Pennsylvania Governor to US Attorney General: Back Off!
Surrounded by medical marijuana patients and advocates, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signs Senate Bill 3 on April 17, 2016.
In a recent letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf wrotea pointed letter regarding the Department of Justice and its posturing to implement a crackdown of lawful state medical marijuana programs.
The full letter:
It recently came to light that Jeff Sessionssent a private letter to Congressional leadership requesting that the agency be permitted to target and prosecute state-licensed medical cannabis facilities, currently prohibited by a spending rider known as the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment.
I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime, Sessions wrote, The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.
Jeff Sessions actually seems to believe that lawful medical marijuana patients, i.e. sick people, are causing the violent crime and contributing to transnational drug trafficking.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was questioned about federal marijuana policy during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this weekand he brought up current DOJ policy and left the door wide open to a potential crackdown.
Jim Cole tried to deal with it in that memorandum and at the moment that memorandum is still in effect. Maybe there will be changes to it in the future but were still operating under that policy which is an effort to balance the conflicting interests with regard to marijuana, stated Rosenstein, So I can assure you that is going to be a high priority for me as the U.S. Attorneys come on board to talk about how to deal with that challenge in the states that have legalized or decriminalized marijuana, whether it be for recreational or medical use
The Cole Memo, is a Justice Department memorandum, authored by US Deputy Attorney General James Cole in 2013 to US attorneys in all 50 states directs prosecutors not to interfere with state legalization efforts and those licensed to engage in the plants production and sale, provided that such persons do not engage in marijuana sales to ...
