The Trump administration is preparing to crack down on marijuana after Attorney General Jeff Sessions' task force tied the drug to violent crime.

The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, is expected to recommend tougher sentences for those caught growing, selling and smoking the plant in its report, due to be released by July 27.

Sessions has been an outspoken opponent of marijuana use, claiming it's a gateway to illegal drugs and crime.

The Trump administration is preparing to crack down on marijuana after Attorney General Jeff Sessions' (pictured on Friday in Philadelphia) task force tied the drug to violent crime

During his first major policy speech as attorney general in February, Sessions said he believes drugs are driving much of the crime and implied he would try and enforce laws against recreational marijuana on a federal level.

'States, they can pass the laws they choose. I would just say, it does remain a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States, whether a state legalizes it or not,' according to Yahoo.

In a memo sent to the Justice Department in April, Sessions said his task force would review existing charges and sentences for marijuana 'to ensure consistency with the Department's overall strategy on reducing violent crime and with Administration goals and priorities.'

On the campaign trail, President Trump said marijuana legalization should be left to the states. Recreational marijuana is legal in eight states and Washington, D.C.

But the president has a complicated stance on marijuana.

Marijuana is legal for recreational use in eight states and Washington, D.C.

Recreation marijuana is legal in eight states, and medical marijuana is legal in 29 plus DC

In May, he avoided a government shutdown by signing a $1trillion spending bill safeguarding medical marijuana that bars the Department of Justice from spending money that could interfere with 'the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana'.

But in a signing statement that laid out his objections, Trump said he reserved the right to ignore the amendment and could pursue legal action against states and territories that legalize marijuana for medical use.

The provision prevents the Justice Department from cracking down on medical marijuana but not recreational marijuana.

Meanwhile Sessions has repeatedly voiced his opposition to legalization, saying 'good people don't smoke marijuana' during a Senate hearing in April 2016.

He also said: 'We need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it's in fact a very real danger.'

On the campaign trail, President Trump (picturd in July) said marijuana legalization should be left to the states. But the president has a complicated stance on marijuana

In May, he sent a letter to congressional leaders asking them to do away with the amendment, saying: 'I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime.'

It is true, according to FBI statistics, that homicide and other violent crimes have recently been on the rise, but the numbers are nowhere close to where they were in the 1980s and early 1990s, and it's hardly clear that the recent spike reflects a trend rather than an anomaly.

But Sessions' hard stance on drugs has sparked fears that a crackdown on marijuana could be on the horizon. Something former White House press secretary Sean Spicer hinted at earlier this year, saying: 'I do believe that you'll see greater enforcement' in reference to legal recreational use according to theLos Angeles Times.

Inimai Chettiar, director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program, told The Hill she had heard Sessions and other DOJ officials explicitly talking 'about how immigration and marijuana increases violent crime.

'We're worried there's going to be something in the recommendations that is either saying that that's true or recommending action be taken based on that being true.'

Sessions has been an outspoken opponent of marijuana use, claiming it's a gateway to illegal drugs and crime

Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, whose office has been prosecuting marijuana drug traffickers, said she would like Sessions to witness that state's flourishing recreational pot industry before imposing a crackdown.

'I'd like to be able to share what we have learned and where we have put in place a good framework for marijuana regulations,' she said.

'Now for the federal government to say we're doing things wrong, or we're going to come in and take this regulation away from you without having first looked to see what we're doing is precipitous.'

She warned of a surging heroin epidemic, rising homicide rates in big cities and said a lack of respect for police has diminished their crime-fighting efforts.

'One of the big things out there now that's causing trouble, and where you see the greatest increase in violence and murders is somehow, someway, we undermine our respect for police and make their job more difficult,' Sessions told the National Association of Attorneys General previously. 'We're not seeing the kind of effective, community-based, street-based policing that we have found to be so effective.'