The powerful Senate Appropriations Committee delivered a disappointing blow to already beleaguered Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The Committee voted on Thursday to extend protections of state medical marijuana and industrial hemp laws against federal interference.
The vote was in defiance of a direct request from Sessions in May, when he asked Congress to eliminate the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which prevents the Justice Department from using federal funds to prosecute marijuana offenses in states that have passed medical marijuana laws.
Thankfully, Sessions’ extreme rhetoric was rejected.
“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,” Sessions wrote in the letter to Congress in May, first reported by MassRoots’ Tom Angell.
However, the Senate Appropriations Committee didn’t buy into Sessions’ skewed logic of linking medical marijuana to violence and heroin use.
The Committee rejected Sessions’ request and proceeded to approve the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat from Vermont.
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