U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions acknowledged before a key Senate panel on Wednesday that “there may well be some benefits from medical marijuana” and that it is “perfectly appropriate to study” cannabis.
But Sessions was also quick to dismiss a mounting body of evidence that legal marijuana access is associated with reduced opioid issues.
Acknowledging that he has seen some research indicating lower overdose deaths in states that allow cannabis in some form and that “science is very important,” the attorney general said he doesn’t “believe that will be sustained in the long run.”
Sessions also indicated that the federal government would soon take steps to license more entities to legally grow marijuana for research.
“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 during an appearance before the Senate Appropriations Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee.
In 2016, the Drug Enforcement Administration enacted a new policy intended to license more research cultivators, and he agency has reportedly since received at least 25 applications to participate in the new program. But it has not yet acted on any of them and, according to the Washington Post, that is because top Justice Department officials have stepped in to prevent DEA from approving any proposals.
In his answers, Sessions indicated that he thought opening up research could put the U.S. at risk of violating international drug treaties.
The “treaty requires certain controls in that process,” he said, adding that in his view, the “previous proposal violated that treaty.”
Sessions was responding to a line of questioning from U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who said that “we’re all evolving on this issue, some quicker than others.”
There are “good civil rights reasons for decriminalizing and pursing a federalist approach around this,” the senator added.
Sessions did not offer a specific timeline for releasing a revised research cultivation approval process.
And despite acknowledging cannabis’s medical potential, he said he takes issue with the way it is currently consumed.
“Medical marijuana, as one physician told me, ‘whoever heard of taking a medicine when you have no idea how much medicine you’re taking and ingesting it in the fashion that it is, which is in itself unhealthy?’” Sessions said.
Advocates welcomed Session’s admission that marijuana can help patients, but said that the Justice Department needed to act on allowing research as well as make broader policy changes sooner rather than later.
“Over two million registered medical marijuana patients throughout the legal markets can attest to the attorney general’s newfound revelation,” NORML Political Director Justin Strekal told Marijuana Moment in an interview. “What we need is better research on consumer grade marijuana and lawful protections for legal markets, not further deliberation from the DoJ.”
Later in the Senate hearing, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) cited a resolution approved by Alaska state lawmakers urging the federal government to respect local marijuana laws. She also attempted to elicit a commitment from the attorney general not to oppose congressional efforts to reform federal cannabis laws.
“I can’t make a commitment about what position we would take at this time, until we know what’s exactly involved,” he replied.
Sessions said, however, that “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.”