Attorney General Jeff Sessions set-off a firestorm of controversy this week when he told U.S. Attorneys that marijuana is still illegal under federal law. That it is controversial for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to enforce the law on the books is laughable. The Left is so unhinged; they applauded Eric Holder’s and Loretta Lynch’s lawlessness, yet now they are appalled that an attorney general would actually enforce the laws passed by Congress and signed by the president. This week’s decision by the office of the Attorney General has more to do with the preservation of our Constitutional form of government than it does with pot smokers, a fact lost on our liberal friends.

In incensed outrage at Jeff Sessions, the Left has embraced something out of convenience that it has normally denounced: states’ rights. When the Obama Administration was nationalizing America’s healthcare system, nationalizing same-sex marriage by prodding the Supreme Court, dismantling religious liberty, and ordering schools to maintain gender neutral bathroom policies, liberals did not give a flip about federalism. Now, states that have legalized pot in spite of federal law are in legal limbo, and liberals are up in arms about states’ rights. It’s a complete farce.

Federal laws prohibiting the recreational use of marijuana were first passed in 1937, and pot has been illegal ever since. In spite of a recent flurry of articles, ads, and opinion pieces, it seems that misinformation about marijuana is at an all-time high (pun intended). For starters, today’s pot isn’t the stuff of Woodstock legend; these products are stronger, more addictive, and more
likely THC than natural weed. Additionally, Harvard brain expert Bertha Madras has indicated that marijuana primes the brain for addiction to other prescription and non-prescription drugs. Recreational marijuana is dangerous, and states that are recreationally legalizing it are making a mistake.

In addition to making a mistake with regard to public safety, recreational legalization creates a legal conundrum. With federal law presently preempting state by state legalization, the first step the recreational marijuana movement must take is to repeal the federal prohibition by congressional action. According to one U.S. House leader, there are less than 100 votes in the House of Representatives for such a measure. Without federal legalization of recreational marijuana, citizens in states like California and Colorado are skating on thin ice when it comes to opening marijuana businesses and / or carrying marijuana across state lines.

If the pot lobby wants to expand recreational legalization, they should first try to repeal the federal prohibition, though that seems unlikely in the near term. The Left certainly should not try and sound like conservatives who care about states rights in an attempt to deceive the American people. We are all smart enough to know that the political ideology of statism and economic collectivism isn’t suddenly concerned with federalism just because they want to roll a doobie.