Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) portrayed himself as the lead protagonist in a Reefer Madness sequel shot on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
The Senate’s Caucus on International Narcotics Control convened a hearing to examine the Department of Justice’s oversight of states that have legalized pot for recreational use. A government watchdog reported in February that the department was not collecting enough data to monitor efforts in Colorado and Washington state to tax and regulate cannabis.
But for Sessions, the real problem is abandoning the Drug War and its mass incarceration of individuals who do little harm to themselves and no harm to others.
“I can’t tell you how concerning it is for me, emotionally and personally, to see the possibility that we would reverse the progress that we’ve made,” Sen. Sessions said. “Lives will be impacted. Families will be broken up. Children will be damaged because of the difficulties their parents have, and children may be psychologically impacted for the rest of their lives with marijuana.”
FBI data released last September showed that there were more than 701,000 marijuana arrests nationwide in 2014—an increase for the first time since 2009. Nine out of ten of the arrests were for “possession only,” according to US News.
Sessions is the only US Senator to endorse Donald Trump for president, and, like the GOP frontrunner, he is no stranger to making comments untethered from reality. In December, Sessions defended Trump’s Muslim ban, suggesting that “strange and dangerous cults” justify the government applying religious tests to immigration enforcement.
“It’s not funny. It’s not something to laugh about,” Sessions said Tuesday, referring to weed (a substance that, in fact, can induce laughter). He added that effective enforcement hinges on sending a message that: “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) knocked the DOJ earlier this year for defying federal guidelines instructing it to collect data on states’ legalization regimes. Department officials “did not see a benefit” in documenting oversight procedures,” GAO stated in its report.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the co-chairs of the caucus, also criticized the DOJ for not taking a more aggressive posture in light of statewide legalization. As many as ten more states states could have legalization measures on the ballot in November.
“In my view, it appears the Department is simply trying not to live up to what its responsibility is,” Sen. Feinstein said in opening remarks.
Sen. Sessions, however, looked to place blame beyond the Justice Department. He wagged his finger at President Obama personally. “I think one of his great failures—it’s been obvious to me—is lax treatment and comment on marijuana,” Sessions claimed.
Drug reform advocates are likely to disagree with the Junior Senator from Alabama’s analysis, citing the numbers released in September, despite the fact that the Justice Department in 2013 did relax some of its marijuana enforcement actions in the wake of state-level measures ending prohibition.
“As long as we have these silly laws on the books, law enforcement resources will be wasted on enforcing them,” Mason Tvert, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, said in response to the FBI data release. “These numbers refute the myth that nobody actually gets arrested for using marijuana.”
President Obama’s own residence was the focus of recent pro-pot agitation. Over the weekend, protestors with the Washington, DC Cannabis Club gathered outside the gates of the White House with a 50-foot inflatable joint, and lit up their own spliffs in defiance of local ordinances preventing public use of the plant. They called on the administration to remove marijuana from its schedule of controlled substances.
At one point in his life, Barack Obama may have been more comfortable among the crowd of pot smokers than within the gates of his presidential residence. A 2012 biography of the president revealed that he was an avid weed user as a teenager. The President and his cannabis-smoking cohort of friends reportedly were called “The Choom Gang.”
