Skip to main content

Trump Admin's New Pot Policy: Victory for Public Health or Defeat for State's Rights?

Share This article

The Trump administration is moving to reverse an Obama-era drug policy that allowed legalized marijuana to flourish in states that declared it legal, despite a long-standing federal law that prohibits it.

The plan: Attorney General Jeff Sessions will give federal prosecutors the ability to determine how aggressively to enforce the federal marijuana law even in states where it's legal. 

Sessions issued a statement Thursday promoting the change as a pragmatic mix of federal and local control.  "This return to the rule of law is also a return of trust and local control to federal prosecutors who know where and how to deploy Justice Department resources most effectively to reduce violent crime, stem the tide of the drug crisis and dismantle criminal gangs," he said.

The decision reverses the 2013 Obama policy, the so-called "Cole memo," which kept the federal government from getting in the way of states that legalized marijuana, as long as they worked to prevent the drug from being used by children and criminal gangs and kept it from migrating to states that had not legalized it.

Kevin Sabet, a former Obama administration drug advisor and marijuana-legalization opponent, says the move is a victory for public health and will help to contain the marijuana industry which has followed the tobacco industry's model of attracting big investors and targeting youth.

"It stops them in their tracks," he told CBN News. "These companies rely on major institutional investments...now that this has happened they are not able to do that."

Sabet also predicted that the policy reversal will have a chilling effect on other states considering marijuana legalization.

READ: Stoned: How Colorado's 5 Years of Legal Pot Is 'Devastating Communities'

But critics of the decision say it tramples on states' rights.  

Colorado senator Cory Gardner denounced the move, tweeting a video of the president on the campaign trail in 2016 saying that states should lead on marijuana policy.  He complained, "the Justice Department has trampled on the will of the voters in Colorado and other states."

The U.S. attorney in Colorado said the new policy won't change marijuana enforcement in his office.  Bob Troyer said Thursday that his office has always focused on prosecuting marijuana cases that "create the greatest safety threats."  He says that goal is consistent with the latest policy statement from Sessions.

Eight states and the District of Columbia allow the recreational use of marijuana and it has become a multi-million dollar industry that attracts top investors as well as helping to fund schools, educational programs and law enforcement.  

In California alone, sales are expected to bring in $1 billion annually in tax revenue in the next several years.

Marijuana legalization supporters were quick to condemn the Sessions' decision on Thursday.  

Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said Sessions "wants to maintain a system that has led to tremendous injustice...and that has wasted federal resources on a huge scale."

The latest Gallup poll shows growing public support for marijuana legalization. An October 2017 poll says 64 percent of Americans say its use should be made legal. When Gallup first questioned survey respondents about the topic in 1969, just 12 percent supported legalization and in 2001, about one-third favored it.

Still, many Americans were recently appalled by a CNN New Year's Eve story that featured a reporter with a lit marijuana cigarette showing another person demonstrating the correct use of a bong pipe.

READ: CNN Promotes Drug Use on LIVE TV: American Journalism Gone to Pot?

Share This article

About The Author

Heather
Sells

Heather Sells covers wide-ranging stories for CBN News that include religious liberty, ministry trends, immigration, and education. She’s known for telling personal stories that capture the issues of the day, from the border sheriff who rescues migrants in the desert to the parents struggling with a child that identifies as transgender. In the last year, she has reported on immigration at the Texas border, from Washington, D.C., in advance of the Dobbs abortion case, at crisis pregnancy centers in Massachusetts, and on sexual abuse reform at the annual Southern Baptist meeting in Anaheim