SEATTLE, WA – U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, doesn't have a very high opinion of marijuana – or the people who use it.

"We need grown-ups in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it is in fact a very real danger," Sessions said at a hearing in April. Later in that same hearing, he said "good people don't smoke marijuana." More controversially, during a 1986 hearing in Congress over his appointment to a federal judge post, he joked that the "Ku Klux Klan was OK until I found out they smoked pot."

As president-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, Sessions would oversee policy at the Justice Department, which means he could choose to be tough on states that allow either medical or recreational marijuana (including states like California and Massachusetts, which approved recreational marijuana on Nov. 8). Under President Barack Obama's attorneys general, the Justice Department has focused on criminal use of marijuana, but not state-sanctioned use. Because Washington was one of the first states to establish a system for recreational marijuana, Patch.com spoke to activists and local marijuana business owners about their thoughts on the potential next attorney general.

Ananda Green, manager at Seattle's Ganja Goddess, did not comment directly about Sessions, but believes that cannabis has done a lot of good, particularly for sick people, and so she thinks it's likely to remain legal. She highlighted the story of a customer who called her store asking for a specific strain of cannabis for her father, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. "His symptoms are typically awful and heartbreaking. Her dad is totally different now than the person she knew growing up. He is very forgetful, aggressive, and fights with anyone trying to provide care for his physical issues," Green said. "Nothing was helping and out of desperation they tried cannabis."

The woman told Green that using cannabis has been "a miracle" for her father, making him calmer and able to accept care. In many ways, medical use of marijuana paved the way for recreational use today, showing non-users that it has benefits outside of just getting high.

Opinions about marijuana have changed greatly over the years. An October Gallup Poll found that a record-high 60 percent of Americans think that marijuana should be legal. In 1985, for example, only about 20 percent of Americans felt that way.

But some on the political side of marijuana legalization are aghast at the prospect of Sessions becoming attorney general, fearing that he would make marijuana a law enforcement priority. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, called Sessions a "drug war dinosaur" in a statement released Nov. 18. Patch spoke to Tom Angell of the Washington, DC-based advocacy group Marijuana Majority about what Sessions might do if he decided to take on recreational marijuana laws. Trump has said that he would leave the marijuana issue to states, but Angell described several scenarios where Sessions could intervene. Additionally, the president does not control the actions of the justice department, so it's possible Sessions and Trump would treat the marijuana issue differently.