Trump Administration Takes Step That Could Threaten Marijuana Legalization Movement<br />The president’s position hasn’t changed, but he does strongly believe that we have to enforce federal law.”<br />Kate Brown of Oregon, a Democrat, said in an interview<br />that she was still exploring her options, but that the net effect of Mr. Sessions’s move was to “rip the framework from underneath us.”<br />Marijuana has become an important industry in Oregon, she said, with 19,000 new jobs, many in rural areas,<br />and $100 million in state tax revenue over the past year and a half put toward schools, law enforcement and other programs.<br />WASHINGTON — The viability of the multibillion-dollar marijuana legalization movement was thrown into new doubt on Thursday when the Trump administration freed prosecutors to more aggressively enforce federal laws against the drug in states<br />that have decriminalized its production and sale, most recently California.<br />“It is the mission of the Department of Justice to enforce the laws of the United States,<br />and the previous issuance of guidance undermines the rule of law,” he said in a statement.<br />In 2013, after voters in Colorado and Washington State voted to decriminalize marijuana for recreational use, the<br />Justice Department deliberated about how to handle the resulting disconnect between state and federal law.<br />“This brings states together around issues of freedom, individual liberty, states’ rights,”<br />he said in an interview, “all of the principles that transcend red and blue.”<br />California began allowing the sale of recreational marijuana on Monday, joining Alaska, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
