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U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions Admits Medical Cannabis May Have Benefits

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[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]T[/dropcap]oday U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions admitted that “there may well be some benefits from medical marijuana” at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies.

The Senate panel was broadcast live on Wednesday.

Sessions also hinted at removing barriers for certain facilities, allowing more research on medical cannabis. He said that it is “perfectly appropriate” to study the efficacy of medical cannabis. “We are moving forward and we will add fairly soon, I believe, the paperwork and reviews will be completed and we will add additional suppliers of marijuana under the controlled circumstances,” he said.

Sessions, however, dismissed the idea that medical cannabis can help curb the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic. There were also other highlights. Sessions clarified the U.S. Department of Justices’ new focus, saying “our priorities are fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine. People are dying by massive amounts as a result of those drugs. We have very few, almost zero, virtually zero small marijuana cases. But if they are a big deal and illegally acting, and violating federal law, our agents may work that case.”

It’s especially unusual to hear positive comments about cannabis coming from Jeff Beauregard Sessions, who has vehemently opposed any sort of cannabis legalization efforts in the past. The U.S. Department of Justice, for instance, has blocked dozens of recent applications to license cannabis cultivators for research purposes.

For a refresher, here’s the shortlist of negative things Sessions has said about cannabis in the past:

“Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” Sessions famously said.

“We need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it’s in fact a very real danger,” Sessions said at a 2017 Senate drug hearing.

The Ku Klux Klan was “OK until I found out they smoked pot” Sessions said decades ago.

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