Newly-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions reiterated his belief on Monday in cannabis prohibition, citing unfounded claims about the policy.
Sessions told reporters that analysts have demonstrated a link between marijuana legalization and crime, despite the destruction of black markets brought about by the move.
“We’re seeing real violence around that,” he said, according to Politico. “Experts are telling me there’s more violence around marijuana than one would think and there’s big money involved.”
The Attorney General did not cite which experts he had been speaking to, according to the Politico report. But he claimed the violence was linked to industry “strong-arm tactics.”
“You can’t sue somebody for drug debt,” Sessions said.
Numerous studies have found no link whatsoever between cannabis legalization and violent crime. Months after Colorado enacted legalized recreational use in 2014, the Denver Police Department reported a quarterly drop in violent crime and property crime.
Pro-legalization advocates reacted to the remarks by noting how Sessions’ claims about mob tactics actually make the case against War on Drugs-style policies.
“By talking about marijuana and violence, the Attorney General is inadvertently articulating the strongest argument that exists for legalization,” Marijuana Majority chair Tom Angell said, according to The Huffington Post. “The only connection between marijuana and violence is the one that exists when illegal sellers battle it out for profits in the black market.”
The comments came the same day that Sessions dismissed Obama-era Justice Department studies on systemic abuses committed by police in Chicago and Ferguson, Mo. The Attorney General claimed the reports were “pretty anecdotal and not so scientifically based.”
“You have 800,000 police in America. Imagine a city of 800,000 people,” Sessions said. “There’s going to be some crime in it, some people are going to make errors.”
The study on Chicago, which was based on thousands of interviews and thousands of records covering half of a decade, concluded that the department had “systematic deficiencies,” and engaged in “racially discriminatory conduct.”
Black residents of Ferguson, the Justice Department concluded, suffered disproportionately under “nearly every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system.” The study also found Ferguson cops “focus on revenue rather than public safety needs.”
Despite Sessions’ personal dislike of marijuana legalization, the policy has ballooned in popularity over the past decade. In October 2016, 57 percent of Americans told Pew Research that they backed full legalization—roughly the percentage of Americans that had said they were in favor of prohibition, in 2006.
Sessions did not make any such claims about ties between marijuana and violence during his confirmation hearing last month. He has a long history of hitting out at cannabis legalization, claiming last year, for example, that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
