Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly may have spoken out of school earlier this week, when he told that portion of the American public sitting at home watching “Meet the Press” that marijuana was “not a factor” in the War on Drugs. It didn’t take long for his comments to show up in the headlines of every major news source on Monday morning. Kelly’s seemingly cavalier attitude toward marijuana may have rattled the head of the Justice Department, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, because by Tuesday morning, the former commander of U.S. Southern Command was singing a completely different tune with respect to his overall stance on cannabis.
“Let me be clear about marijuana. It is a potentially dangerous gateway drug that frequently leads to the use of harder drugs,” Kelly said in front of a crowd at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. “Its use and possession is against federal law and until the law is changed by the United States Congress, we in DHS, along with the rest of the federal government, are sworn to uphold all the laws that are on the books.”
How is it that Kelly’s position on pot was just so much more relaxed than anyone else in the Trump Administration? We imagine the moment that Kelly told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd that the solution to winning the drug war “is not arresting a lot of users,” Attorney General Sessions made his uneasy known.
What other explanation could there be for Kelly’s seemingly focused tirade on Tuesday, going well out of his way to ensure the people, the media and anyone else willing to listen, understands that his agency is, without a shadow of a doubt, opposed to all things marijuana.
Kelly even went as far as to threaten those people who try to sneak pot on planes, saying “When marijuana is found at aviation checkpoints and baggage screening, TSA personnel will take appropriate action.”
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He then went on to suggest that any illegal immigrant who has ever so much as looked at marijuana for more than a few seconds will be run out of the country on a fiery rail.
“Finally, ICE will continue to use marijuana possession, distribution and convictions as essential elements as they build their deportation, removal apprehension packages for targeted operations against illegal aliens,” Kelly said.
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