To the litany of challenges facing Colorado’s state-licensed marijuana business owners, add this: The federal government could — though probably won’t — try to execute them. This week, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a memo urging federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in cases involving large-scale drug traffickers. The memo points to an existing but little-known federal law that already allows for such a punishment, the Denver Post reports. Sessions talks mostly about opioids, but federal law contains no drug-specific limitation on prosecutors’ power. Anyone convicted of cultivating more than 60,000 marijuana plants or possessing more than 60,000 kilograms of a substance that contains marijuana could face death as a punishment.
Did Sessions greenlight using the death penalty against the nation’s largest marijuana business owners? “I think it’s still very theoretical,” said Sam Kamin, a University of Denver law professor who specializes in both marijuana law and in the death penalty. “I don’t think anyone thinks the federal government is going to seek the death penalty against a state-licensed business. But what it highlights is this enormous disconnect with federal and state law.” Aaron Smith of the National Cannabis Industry Association dismissed the possibility of executions for marijuana business moguls, saying, “I really think that’s just bluster.” The key to the law is the quantity of plants an operation cultivates — 60,000, double what is needed for federal prosecutors to seek a lifetime prison sentence. Colorado’s biggest marijuana businesses are secretive when it comes to how many plants they are growing at any one time. In June 2017, there were nearly one million marijuana plants under cultivation by Colorado’s state-licensed cannabis businesses.