Trump Administration Expected to Announce Marijuana Crackdown, Possibly Link Usage to Violent Crimes

Attorney General Previously Called Marijuana Usage ‘Slightly Less Awful’ Than Using Heroin

Donald Trump’s Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is expected to announce its crackdown on marijuana usage next week.

As The Hill reported, the expected crackdown is one that “criminal justice reform advocates fear will link marijuana to violent crime and recommend tougher sentences for those caught growing, selling and smoking the plant.”

They further cited a memo that Sessions sent to U.S. Attorneys and component heads on the work of the task force at the Department of Justice (DOJ), which requested review of “existing policies in the areas of charging, sentencing, and marijuana to ensure consistency with the Department’s overall strategy in reducing violent crime with the Administration goals and priorities.”

“The task force revolves around reducing violent crime and Sessions and other DOJ officials have been out there over the last month and explicitely the last couple of weeks talking about how immigration and marijuana increases violent crime,” Inimai Chettiar, director of the Bennan Center’s Justice Program told the outlet.

“Our attorney general is giving everyone whiplash by trying to take us back to the 1960s,” California Democratic Representative Jared Huffman recently told The New York Times.

In March, Sessions called marijuana usage a “life-wrecking crisis,” calling it “only slightly less awful” than using heroin:

“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.”

Mirroring these assertions, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced last August that it would not reschedule its classification of marijuana under the Controlled Substance Act, keeping the drug in the same class as heroin despite a majority of Americans favoring its legal use.

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license