Indopedia All Things Marijuana
The key to understanding the Trump administration’s approach to policy, it seems, is to look at what most Americans want and then imagine the opposite.
Consider the new guidance on marijuana that Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued last week, which reverses Obama-era policy and gives prosecutors more leeway to enforce federal laws against the drug in states where it is legal. Mr. Sessions has been on a lifelong crusade against the plant, which he considers the root of many of society’s ills.
And yet more than six in 10 Americans, and seven in 10 of those under 30, believe marijuana should be legal, twice as many as in 2000. Three-quarters of the public believe the federal government should not prosecute the drug’s sale or use in states where it is legal.
In other words, the new policy is deeply unpopular. Many of its harshest critics are members of the president’s own party, who expressed outrage at the reversal of Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to leave the matter to the states.
Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado, where legalized marijuana has spawned a $1 billion industry, threatened to block all nominees to the Justice Department until the new policy is…
