WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions is rescinding the Obama-era policy that had paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country, two people with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press. Sessions will instead let federal prosecutors where pot is legal decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law, the people said.
The people familiar with the plan spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it before an announcement expected Thursday.
The move by President Donald Trump’s attorney general likely will add to confusion about whether it’s OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states where pot is legal, since long-standing federal law prohibits it. It comes days after pot shops opened in California, launching what is expected to become the world’s largest market for legal recreational marijuana and as polls show a solid majority of Americans believe the drug should be legal.
While Sessions has been carrying out a Justice Department agenda that follows Trump’s top priorities on such issues as immigration and opioids, the changes to pot policy reflect his own concerns. Trump’s personal views on marijuana remain largely unknown.
Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and has blamed it for spikes in violence, had been expected to ramp up enforcement. Pot advocates 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.
The Obama administration in 2013 announced it would not stand in the way of states that legalize marijuana, so long as officials acted to keep it from migrating to places where it remained outlawed and out of the hands of criminal gangs and children. Sessions is rescinding that memo, written by then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, which had cleared up some of the uncertainty about how the federal government would respond as states began allowing sales for recreational and medical purposes.
The pot business has since become a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar industry that helps fund schools, educational programs and law enforcement. Eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and California’s sales alone are projected to bring in $1 billion annually in tax revenue within several years.
Sessions’ policy will let U.S. attorneys across the country decide what kinds of federal resources to devote to marijuana enforcement based on what they see as priorities in their districts, the people familiar with the decision said.
Sessions and some law enforcement officials in states such as Colorado blame legalization for a number of problems, including drug traffickers that have taken advantage of lax marijuana laws to hide in plain sight, illegally growing and shipping the drug across state lines, where it can sell for much more. The decision was a win for pot opponents who had been urging Sessions to take action.
“There is no more safe haven with regard to the federal government and marijuana, but it’s also the beginning of the story and not the end,” said Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, who was among several anti-marijuana advocates who met with Sessions last month. “This is a victory. It’s going to dry up a lot of the institutional investment that has gone toward marijuana in the last five years.”
Threats of a federal crackdown have united liberals who object to the human costs of a war on pot with conservatives who see it as a states’ rights issue. Some in law enforcement support a tougher approach, but a bipartisan group of senators in March urged Sessions to uphold existing marijuana policy. Others in Congress have been seeking ways to protect and promote legal pot businesses.
A task force Sessions convened to study pot policy made no recommendations for upending the legal industry but instead encouraged Justice Department officials to keep reviewing the Obama administration’s more hands-off approach to marijuana enforcement, something Sessions promised to do since he took office.
The change also reflects yet another way in which Sessions, who served as a federal prosecutor at the height of the drug war in Mobile, Alabama, has reversed Obama-era criminal justice policies that aimed to ease overcrowding in federal prisons and contributed to a rethinking of how drug criminals were prosecuted and sentenced. While his Democratic predecessor Eric Holder told federal prosecutors to avoid seeking long mandatory minimum sentences when charging certain lower level drug offenders, for example, Sessions issued an order demanding the opposite, telling them to pursue the most serious charges possible against most suspects.
You do realize that Sessions' stance on this is diametrically opposed to Trump's, right?
No, I don’t.
Is this just another of your infamous drive-by and drop-off comments to stir shit you are notoriously known for....never furnishing any confirming validations, only links to the opinions of others.?
So, since I don’t know....will you please explain Trump’s current stance on marijuana and show exactly what he said....and not what someone says he said. Except of course what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said today. I will accept that since it is her job to speak for Trump....a job which she performs excellently.
That damned Sessions cost me a pretty penny today. Every marijuana STOCK, plummeted today. I had my money almost doubled in 2.5 weeks... and now I'm only up about 15%.
I've gotta say, I'm not, nor have I ever been a fan of the federal government out trumping states rights (unless it's a national security issue like sanctuary cities).
That damned Sessions cost me a pretty penny today. Every marijuana STOCK, plummeted today. I had my money almost doubled in 2.5 weeks... and now I'm only up about 15%.
A temporary bump. Sessions only rescinded 0bama DoJ's deprioritization order. You still have to find a federal prosecutor in one of the pro-pot states to prosecute a case. So far, no takers and no fed in those states seems likely to pursue these cases.
DENVER (AP) – US attorney in Colorado: No change to marijuana enforcement despite Attorney General Jeff Sessions' shift on pot policy
Keep your holdings, consider increasing your investment.
Yeah, I'm not changing course... and I am gonna buy more while it's down. Even with the sell off, only one stock is lower than what I paid. I still have my original investment... what I lost was all my gain.
I dunno, you two dabbling in pot stocks, next thing you two will be spamming the LF sidebar with those FreeOfThoughtProject articles, just like Deckard.
I am not into pot stocks. I bought two pot stocks for a trial “look see” and I was in them only for a very short time. I am a “Swing Trader” and I go in and out of no fewer than 20 stocks in one day. Right now I am sitting with 32 stocks in my portfolio waiting for the market to open on Monday. It’s not that pot stocks were too volatile for my type trading, it’s just that there are only a couple or more pot stocks on the NYSE and AMEX. The rest are on different exchanges which do not permit stop orders. Since it is difficult for me to monitor so many stocks at one time. I must rely on stop orders for loss prevention. I post on LF during the day when there is a lull in my actions. I do most of my research at night and that is why you may notice I post on LF at odd hours sometimes, all during the night.
Whle I am not into pot stocks, I am into stocks that I call “double bangers” so I can safely have it both ways. For example Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (SMG) is a dual play stock for me. I was into it pretty heavily until the “Sessions Scare” kicked in the other day and my stop loss order at 96% kick me out of it. It is one that remains on my computerized watch list so I still automatically follow it throughout the day and I will no doubt buy back into it soon. It doesn’t matter at what point I buy in. Besides being a swing trader, I am also considered a momentum trader. As long as a stock gains 1% in one day and 5% in the past five days....I am a buyer and immediately place a stop loss order. Sometimes it is hard to find the amount of those stocks I need to have in one day, so I do have to adjust those perimeters. My minimum entry point into a particular stock is that the graph show constant upwards movement with at least two gain days.
I constantly move my stop loss orders up each time the stock moves up at always only a 4% loss factor. I never place a sell order, I let my stop loss order automatically take care of that if and when the stock drops 4%. My biggest goal is to “preserve capital.” That may sound stupid for someone who wants to make money off stocks. But it is a great principle. I started using it many years ago....long before I saw the trading gurus preaching it on the Internet.
There is no doubt more here that you wanted, or needed, to know....but I had the time and I just started to ramble since I have nothing to do at this moment. Please forgive me if I have bored you.
DISCLAIMER: I am neither a registered stock broker nor a registered financial adviser and all the information I posted to you here is in no way to be considered as recommendations. It’s just that you sounded interested, so I decided to share some personal information with you....that’s all.
There is no doubt more here that you wanted, or needed, to know....but I had the time and I just started to ramble since I have nothing to do at this moment. Please forgive me if I have bored you.
I've known several guys who follow a similar philosophy and trading pattern. One has done very well with it in currency trading. My brother has done pretty well with a similar trading pattern.
I like hearing what others use as their metric for deciding when to buy and when to sell.
