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He described marijuana as a “very real danger” and has said its effects are “only slightly less awful” than those of heroin. Once, during a drug hearing when he was a Senator, he said he wanted to send a clear message: “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” So when Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions was ousted recently, a collective sigh of relief rose up from proponents of legalized pot — activists, politicians, investors — who felt targeted by the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Sessions’s departure has translated into spiking stocks for cannabis companies and a reset of sorts for the legalization...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a five-state coalition that on Thursday won an $839 million judgment against the federal government in an Obamacare lawsuit, a massive blow to the Obama administration’s namesake legislation. The Affordable Care Act (ACA, better known as Obamacare) requires medical providers to pay a Health Insurance Provider Fee (HIPF). Even though the ACA exempts states from paying that fee when providing health care, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the Obama era created a regulation requiring states to pay the fee anyway, a fee that is styled as a tax...

Senator Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts, is in the headlines for joining with Senator Cory Gardner, a Republican who represents Colorado, to introduce the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States Act. That legislation would, as Warren put it in a tweet, “let states, territories, & tribes decide for themselves how best to regulate marijuana — without federal interference.” Justice Thomas is Warren’s natural ally on the issue. He wrote an emphatic dissent in the 2005 Supreme Court case Gonzalez v. Raich. Alberto Gonzalez was President George W. Bush’s attorney general, and Angel Raich is an Oakland, Calif., woman who...

President Trump said he likely will support a congressional effort to end the federal ban on marijuana, a major step that would reshape the pot industry and end the threat of a Justice Department crackdown. Trump’s remarks put him sharply at odds with Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions on the issue. The bill in question, pushed by a bipartisan coalition, would allow states to go forward with legalization unencumbered by threats of federal prosecution. Trump made his comments to a gaggle of reporters Friday morning just before he boarded a helicopter on his way to the G-7 summit in Canada. His...

CNN Refuses to Show This Hillary Video. Click Here to Watch Health Sciences Institute Ads by Revcontent Lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday aimed at resolving the long-running tension between states that legalized medical and recreational marijuana sales and the federal government, which still deems all use a federal crime. The bill, offered by Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., comes after President Trump's April assurance to Gardner that he would support reform. Gardner told reporters at a morning press conference that "I have spoken to the president today and that certainly was part of the conversation."

President Trump called Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner this week to tell him there will be no crackdown on states that legalized marijuana for recreational use. Trump also said he will support legislation to allow state autonomy under federal law, which currently makes pot possession for any reason outside limited research a crime. Gardner, a Republican, won the assurances by blocking Justice Department nominations after Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew the so-called Cole Memo in January.

Binge drinking across the United States is at an all time high. Yet, a new report from the Wall Street investment firm Cowen & Company shows that this dangerous alcoholic behavior is on the decline in states that have legalized the leaf in a manner similar to alcohol.It was just a month ago that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published new data suggesting that more Americans are now engaging in regular binge drinking. What was once considered a foolish exploit of College students has now apparently infiltrated citizens from every demographic and all walks of life. [...]But the investment analysts at...

WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors won't take on small-time marijuana cases, despite the Justice Department's decision to lift an Obama-era policy that discouraged U.S. authorities from cracking down on the pot trade in states where the drug is legal, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Saturday. Federal law enforcement lacks the resources to take on "routine cases" and will continue to focus on drug gangs and larger conspiracies, Sessions said, speaking at a Federalist Society event in Washington, D.C. The comments come after the Trump administration in January threw the burgeoning marijuana legalization movement into uncertainty by reversing the largely hands-off approach...

The hippies of the 70s are old. Time is merciless and none of us get out of here alive. My dad is a baby boomer born in 1944. He enjoyed his time as a 20 and 30 something in the '60s and '70s of America. It was a crazy time marked by free-love, tie-dyed shirts, pot-smoking, a free-wheeling youth, and the chaos of Vietnam. That was a long time ago. Until a year ago, my dad, now in his early 70s, was diagnosed with ParkinsonÂ’s Disease. My dad was a strong man who worked construction much of his life. His...

Gov. Phil Scott has signed Vermont's marijuana legalization bill into law. A Scott administration official tells WCAX the governor signed the bill shortly before 2 p.m. Monday. Scott is now the first governor in the country to sign marijuana legalization into law. Eight other states legalized marijuana through public referendums. In a letter to lawmakers, Scott said he signed the bill, H.511, with "mixed emotions." The bill allows Vermonters over the age of 21 to have an ounce of weed and to grow a few plants. Once signed, the new law goes into effect July 1.

<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Two Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to make medical marijuana legal in Tennessee, but only in oil-based products.</p> <p>Sen. Steve Dickerson of Nashville and Rep. Jeremy Faison of Cosby announced the bill's filing Thursday amid wide support for medical marijuana in state polls.</p>

You would think that the Justice Department has better things to do than to restart a federal war on marijuana or that it would want to stay away from interfering with the will of the people in the 29 states, plus the District of Columbia, that allow at least the medical use of marijuana. But you would be wrong. Thanks to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, we have now an emerging conflict between federal and state laws. That conflict should be resolved in favor of the states. When he was a senator, Sessions once said during a Senate hearing, "Good people...

When Winston Churchill's party lost an election in 1945, evicting him from the job of prime minister of Britain, his wife ventured that the defeat might be "a blessing in disguise." He replied, "Well, at the moment, it's certainly very well-disguised." For those who favor legalizing recreational and medical use of marijuana, there is plenty of bad news in Attorney General Jeff Sessions' decision to reverse the Justice Department's previous hands-off policy toward state experimentation. He ordered federal prosecutors "to enforce the laws enacted by Congress." That directive poses a threat to cannabis growers, dispensaries, investors and users who had...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is being attacked on both sides of the aisle for rescinding the Obama policy that opened the floodgates to marijuana addiction. Funded by libertarian billionaires such as the Koch brothers, pro-pot senators like Cory Gardner are demanding that AG Sessions stand down and continue Obama’s misguided policy. Sessions rescinded Obama’s command that the Department of Justice ignore federal law against marijuana production and sales, and instead Sessions instructed U.S. Attorneys to begin enforcing well-established federal statutes against large-scale cultivation and distribution of marijuana. These federal laws preempt state law, particularly in Colorado and California where a...

If you live in a place where recreational pot use is legal, you’re probably wondering whether you need to start worrying about getting prosecuted for it. The answer is probably not, at least according to initial indications from the dozen or so U.S. attorneys general who get to make that call. [...] Of the 13 U.S. attorneys presiding in the eight states with laws making recreational use legal, several have indicated they’re interested only in going after marijuana distributors or users with ties to crime or violence. [...]

Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a “cataclysmic mistake” by rescinding Obama-era federal marijuana policies, according to Roger Stone, President Trump’s former campaign adviser. Mr. Stone, 65, formed a bipartisan, pro-marijuana lobbying group earlier this year, the United States Cannabis Coalition, “dedicated to influencing federal level decision makers, including the president, so they honor state’s rights and state mandated marijuana laws as well as reform our antiquated and failed federal drug laws,” according to its website. Mr. Stone, the president’s campaign adviser through August 2015, criticized the attorney general’s recent decision to roll back marijuana protections during a luncheon Friday at...

Excerpts - Forty-six states — including Sessions' home state of Alabama — have legalized some form of medical marijuana in recent years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Eight of those states also allow recreational marijuana. The only legal protection now for medical marijuana growers, processors, sellers and users is a temporary measure sponsored by Republican California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Democratic Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer prohibiting the U.S. Department of Justice from using government funds to target them.

Former Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson reacted angrily to President Trump's apparent abandonment of a campaign pledge to leave pot policy to the states, saying he hopes the pivot ends Trump's shot at re-election. Johnson, who served two terms as a Republican governor of New Mexico, said the Trump administration is "grossly underestimating the anger this will create." "I hope it dooms his re-election. Trump promised to leave marijuana to the states," Johnson told the Washington Examiner.

We are supposedly a nation of laws, not men, but our lawmakers have ensured over the years that we are increasingly at the whim of men, elected or appointed, instead of the law. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has declared that he will reverse an Obama Administration position allowing states to decide on marijuana legalization. Now, local United States Attorneys will be empowered to decide. But neither the Obama Administration nor Jeff Sessions should do anything other than enforce the law, and federal law criminalizes marijuana. The solution here is not to ignore the federal law, but to repeal it. To...

Colorado’s top federal prosecutor said his office won’t alter its approach to enforcing marijuana crimes after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew a policy Thursday that allowed pot markets to emerge in states that legalized the drug. The statement by U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer came amid bipartisan outrage over Sessions’ decision to end the so-called Cole memorandum, which sharply limited what charges prosecutors could pursue in legal pot states. He will allow federal prosecutors to decide how aggressively to enforce longstanding federal law banning pot. Troyer said his office will continue to focus on “identifying and prosecuting those who create...