In a recent interview, former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Jeff Sessions has far more important things to do than crack down on state-legal cannabis.

“With respect to everything else going on in the US, this is pretty low-priority,” Gonzales said. “To prosecute an act that is otherwise lawful under state law, one could make the argument [that] as a matter of policy, we’ve got other priorities we ought to be spending our resources on.”

Gonzales has long been a supporter of state-legal cannabis, and in an interview in 2012 about federal prohibition of cannabis, he said, “I personally believe it’s a mistake.”

“Being a former state official of Texas,” he added, “I certainly believe in the rights of states to make these kinds of decisions for their own people.”

Sessions instead has repeatedly attacked both medical and social cannabis legalization. Last month, he said cannabis was responsible for the current opioid crisis.

“When you talk to police chiefs, consistently they say much of the addiction starts with marijuana. It’s not a harmless drug,” he said. “We’ve got to re-establish, first, a view that you should just say no.”

His immediate predecessor Loretta Lynch had mentioned most opioid addiction “affects individuals that started out with a prescription drug problem, and then because they need more and more, they turn to heroin.”

“It isn’t so much marijuana is the step right before using prescription drugs or opioids,” she said.

Session’s office is currently reviewing the Cole memo, a Department of Justice guidance document that sets a policy of noninterference with state-legal cannabis markets.

However, Gonzales said Sessions does not have the final say, the reason why he has not filed legal action against legal cannabis. His administration has also largely been silent on the matter.

As Gonzales told Newsweek, “What people often fail to understand or appreciate is that the attorney general works for the president.”