Jeff Sessions: “It’s Time to Get Tough Again” on Drug Sentencing
Attorney General Jeff Sessions says being soft on drug sentencing means “more violent crimes”, and that “it’s time to get tough again”.
On Friday the Washington Post published an op-ed from Attorney General Jeff Sessions detailing his position on America’s drug laws. Once again, he’s pushing for harsher sentences and escalating outdated and harmful drug war policies. Sessions notes that from 2011 to 2016, federal prosecutions for drug offenses fell by 23 percent, while the average sentence length for a convicted federal drug offender decreased 18 percent from 2009 to 2016. Many of this is due to Obama-era policies that reduce or end mandatory minimum sentencing, something Sessions is working to overturn.
“Cracking down on drug crimes with harsher sentences isn’t going to make us safer,” says Major Neill Franklin (Ret.), executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. “We already tried that. Drug war violence will diminish when we move the market into the legal sector and treat drug use as a health issue.”
Major Franklin believes that “Attorney General Sessions can expect a backlash – Americans do not want an escalation of archaic drug war policies.”
The full op-ed from Sessions can be viewed by clicking here.
