Attorney General Jeff Sessions is no fan of marijuana. On that we can all agree. On Tuesday, Eric Holder, who served as attorney general under President Barack Obama from 2009-2015, chimed in on Sessions’ reefer madness by claiming that he has an “almost obsession with marijuana.”
Holder, speaking at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, defended the previous administration’s decision to provide states some autonomy in creating their own marijuana laws. According to a story by the Washington Examiner‘s Steven Nelson:
Sessions frequently criticizes marijuana use and legalization in public remarks, and his department is reviewing whether to revise or more strictly enforce the 2013 Cole Memo that outlined federal enforcement priorities.
“I think that was a really good policy,” Holder said. “The Sessions almost obsession with marijuana I think is the thing that’s put the Justice Department in this strange place.”
Over the years, Sessions, indeed, has attacked cannabis and those who use it. Just last year, his “Good people don’t smoke marijuana” statement was heard loud and clear by patients who have used cannabis as a therapy for multiple ailments.
Here are a few more statements from Sessions regarding marijuana:
- ‘We need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized. It ought not to be minimized, that it’s in fact a very real danger. Lives will be impacted. Families will be broken up. Children will be damaged because of the difficulties their parents have, and people may be psychologically impacted the rest of their lives with marijuana.”
-  “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.”
- This drug [cannabis] is dangerous. You cannot play with it. It’s not funny.
- “I think one of [Obama’s]Â great failures, it’s obvious to me, is his lax treatment in comments on marijuana. … It reverses 20 years almost of hostility to drugs that began really when Nancy Reagan started ‘Just Say No.’ “
So you can where Holder is coming from when he talks about Sessions’ obsession. During his Tuesday speech, Holder reiterated his stance:Â “I think the policy we had in place was a good one: Let the states experiment with the notion that again we have these eight or nine federal factors and if you trigger one of these eight or nine factors the feds are going to be coming in.”
