Trump, in Apparent Break With Sessions, Says He’s Likely to Back Marijuana Bill

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump appeared to break with his own administration’s policy on Friday, saying that he was likely to support a legislative proposal to leave the decision to states about whether to legalize marijuana.

Trump was asked about a new bill introduced by Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

“We’re looking at it. But I probably will end up supporting that, yes,” Trump said to reporters as he departed Washington to attend the Group of 7 summit meeting in Canada.

Trump’s view is in stark contrast to measures his administration took this year, freeing federal prosecutors to more aggressively enforce federal laws against the use of marijuana in states that have decriminalized it.

Trump’s prediction that he would support the bill is the second time this week that the president has taken a position directly contradicting the policies driven by his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, with whom the president has been openly hostile, even saying recently that he wished he had selected someone else for the job.

This week, Trump commuted the sentence of Alice Johnson, a 63-year-old serving a life term in federal prison for a nonviolent drug conviction. Last year, Sessions directed federal prosecutors to reverse former President Barack Obama’s work to ease punishment in nonviolent drug cases. On Friday, the president said his aides were reviewing similar cases that appear to have drawn “unfair” treatment from the justice system.

During his presidential campaign, Trump said the enforcement of marijuana laws was a state issue. That changed once Trump occupied the Oval Office. His press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has said his evolution on the policy is a result of Trump believing in “enforcing federal law.”

“That would be his top priority, and that is regardless of what the topic is,” she said.

Currently, 30 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medicinal or recreational use. Gardner has emphasized that his proposal does not call for broadly legalizing marijuana across the country.

“Instead, it allows the principle of federalism to prevail as the founding fathers intended and leaves the marijuana question up to the states,” Gardner said in a Twitter post on Thursday.

In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Warren said there was a conflict in states that have legalized marijuana use.

“It means right now that, for example, in Colorado, and soon in Massachusetts, someone who buys marijuana, someone who sells marijuana, is complying with state law, but they are in violation of federal law. And that puts them at risk,” Warren said. Massachusetts is scheduled to begin marijuana sales this year.

Last year, the Justice Department, led by Sessions, assembled a task force to review links between violent crime and marijuana. Sessions also asked Senate leaders to lift rules that prevented the Justice Department from bypassing state laws to enforce a federal ban on medical marijuana.