A Republican congressman claims that using marijuana “hurts your DNA,” will “make you a loser in life” and leads to young women being “taken advantage of.”
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), one of the most outspoken opponents of cannabis legalization in Congress, made the comments in an appearance on “High Stakes,” a podcast produced by the prohibitionist organization Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM).
“If you want to become a loser in life—if you want, as a young woman, to be around areas where the knowledge that you have of being assaulted, taken advantage of, and harming your life—just go forth and be around marijuana,” he said.
“I became very aware in college about people who used marijuana, who ended up literally dropping out—dropping out of life—who just chose that way of life,” he said. “I saw it from a personal perspective of a danger to someone’s future in their life.”
“There is not one positive effect of this marijuana,” Sessions claimed, despite the fact that nearly every state in the country has legalized cannabis for medical uses and the Trump administration has partially federally rescheduled it, officially recognizing its therapeutic value.
The GOP lawmaker also spoke about how his father, former FBI Director William Sessions, was responsible for putting a warning that “Winners Don’t Use Drugs” on numerous arcade games.
“Yeah, it says right under there, William S. Sessions, director of the FBI,” the congressman said.
“If you want to be a loser in life, feel free to mess around with marijuana.”
Cannabis “integrates itself to destroy your ability to effectively grow your mind, your brain and your body, and it correspondingly hurts your DNA and beyond,” Sessions claimed. “And the facts of the case are very open and very well known, of the psychosis through addiction that it creates. It has created losers all across every single state that has legalized marijuana.”
“But the people who go and vote for these things as they did in Colorado, felt like they would make money off people’s misery—and in fact the amount of money in Colorado that was supposed to then be to help other state functions never materialized because nobody wants to pay taxes and so it has just encouraged the illegal selling of marijuana. And yet we still have huge numbers of people that are showing up at their hospitals, at their emergency room psychosis, the devastating effect that takes place.”
The lawmaker went on to claim that cannabis is a “starter drug” to use of other substances.
“I will continue to encourage those in public policy, including the administration, to understand the terrible cost that is happening on the American society and out future,” he said. “And you can see it most plainly when you look at all of the heroin and cocaine that flows into this country.”
Sessions, who called cannabis a “catalyst for deaths on the highway” in the new interview, recently appeared at a press conference with an organization that represents the drug testing industry and pushed for the Department of Transportation to keep testing safety-sensitive workers for marijuana even in light of federal rescheduling.
While serving as chairman of the House Rules Committee, Sessions played a key role in blocking dozens of cannabis- and drug policy-related amendments from advancing to floor votes.
The post Using Marijuana Will Make You ‘A Loser In Life,’ GOP Congressman Says appeared first on Marijuana Moment.
