Jeff Sessions Marijuana Update: Cannabis Industry Fears US Attorney General Will Implement Federal Ban Against Weed, Says Report

Envisioning Senator Jeff Sessions as U.S. attorney general since confirmation of his appointment Wednesday is unnerving players involved in the country's legalized marijuana industry. Sessions' appointment, considering his history of criticizing marijuana, has reportedly disrupted and disturbed share prices and financial deals.

Reuters, citing industry experts, reports that since his nomination, many marijuana businesses have been driven underground, several companies are looking for ways to protect their records from investigators and investors are also backing off.

"There was a sharp drop in the stocks post-election… there were deals lost and second thoughts had by many people," Tom Adams, analyst & editor-in-chief of Arcview Market Research told Reuters.

Index of around 33 publicly traded legal cannabis companies fell to a low of 284 points post elections from a high of 418 in October, before hitting a high of 379 on Jan.6, said Michael Arrington, an analyst of Arcview, based on the most recently tracked data of the companies followed by Arcview.

"Everyone's back into wait-and-see mode because one doesn't want to paint a target on one's back," Sasha Kadey, chief marketing officer for Greenlane, which distributes cannabis accessories such as vapor smoking devices told Reuters. Kadey also added that he had to alter his company’s plan of rolling out a new line of premium, child-resistant packaging. They are going to market the product by omitting the words marijuana or cannabis.

Massroots, a web-based portal for cannabis enthusiasts lost 14 percent of its share price by Nov. 21, three trading days after Sessions' nomination. Isaac Dietrich, chief executive of the company that runs a mobile phone app to facilitate conversation among people and their reviews of cannabis strains, said that they were subsequently removed from the Google Play app store.

Others such as Steve Gormley, CEO of the cannabis private equity firm Seventh Point, LLC says that disruptive valuations have made trouble for cannabis companies up for sale.

Sessions' a Republican senator from Alabama was confirmed as President Donald Trump's nomination to the post of U.S. attorney general by the Senate after a close vote of 52-47. Sessions has said that “good people don’t smoke marijuana” and cannabis is “not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized,” besides opposing attempts to legalize marijuana and attempts to reduce drug sentences. He also reportedly advocated the death penalty for drug traffickers.

Marijuana remains an illegal drug at a federal level, even though more than two dozen U.S. states have legalized some form of marijuana for medical or recreational use. Stakeholders in the industry fear that Trump era policies may reverse Obama administration tolerance, which mostly interfered with big cases and other crimes such as selling pot to children.

Sessions, on the other hand, indicated that Congress needs to “pass a law that changes the rules" if it no longer wishes to criminalize marijuana, during a Senate confirmation hearing last month. "It’s not so much the attorney general’s job to decide what laws to enforce. We should do our job and enforce laws effectively as we are able," Sessions said.

It is also alleged, through testimonies of Sessions’ colleagues during the 1986 Senate committee that Sessions used the n-word and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were “okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana.”

Meanwhile, while its future is uncertain, the cannabis industry reached $7 billion in legal sales and generated half a billion dollars in sales taxes in 2015.