New Attorney General said KKK was “Ok” Until He Learned they Smoked Cannabis

New Attorney General said KKK was “Ok” Until He Learned they Smoked Cannabis

President-elect Donald Trump has selected Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as the next attorney general of the United States. Sessions was the first sitting U.S. Senator to endorse Trump for president.

“Jeff Sessions is a drug war dinosaur, which is the last thing the nation needs now,” says Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Those who counted on Donald Trump’s reassurance that marijuana reforms ‘should be a state issue’ will be sorely disappointed. And not just Democrats but the many Republicans as well who favor rolling back the war on drugs had better resist this nomination.”

Sessions, who once said that the Ku Klux Klan was, “OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana,” has a track record of opposing cannabis law reform. Earlier this year, Sessions spoke out against legalization in a Senate hearing and urged the government to send the message to the public that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

In 1986 during a hearing for a potential judgeship, a former assistant U.S. attorney, Thomas Figures (who is black), testified that Sessions called him “boy” and told him to be careful about what he says to “white folks.”

“Donald Trump’s decision heralds a return to the worst days of the drug war,” said Bill Piper, Senior Director of Drug Policy Alliance’s Office of National Affairs. “Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp’ but he’s gone to the very bottom of the drug war barrel for this pick.”