United States

Sessions Memo Raises Specter of Death Penalty for Legal Marijuana Moguls

"It's completely unacceptable to be applied to a consensual crime like providing marijuana," one advocate said

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions move to urge federal prosecutors to seek death for drug traffickers "dealing in extremely large quantities" this week has some in the legal cannabis community worried, NBC News reported.

The guidelines for capital punishment include selling 60,000 kilograms of marijuana product annually or $20 million in gross receipts, said Tom Angell, who founded the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Marijuana Majority, and that could apply to producers and growers of state-approved recreational pot.

"Regardless of one's feelings about the death penalty, it's completely unacceptable to be applied to a consensual crime like providing marijuana," Angell said.

Experts say that it's almost legally impossible to institute the death penalty for dealing pot, but they were also astonished that the country's top law enforcement official would open the door to it.

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