Weed stays winning

I have been smoking weed for years, but I still cough. I mean like a lot. What can I do to stop?

—X. Pector-Rant

No need to take a giant hit and hold it as long as possible. It just irritates your lungs and makes you uncomfortable. Use a clean glass pipe, find a nicely cured strain and take an easy inhale and exhale.

So, Jeff Sessions is rescinding the Cole memo. What does that even mean? Is it bad?

—N. Trap Enoor

It means that U.S. Attorney General Jeff “I thought the KKK was okay until I found out they smoked pot” Sessions doesn’t respect the people’s will. The Cole memo was implemented by the Obama administration as a way to allow states (“the laboratories of democracy”) to implement cannabis legalization laws without federal interference. Sessions’ rescinding of this policy threatens to return us to the days of the DEA raiding cannabis shops and arresting legitimate business owners. Rescinding the Cole memo also allows the DEA and the U.S. Department of Justice to start threatening property owners with asset forfeiture for renting spaces to cannabis businesses. Rescinding the Cole memo is a bad idea, especially since 64 percent of Americans think that weed should be legal. Of course, big pharma (opioid sales and overdoses decrease in states with legal weed), big booze (alcohol sales diminish when weed is legal) and the private prison industry are all against legalization, so of course Sessions will try to keep weed as illegal as possible, common sense and science be damned.

However, weed stays winning. Jeff Sessions’ plan to drive us back into the days of reefer madness is doomed to fail. Eight states have legalized marijuana outright. At least 20 other states have legalized medical marijuana. The feds don’t have the resources to stop everyone. Hell, they don’t even have the political support to stop everyone. Even Republicans have had enough. Here is a quote from California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s website: “How ironic that the attorney general has long championed states’ rights when it suits other parts of his agenda! More than that, by attacking the clear will of the American people, the attorney general contradicts President Trump’s campaign pledges to leave medical and recreational marijuana questions for the states to decide.” Representative Rohrabacher is also a co-author of the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment to the U.S. budget that Trump signed into law last week. This amendment prohibits the DEA from using resources to go after state-legal cannabusinesses. And, California State Rep Reginald Jones-Sawyer has reintroduced Assembly Bill 1578, which would keep California law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal authorities going after state-legal cannabusinesses. I wouldn’t worry too much about Sessions coming after the weed in California, but I would keep a few protest signs in my car just in case.