The AP reported on Thursday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, America’s biggest narc, will rescind Obama-era directives that instituted policies favorable to states that have legalized marijuana.
The Cole memo, which was issued in 2013 and is the main of three directives Sessions will announce he’s rescinding today, was intended to clear up questions as to how the federal government—which still outlaws pot—would deal with states that had legalized the drug. In essence, the memo directed a hands-off approach, with the federal government staying out of the states’ way so long as officials made sure to keep marijuana from migrating across state lines and out of the hands of minors and criminal enterprises.
In many states, the legal marijuana industry is already booming; Sessions’ move will, as the AP reports, “add to confusion about whether it’s OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states where pot is legal.”
The decision is also antithetical to conservatives’ professed love of federalism. Of course, the right doesn’t really care about states rights, at least not when it impedes their goal of criminalizing and terrorizing unrepresented communities, which is what a renewed crackdown on marijuana would do. And as the Daily Beast reported on Wednesday, one marijuana policy adviser to Sessions has professed he wants doctors to be able to drug test everyone.
The one silver lining, however, is that the move will likely prove to be politically unpopular, as 64% of Americans favor marijuana legalization.