Taking another step to undo the previous administration’s every policy, Jeff Sessions on Jan. 4 rescinded three Obama-era memos that had suggested non-interference on marijuana in the states. This decisions was met with outcries from both Congress members and the public, but protests aside, one of the main issues with this move is that it targets the wrong problem. The ongoing opioid crisis is the most pressing drug issue of our time, one whose place on the list of government priorities should obviously and distantly surpass that of marijuana. What is more, because all the new plan does is allow federal prosecutors to individually decide how to handle marijuana in legal states, Sessions is mostly just talk here. It is a sorry state of things when the administration can’t even talk about the right issue.
In October of last year, President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a “public health emergency” but did not allocate any additional federal funds for relief efforts. Since then, opioid addiction has continued to ravage the lives of tens of thousands of people in the United States. It makes no sense that Sessions has chosen marijuana to be his target—he has a history of abhorrence toward the drug—when opioids are far more dangerous and destructive. Also, legalization of marijuana has high approval ratings from Americans and has spawned an enormous industry in Colorado that sends hefty tax revenues back to benefit projects like school construction each year. A policy that amounts to disapproving words from the attorney general on marijuana seems like a diversion from the important drug issue at hand, an issue that the Trump administration is not taking seriously enough.
While members of Congress, including Colorado Senator Cory Gardner, had to argue with Sessions about pot this week, the National Governors Association created a list of recommended actions to address opioids. The list included increased access to naloxone (an anti-overdose drug), closer watch over synthetic drug shipments to the U.S. and more support for the states from the federal government. This kind of bipartisanship and urgency is what is needed to take on the opioid crisis, and it is the kind of effort that must be strengthened at the federal level.
Sessions’s call on marijuana is a bad one on its own but even worse when set in front of the backdrop of a national opioid crisis. Sessions’s personal beef with pot must not get in the way of aid for communities struggling with addiction. This is the actual drug problem the Trump administration needs to confront.
