By Kurtis Lee | Los Angeles Times
He described marijuana as a “very real danger” and has said its effects are “only slightly less awful” than those of heroin. Once, during a drug hearing when he was a Senator, he said he wanted to send a clear message: “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
So when Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions was ousted recently, a collective sigh of relief rose up from proponents of legalized pot — activists, politicians, investors — who felt targeted by the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
Sessions’s departure has translated into spiking stocks for cannabis companies and a reset of sorts for the legalization movement, which, since 2012, has seen nearly a dozen states pass recreational pot measures.