Oregon pushes back as Sessions hints at crackdown on legal weed

Oregon is the latest state to push back at U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions for using bad data to evaluate — and consider regulating — its marijuana industry.

In a letter to Democratic Gov. Kate Brown in July, Sessions pointed to a report he said raised “serious questions about the efficacy of marijuana ‘regulatory structures’” in Oregon, such as blackmarket diversion of legal weed. But Brown on Tuesday took issue with his source, a leaked draft report from the Oregon State Police that the department says was still years from publication due to a lack of “objective data” available.

Brown sent a letter to Sessions calling the police report’s assertions “incorrect” and “heavily extrapolated,” and pointing out they were sourced from “random blog and newspaper articles that should hardly form the basis of an informed policy discussion.”

Sessions has indicated he might crack down on legal weed, so if he’s relying on faulty information, it could threaten an industry that has netted Oregon state $60.2 million since legalization in 2015.

“Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a crime,” Sessions wrote in July in letters to the governors of four states with legal marijuana, including Oregon.

Sessions’ information on Oregon’s ‘regulatory structures”, Brown insisted in her letter, doesn’t reflect the reality of what’s happening on the ground, as the state has passed recent measures like digital “seed-to-sale” tracking and easier prosecution of illegal weed exporters.

Brown isn’t the only one challenging Sessions’ weak information. A number of states’ officials have criticized the attorney general’s handling of facts, following Sessions’ July responses to the governors of Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, who signed a joint letter urging the federal government to keep the Obama-era hands-off policy on regulating states with legal weed.

The governor and attorney general of Alaska, both Independents, wrote to Sessions on August 14 pushing back against various claims he made because of incomplete information, according to documents obtained by the Huffington Post.

“The report simply does not speak to the success or failure of the new regulatory framework,” the letter says, referring to one of Sessions’ sources.

At the beginning of August, Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington, had a nearly identical response, that Sessions was getting bad info on Washington state’s marijuana industry.

“Unfortunately, he is referring to incomplete and unreliable data that does not provide the most accurate snapshot of our efforts since the marketplace opened in 2014,” Inslee said in a statement.

The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.