US

Sessions Wants To Bring Back Reagan-Era Drug Policies

REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Alex Pfeiffer White House Correspondent
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Former “choom gang” member Barack Obama is out of the White House and Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants you to know smoking dope isn’t cool anymore.

In remarks before law enforcement officials in Richmond, Va. Wednesday, Sessions said that smoking marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than using heroin.

“I realize this may be an unfashionable belief in a time of growing tolerance of drug use.  But too many lives are at stake to worry about being fashionable.  I reject the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store,” the attorney general said.  “And I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana – so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that’s only slightly less awful.  Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs will destroy your life.”

Under President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, the Justice Department gave states the flexibility to sell legal recreational marijuana. Sessions’ Justice Department has yet to make it clear how they will enforce marijuana laws in states such as Colorado, and Sessions has said “states can pass the laws they choose.”

However, White House spokesman Sean Spicer once stated there will be “greater enforcement” of the federal laws on the books, and Sessions has said the DOJ “needs to be clear” that “marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized.”

This is distinctively different from President Obama, who in an exit interview said marijuana should be treated like alcohol and cigarettes.

Sessions also advocated in his Wednesday speech for a return of anti-drug PSAs from the 1980s and 1990s.

“In the ’80s and ’90s, we saw how campaigns stressing prevention brought down drug use and addiction.  We can do this again.  Educating people and telling them the terrible truth about drugs and addiction will result in better choices,” Sessions said. “We can reduce the use of drugs, save lives and turn back the surge in crime that inevitably follows in the wake of increased drug abuse.”