America’s glorious pot party may be coming to an end.
At Thursday’s White House press conference, Sean Spicer hinted that the feds may take action against recreational marijuana use. “Well I think that’s a question for the Department of Justice,” Spicer said. “I do believe you’ll see greater enforcement of it. Because again there’s a big difference between the medical use … that’s very different than the recreational use, which is something the Department of Justice will be further looking into.”
The Justice Department is currently headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for not enforcing federal marijuana laws in states that voted for legalization.
Spicer even compared recreational marijuana use to the opioid addiction crisis. Yikes!
“There’s two distinct issues here: medical marijuana and recreational marijuana,” Spicer said. “Medical marijuana, I’ve said before the president understands the pain and suffering many people go through who are facing terminal diseases, and the comfort that some of these drugs, including medical marijuana, can give to them.
“That’s something that Congress in 2011 put in an appropriations bill, saying the Department of Justice wouldn’t be funded to go after those folks. There’s a big difference between that and recreational marijuana, and I think when you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people. There is still a federal law that we need to abide by when it comes to recreational marijuana.”
Recreational marijuana is currently legal in eight states and Washington, D.C. Marijuana is currently a $6 billion industry in the United States and the economies of cities like Denver are already tightly wound around the pot trade.
Abruptly uprooting this industry is not going to do any favors for states’ economies, not to mention the thousands of small business owners who have staked their fortunes on the industry.
In a recent Gallup Poll public opinion in favor of marijuana legalization is at a whopping 60 percent. Where is the political capital in going after weed?
The vibe in the room has seriously gone harsh, brah.
