U.S. Justice Department issues the Cole Memorandum, clearing the path for state cannabis markets

On August 29, 2013—four months before Colorado’s first recreational cannabis stores were scheduled to open—U.S. Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole issued a four-page directive to all federal prosecutors known as the Cole Memorandum. The memo answered the question hanging over the newly passed laws in Colorado and Washington: whether the federal government would sue to block state licensing or raid state-compliant recreational dispensaries.

The eight federal enforcement priorities

While reiterating that cannabis remained illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act, the Cole Memorandum directed U.S. Attorneys to focus federal investigative and prosecutorial resources on eight specific priorities:

1. Preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors;
2. Preventing revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels;
3. Preventing the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal under state law in some form to other states;
4. Preventing state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover or pretext for the trafficking of other illegal drugs or other illegal activity;
5. Preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana;
6. Preventing drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health consequences associated with marijuana use;
7. Preventing the growing of marijuana on public lands and the attendant public safety and environmental dangers posed by marijuana production on public lands; and
8. Preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property.

Why the memo was pivotal

Outside of those eight priorities, the Justice Department stated it would rely on state and local authorities that implemented “strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems” to police their own cannabis markets. Although Attorney General Jeff Sessions later rescinded the Cole Memo in January 2018, its eight guardrails became the blueprint for how every legal state designed its seed-to-sale tracking, age verification, and packaging rules.