title:  Trump Administration Gets Ready To Come After Cannabis (DETAILS)
text: Because there s totally nothing else better for the Trump administration to do, it s about to crack down on marijuana users. Attorney General Jeff Sessions won t find much support from voters on this as support to legalize marijuana has risen to an all time high.Sessions leads the amateur president s Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety which is expected to release a report next week. Critics are concerned that the report will try to link weed to violent crime and recommend tougher sentences. And there is no link to violent crime and smoking weed.The Hill reports:Sessions sent a memo in April updating the U.S. Attorney s Offices and Department of Justice Department (DOJ) component heads on the work of the task force, which he said would be accomplished through various subcommittees. In the memo, Sessions said he has asked for initial recommendations no later than July 27. Task Force subcommittees will also undertake a review of existing policies in the areas of charging, sentencing, and marijuana to ensure consistency with the Department s overall strategy on reducing violent crime and with Administration goals and priorities,  he wrote.Clearly, critics aren t wrong to be concerned of Sessions implementing tougher sentences for smoking weed. The task force revolves around reducing violent crime and Sessions and other DOJ officials have been out there over the last month and explicitly the last couple of weeks talking about how immigration and marijuana increases violent crime,  Inimai Chettiar, the director of the Brennan Center s Justice Program said.Sessions is going after weed, you know, because the  war on drugs  worked out so well last time.Back in May, he penned a letter to Congressional leaders. I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,  Sessions wrote in the letter.We re not sure what weed has to do with the opioid epidemic sweeping across America, a problem which the Trump administration has failed to address.On Wednesday, Sessions managed to outrage both Democrats and Republicans with his controversial plans to increase civil asset forfeiture.Local law enforcement leaders don t feel that a crackdown is necessary. From a practitioner s point of view, marijuana is not a drug that doesn t have some danger to it, but it s not the drug that s driving violent crime in America,  said Ronal Serpas, the former superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department who co-chairs Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration. That s not the drug with which we see so much death and destruction on the streets of America. Crack and powdered cocaine, heroin and opioids is where we re seeing people die on street corners fighting over territory or control,  he added.The states rights issue that Republicans have vigorously touted seems to go against what Sessions is about to do.While on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to leave marijuana legalization up to the states but he appears to have flip-flopped on that issue, too.Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images.