As President Trump considers a new Attorney General to replace Sessions, we request he nominate someone who is willing to pursue a pragmatic approach to drug policy — specifically, Medical Marijuana legalization.
 
We also request that the United States Senate’s review of any nominees include their willingness to consider Medical Marijuana as a contributor to stemming the existing, and growing, opioid epidemic.
 
Sessions’ treatment of Marijuana inhibited implementation of a sound, comprehensive drug policy by treating Marijuana as an evil threat rather than a substance with widely acknowledged medicinal uses. Instead of focusing on a broader approach to reducing opioid overdoses, exceeding 40,000 a year, he ramped up efforts to enforce federal law to the letter by prosecuting Marijuana as an illegal Schedule 1 drug under the Controlled Substances Act - regardless of state law.
 
Those actions ran against the tide of rising voter support, further emphasized by victories for Marijuana this past Tuesday.  Voters in Utah and Missouri joined 31 other states that had already passed legal Medical Marijuana, demonstrating a steady momentum towards Marijuana policy reform in the United States.
 
A record high 64% of Americans now support legalizing Marijuana at the federal level, including 51% of Republicans, according to a recent Gallup poll. Even in deep-red Oklahoma, voters recently overwhelmingly approved a Medical Marijuana law through a ballot initiative that was opposed by the entire state GOP establishment.
 
Earlier in his campaign (in October of 2015) President Trump announced his support of Medical Marijuana at a campaign rally, saying: "The marijuana thing is such a big thing. I think medical should happen—right? Don’t we agree? I think so. ... I think that should be a state issue, state-by-state."
 
Additionally, the Senate has shown bipartisan support for legalizing Medical Marijuana through the introduction of the STATES Act and the CARES Act.
 
Finally, the United States Senate was designed to protect states rights through equal representation of two members per state. This purpose, combined with the reality that two-thirds of the states in our country have legalized Marijuana to some degree, demands that the Senate confirm an Attorney General who is favorable to moving Medical Marijuana into mainstream treatment for medical needs.

Efforts to oppose legalizing Medical Marijuana have failed at the state level, resulting in some cases of poorly enforced laws. Both the Administration and Congress need to be proactively moving forward with legalizing Medical Marijuana to benefit patients and protect children by working on fair and effective laws and regulations. This can't be done by nominating and confirming an Attorney General whose only answer is to fight to protect pharmaceutical profits over the health and well-being of Americans.