WASHINGTON _ Attorney General Jeff Sessions is rescinding the long-standing federal policy permitting states to legalize recreational pot, placing thousands of marijuana businesses in several states operating legally under state law at risk to federal raids and seizures.
The Justice Department move plunges California's fledgling recreational pot market into further uncertainty, and was met with a stinging bipartisan backlash from lawmakers in states where marijuana is sold to any adult who wants to buy it.
Whether federal prosecutors have the resources, or even the interest, in undermining the national movement toward more permissive cannabis regulation remains to be seen.
Even as Sessions began signaling long ago that a crackdown was coming, pro-marijuana lawmakers and regulators had responded with defiance, declaring that legalization was so far along that there is little the Department of Justice could do to stop it.
But the move on Thursday is sure to spread anxiety throughout the rapidly expanding multibillion-dollar pot industry.
The Associated Press first reported that Sessions would rescind the Obama-era policy, which was put in place in response to the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington state.
The policy has prevented federal prosecutors from targeting marijuana businesses operating legally under state law and allowed the recreational cannabis trade to bloom in the states where voters have legalized.
