Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
- Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned on Wednesday. In the following hours, stocks of marijuana companies soared.
- The interim attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, has expressed support for a law that legalizes a non-psychoactive form of cannabis, though it’s unclear where he stands on medicinal or recreational legalization of other forms of the drug.
- Six out of 10 Americans support legalization — up from 3 out 10 in 2000.
It’s been an exceptional week for marijuana. On Tuesday, Missouri and Utah voted to legalize medicinal cannabis, while Michigan became the first Midwestern state, and the tenth in the country, to legalize recreational marijuana.
However, the biggest boost for legalization-minded Americans and the businesses that grow and sell marijuana came on Wednesday when former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced out of office by the person who nominated him, President Donald Trump.
Sessions, a vocal supporter of the war on drugs, had been a thorn in the side of drug law reform advocates and the country’s burgeoning and quasi-legal cannabis industry, which generates upward of $5 billion in annual revenue.
“He’s been an absolute disgrace on drug policy,” Michael Collins, interim director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, told NBC News.
Sessions made his views on marijuana abundantly clear.
“Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” he said in an April 2016 Senate hearing. “We need grown-ups in charge in Washington to…
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