Skip to main content

Jeff Sessions as Catalyst

Jeff Sessions, official portrait.jpg

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions arrived in the AG's office in February 2017 amidst a good deal of talk that he presented a danger to the state-legal marijuana industry. Sessions had built up quite a reputation in the US Senate as a "hawk" on the War on Drugs in general and pot in particular.

His tenure in that office, of one year and three quarters, was consumed with other controversies, and with the odd spectacle of the man who appointed him continually ridiculing him.

But he did make one significant MJ-related gesture. He rescinded the Cole Memorandum.  That is, he rescinded an Obama-era instruction that the D of J had issued to the district attorneys around the country to the effect that they should NOT bring charges against state legal marijuana use. One can infer that he was saying it was okay for prosecutors to bring such charges.

But he was not pressing them to do so, and in general they did not. The habit associated with the Cole Memorandum survived rescission.of benign neglect of the state systems persisted.

Now that we have months of hindsight on Sessions, we can conclude this about his pot hawkishness. Its chief effect was to catalyze the doves on Capitol Hill.

https://thefreshtoast.com/cannabis/elizabeth-warren-reveals-how-jeff-sessions-catalyzed-marijuana-legalization/

The catalyzing effect in turn helped legalize hemp.

If this is what is meant by the "deep state," then thank God for the deep state. If it is the "deep state" that decided NOT to continue a war on pot smokers and sellers, and not to resume a war despite what a political appointee desired, then the Deep State sometimes sides with liberty.

Okay, that doesn't sound very anarchistic of me. But in tough times one finds one's allies where they are.

Comments

  1. You're right that this is not very anarchistic. According to the article to which you link, Elizabeth Warren said, "The federal government needs to get out of the business of outlawing marijuana. States should make their own decisions about enforcing marijuana laws."

    But it is just as wrong for the states to lock up people for marijuana possession or distribution as it is for the federal government (except that each state's wrong affects fewer people than does the federal government's wrong). I believe that virtually all drug laws are unconstitutional. I'm not aware of any constitutional scholars who have made this point, but, because, as the Supreme Court has held, it is unconstitutional for the government to deny people the right to use birth control or to get abortions, it should be unconstitutional for it to tell anyone what to do with his or her body, including to put drugs into it, or to sell someone drugs to put into it. Where one's actions with respect to one's body affect others, then exceptions may be defensible. Mandatory vaccine laws are an example, as are requiring prescriptions for some drugs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "But it is just as wrong for the states to lock up people for marijuana possession or distribution as it is for the federal government." True. Still, in this matter the self-assertion of states HAS had a liberating effect for both users and suppliers. I'm perfectly happy to applaud that development, and happy with those (even in the deep state) who are willing to defend the ground it has won against backlash from the superficial state, or whatever one calls Sessions and his ilk in such a contrast.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

  Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave.   First, Plato  is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability.  I  only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak