The Cole Memo, Sessions Rescission & Federal Enforcement Policy

The Cole Memo was a two-and-a-half-page document addressed to all United States Attorneys. It did not legalize cannabis. It did not decriminalize cannabis. It did not create any enforceable right for any person or business. What it did was establish a set of enforcement priorities that, if followed, would leave state-legal cannabis operations largely unmolested by federal prosecutors — provided those operations did not cross certain bright lines.

The eight priorities

The memo identified eight areas where federal enforcement resources should be concentrated, regardless of state law:

1. Preventing the distribution of cannabis to minors
2. Preventing revenue from cannabis sales from going to criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels
3. Preventing the diversion of cannabis from states where it was legal to states where it was not
4. Preventing state-legal cannabis activity from being used as a cover or pretext for trafficking of other illegal drugs
5. Preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of cannabis
6. Preventing drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health consequences
7. Preventing the growing of cannabis on public lands
8. Preventing cannabis possession or use on federal property

The logic was implicit but clear: if a state-legal cannabis operation did not trigger any of these eight priorities, federal prosecutors should direct their limited resources elsewhere. The memo gave United States Attorneys discretion — not orders — and that discretion operated in only one direction. A U.S. Attorney who wanted to prosecute a state-legal dispensary could still do so under existing federal law. The Cole Memo was permission to refrain, not a prohibition on action.

The legal fiction

The cannabis industry understood the Cole Memo's limitations from the outset. Industry lawyers described it accurately: a prosecutorial guidance document, not a law. It could be rescinded by any Attorney General at any time, without notice, without process, without judicial review. It created no vested rights. It offered no reliance interest. A business that invested millions of dollars in a cannabis operation on the strength of the Cole Memo had no legal recourse if the next Attorney General decided to prosecute.

Yet the industry built anyway. Entrepreneurs applied for state licenses, signed commercial leases, hired employees, purchased equipment, and opened retail locations — all while operating businesses that remained federal felonies. Banks that accepted cannabis deposits were facilitating money laundering under federal law. Landlords who rented to dispensaries were maintaining drug premises. Accountants who prepared cannabis company tax returns were documenting criminal enterprises. Everyone involved understood that the entire structure rested on a two-and-a-half-page memo that any future Attorney General could revoke with a single signature.

Sessions rescinds the Cole Memo

On January 4, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Cole Memo. His replacement memorandum was a single page. It directed United States Attorneys to follow "well-established principles that govern all federal prosecutions" in deciding whether to bring cannabis cases. It provided no specific guidance, no priorities, and no framework — just a return to the baseline principle that federal law was federal law and prosecutors could enforce it as they saw fit.

Sessions had been the most vocal critic of cannabis legalization in the Senate before his appointment as Attorney General. His opposition was ideological and consistent. He had famously said that "good people don't smoke marijuana." The rescission was not a surprise.

The aftermath

The practical fallout from the Sessions rescission was smaller than the industry feared. Most United States Attorneys, including those in states with large cannabis industries, continued to exercise the same restraint they had practiced under the Cole Memo. Colorado's U.S. Attorney issued a statement indicating that his office's approach would not change. Few new federal prosecutions of state-legal operations materialized.

But the rescission clarified something the industry had always known but preferred not to dwell on: the entire state-legal cannabis sector operated at the pleasure of whoever held the office of Attorney General. The Cole Memo had been a gentleman's agreement backed by nothing more durable than the political calculations of the current administration. Sessions proved that what one Attorney General gave, the next could take away — and the industry had no legal mechanism to prevent it.

The experience accelerated the push for federal legislation — the SAFE Banking Act, the MORE Act, the STATES Act — that would convert the Cole Memo's informal restraint into binding statutory protection. As of April 2026, none of those bills has been enacted into law. The cannabis industry continues to operate, in the most fundamental legal sense, on faith.