Massachusetts Marijuana Shops Go Cash-Only With Fear of Federal Crackdown

Officials however wouldn’t say whether federal prosecutors would target marijuana shops and legal growers, nor would they speculate on whether pot prosecutions would increase. Schedule I drugs must have no acceptable medical use, as marijuana surely does, and a high potential for abuse.

That rider, called the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment, expires January 19.

Rep. Niki Tsongas said Wednesday that Congress must find a way to reconcile state and federal laws.

This directly impacts the 29 states that have legalized medical marijuana. “States will continue to move forward”.

The measure, which is expected to be debated in the Senate this year, declares that citizens with valid state permits to carry concealed handguns – as well as those who live in several other states that don’t require permits to carry – can travel with their weapons nationwide without fear of prosecution. “We have also prosecuted large-scale marijuana distribution organizations and did so even while operating under the recently rescinded DOJ guidance”.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent decision to roll back an Obama administration directive on marijuana prosecutions has reshaped the battlefield in the war on drugs. We are a nation of laws and not men.

Denver-based U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer has indicated that he will not change the way his office treats marijuana. “We need to factor that into the way that we think about it”. Sessions, the first USA senator to officially endorse Trump during his 2016 campaign, was nominated by the president for the AG position shortly after the election.

“Despite backwards moves by the Trump administration, I will continue to protect cancer patients, kids with epilepsy, veterans with PTSD and all Pennsylvanians seeking relief from legal medical marijuana”, Wolf said. Sessions, who has always been an outspoken critic of marijuana legalization, wrote a series of letters to the governors of Washington, Oregon, and Alaska expressing grave concerns over each state’s ability to comply with the Cole Memo guidelines.

A 16-year veteran of the Justice Department who took over as US attorney late last month, Lelling said this is “a straightforward rule of law issue” and said he will proceed on a case-by-case basis to determine whether a case is worthy of expending “limited federal resources” to pursue. “The question is what he’s going to replace that guidance with”.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the actions by Sessions and the Department of Justice “reckless” and said it “disrupts the ability of states to enforce their own drug policies and puts our public health and safety at risk”.

Additionally, respondents believe fairly overwhelmingly that marijuana laws should not be determined at the federal level, with only 32 percent agreeing that federal law should rule the issue.

Let me tell you what is certain: I will defend the will of the voters in my state.

The directive leaves in place a key prohibition: VA providers are still not permitted to refer veterans to state-approved medical marijuana programs, since the drug is illegal under federal law, with no accepted medical use. “And so I don’t want to see that national trend working its way into Arkansas, and federal enforcement is an important part of where we go as a country”. “And I guarantee you all the tax money the state of Maine from medical marijuana really helps people all around”.