Attorney General Jeff Sessions is rescinding the Obama-era policy that had paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country, sources tell The Associated Press.
Sessions will instead let federal prosecutors decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law, people with knowledge of the situation say. An announcement is expected today.
The move by President Donald Trump’s attorney general likely will add to the confusion about whether it’s OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states where pot is legal, since the long-standing federal law prohibits it.
Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and has blamed it for spikes in violence, had been expected to ramp up enforcement. The Obama administration in 2013 announced it would not stand in the way of states that legalize marijuana, so long as officials acted to keep it from migrating to places where it remained outlawed and out of the hands of criminal gangs and children.
Sessions is rescinding that memo, written by then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, which had cleared up some of the uncertainty about how the federal government would respond as states began allowing sales for recreational and medical purposes.
