Jeff Sessions is leading America back into Reefer Madness

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Jeff Sessions is leading America back into Reefer Madness

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/18/jeff-sessions-against-weed-reefer-madness-marijuana?CMP=share_btn_tw
Jamie Peck


Last modified on Tuesday 18 July 2017 14.18 EDT

Once upon a time, the 1936 film Reefer Madness attempted to spread sensationalistic messages about marijuana to youths across the land. Just one toke, the film warned, and you could be setting off down the primrose path to murder, hallucinations, rape, suicide, and yes, the titular madness. Yikes!

Luckily for fans of the plant, we now know the worst effects of marijuana are smoker’s cough, laziness and a predilection for salty junk food. Furthermore, studies have shown it can be used to treat a vast array of health problems, from glaucoma to the nausea caused by chemotherapy. ....................................


...............The total number of fatal marijuana overdoses per year remains steady at zero. Why, it’s almost like pot is no big deal, and we should be allowed to have it if we want.

This knowledge, plus widespread social acceptance – a recent Gallup poll found that one in eight US adults admits to smoking the stuff, and more than half have tried it – have led to a gradual liberalization of marijuana laws on the state level, to the point where 29 states plus Washington DC have legalized medical marijuana.

Eight states have gone a step further and legalized it for recreational use, allowing people over the age of 21 to enjoy it responsibly. In 2016 alone, the citizens of eight states voted to relax their laws on recreational and/or medical marijuana, one of few progressive victories in an otherwise depressing election. (Perhaps because it’s one of a few issues that unites progressives and libertarian-leaning conservatives.) It would seem a critical mass of Americans is coming to accept the popular plant as the relatively harmless, potentially helpful substance it is.


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After making baseless statements that marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than heroin and that “good people don’t smoke marijuana,” the attorney general, Jeff Sessions – who once “joked” that he thought the violent white supremacists of the KKK were “okay until I found out they smoked pot” – has established a task force to investigate the connection between marijuana and violent crime.

He might learn that legalizing marijuana has actually been shown to reduce violent crime in some instances and leave it unaffected in others. But, in case anyone thought he was waiting for the task force’s findings to come in before acting, in May he wrote a letter to congressional leaders asking them to roll back protections put in place by the previous Congress. These use the power of the purse to keep the Department of Justice from prosecuting medical marijuana in states that have voted to legalize it.

In said letter, he referred to a “historic drug epidemic”, willfully conflating marijuana use with the crisis of opiate addiction plaguing our country. (Sessions either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that opiate deaths have actually decreased in states that have legalized medical marijuana, partly because it can serve as a gentler alternative to addictive prescription painkillers.) .........................

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1. His will be the last generation to fuck with marijuana...

From here on out it's only better horizons for legalization...