Best-Case Scenario
The best-case scenario is one in which President Trump identifies marijuana legalization as a winning issue with broad popular support, and nominates a pro-legalization Attorney General to capitalize on that. I’ve previously written about how Trump could take up the mantle of legalization, seizing an issue that should have been an easy win for Democrats if their leadership hadn’t failed to act on it when they were in power. This could position Trump very well for the 2020 election, since legalization is supported overwhelmingly by young people—a group that Democrats are relying on to take back the presidency. Marijuana reform has also passed by wide margins in swing states like Florida and Michigan.
One person who could fill this role would be Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). While he isn’t among the most vocal supporters of sweeping marijuana reform, Graham did sign on as a sponsor for the CARERS Act of 2015, which would have legalized medical marijuana federally. He has also been a key ally to President Trump, and South Carolina’s Republican governor means that a Republican could be appointed to finish out his Senate term if he left early. Graham has even said that Trump once offered him the job as Attorney General while they were golfing together. Though Graham claims that Trump was joking and that he would never want the job, refusals in Washington are rarely final, and it’s possible that Graham could accept under the right conditions.
A Reason To Be Optimistic
Regardless of who winds up as America’s next top prosecutor, there is a reason to be optimistic. While we may never know why the Justice Department wasn’t more aggressive in cracking down on state-legal marijuana businesses under arch-prohibitionist Jeff Sessions, it likely had to do with political considerations by individual U.S. Attorneys. While the Attorney General does have the ability to set prosecutorial priorities, he or she technically does not have the ability to tell U.S. Attorneys which cases to pursue.
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