at the prospect of Sessions becoming attorney general, fearing that he would make marijuana a law enforcement priority. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, called Sessions a “drug war dinosaur” in a statement released Nov. 18.

Patch spoke to Tom Angell of the Washington, DC-based advocacy group Marijuana Majority about what Sessions might do if he decided to take on recreational marijuana laws. Trump has said that he would leave the marijuana issue to states, but Angell described several scenarios where Sessions could intervene. Additionally, the president does not control the actions of the justice department, so it's possible Sessions and Trump would treat the marijuana issue differently.

Angell said that, if it wanted to intervene, the Justice Department could start a letter-writing campaign asking marijuana businesses to either shut down within a certain period or face a raid by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

A second route would be to use federal courts to force states to dismantle regulatory schemes that allow for recreational marijuana. That could lead to a situation, Angell said, where marijuana is legal to use and possess in a given state, but where there would be no legal way to obtain it.

“There would be no testing, no labeling for potency and purity. It would kind of be a terrible situation for health and public safety,” Angell said.

If the issue lands in federal court, Angell said, there’s the chance that it might someday end up in front of the Supreme Court.

“[Sessions] doesn’t seem to be a fan of marijuana or people who consume it; through that lens his views are concerning, to say the least,” Angell said. “But, he also is someone who strongly believes in federalism and state’s rights. When it comes to this issue, it seems like he’s almost internally conflicted.”

And Green, of Ganja Goddess, raised another issue that might keep recreational marijuana around: revenue. The Tacoma News-Tribune this week reported that Washington residents and tourists spent some $212 million on recreational marijuana in the second quarter, which is the first time that figure has cracked the $200 million mark. That’s compared to $249 million spent on spirits in the second quarter.

The state hasn’t released third-quarter figures on spirits, but marijuana sales had increased to nearly $280 million, per the report.

“The more people that have positive experiences with cannabis, the more likely it will remain legal,” Green said.

Image via U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions