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Donald Trump's new Attorney General appointee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, is drawing criticism from a variety of quarters. He's fought legal immigration and is a climate change skeptic, according to the Washington Post.

And during testimony 30 years ago, when Sessions was up for a federal judgeship, Thomas Figures, an African American assistant U.S. attorney, said that Sessions had once joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought members of the group were "okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."

Sessions was ultimately rejected for the judgeship, though he denied the claims that he is racist. However, his dislike for cannabis is well-documented. In 2014, Sessions said he was "heartbroken" when President Barack Obama told the New Yorker, "I don't think [pot] is more dangerous than alcohol."

Sessions' rebuttal? "Lady Gaga says she's addicted to it and it is not harmless."

Sessions spoke in April of this year, at a hearing of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control that was, according to the Washington Post, "focused almost exclusively on what the speakers said were the harms caused by relaxing marijuana laws."

During the hearing, Sessions, who is a member of the caucus, testified about the need to encourage "knowledge that this drug is dangerous, you cannot play with it, it is not funny, it's not something to laugh about... and to send that message with clarity that good people don't smoke marijuana."

The appointment of an anti-cannabis attorney general has some in the legal cannabis community concerned.

"Sessions is the worst pick that Trump could have made for attorney general as it comes to the marijuana issues and this selection bodes very poorly for the Trump administration to adopt a marijuana friendly policy," wrote Aaron Herzberg, a cannabis policy expert from California in an email.

"It appears that he is intent on rolling back policy to the 1980's Nancy Reagan's 'just say no on drugs' days," wrote Herzberg, adding "he has displayed open hostility to efforts to legalize marijuana."

Tom Angell, Chairman of Marijuana Majority, was slightly more optimistic about the appointment.

"While the choice certainly isn't good news for marijuana reform," Angell wrote in an email, "I'm still hopeful the new administration will realize that any crackdown against broadly popular laws in a growing number of states would create huge political problems they don't need and will use lots of political capital they'd be better off spending on issues the new president cares a lot more about."

"The truth is" continued Angell, "marijuana reform is much more popular with voters than most politicians are, and officials in the new administration would do well to take a careful look at the polling data on this issue before deciding what to do."

In a statement from the National Cannabis Industry Association, executive director Aaron Smith said, "Voters in 28 states have chosen programs that shift cannabis from the criminal market to highly regulated, tax-paying businesses. Senator Sessions has long advocated for state sovereignty, and we look forward to working with him to ensure that states' rights and voter choices on cannabis are respected."

-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052

lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker