Sessions: New marijuana sheriff in town

With the new U.S. attorney general’s avowal to reassert tough-on-crime attitudes, I guess it’s back to the bad old days.

From now on, if Jeff Sessions has his way, there’ll be fewer prison release programs, more low-level offenders stuffed away in prisons for minor crimes and probably a recidivism rate that will only skyrocket.

One thing’s for certain: Private prison operators can expect to reap billions in profits, never mind that those profits will be taxpayer dollars going into their pockets.

And none of this begins to deal with the marijuana issue. Sessions opposes its use, in any form, with the vehemence of a 17th century New England minister railing against singing and dancing.

Marijuana, it seems, is the bete noire of a certain conservative mentality that views the world from a very narrow and rigid perspective. It’s the kind of zealousness one encounters in the hidebound religiosity of Opus Dei members or Muslim clerics who have been indoctrinated since childhood.

Unfortunately, it’s endemic to those who, like Sessions, seemingly have never spent much time out in the world, acquiring tolerance for the “other.”

In any case, crime is only going to get worse, not better.

This story was originally published May 19, 2017 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Sessions: New marijuana sheriff in town."