U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) convened a hearing yesterday to investigate whether or not the Justice Department has dropped the ball on the enforcement of cannabis prohibition.
Grassley quickly made known his opinion on the matter — “The Department of Justice decided to all but abandon the enforcement of federal law relating to the possession, cultivation, and distribution of marijuana,” he said.
Furthermore, speakers at the hearing consisted largely of well-known prohibitionists, and the hearing focused almost exclusively on the potential drawbacks of loosening state or federal marijuana laws. After seeing the agenda for the day, the Drug Policy Alliance issued statements describing the event as a “sham hearing” and a “one-sided prohibitionist party.”
In a climax of the day’s many shortsighted prohibitionist comments, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said that the government needs to educate people “that this drug is dangerous, you cannot play with it, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about,” and also should “send that message with clarity that good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
For more information about the hearing, see Christopher Ingraham’s report for The Washington Post.
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