Tag: medical marijuana

Medical Marijuana Growers And Caregivers Can Own Guns, But Patients Can’t, FBI Says In Little-Noticed Memo

Being a state-registered medical marijuana caregiver or grower doesn’t automatically disqualify a person from owning a firearm, the FBI says. But merely possessing a medical cannabis card as a patient does render a person ineligible.

Amid the growing tension between federal gun policies and the ever-expanding state marijuana legalization movement, a little-noticed FBI memo from 2019 offers a lens into the byzantine legal interpretations surrounding cannabis and firearms—an issue that’s recently been raised in multiple federal court cases.

The government has several different ways it assesses firearm eligibility in the context of cannabis, according to the memo from FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, which was briefly noted in a report from The New York Times last week. In some cases, that involves affirmatively restricting gun rights based on activities or documentation that doesn’t necessarily mean a person is an active marijuana consumer.

At their core, the federal rules say that being an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance, including marijuana, means a person cannot buy or possess a gun. Would-be gun purchasers are required to disclose such use as part of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) form before making a purchase, and lying on that form is a felony offense.

The statute behind that prohibition has been challenged in a number of federal courts over the past couple of years, with more than one judicial body determining that the restriction is unconstitutional. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has steadfastly defended the ban, however, contending that medical marijuana patients and everyday consumers pose unique dangers to society that justify withholding Second Amendment rights.

But the federal government’s interpretation of the policy is apparently more nuanced, as evidenced by the memo from CJIS’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System Section that’s gone largely unscrutinized since being published more than four years ago.

A person’s firearm eligibility is partly determined by whether their use of a controlled substance is deemed “current.” FBI says that’s “not limited to the use of drugs on a particular day, or within a matter of days or weeks before, but rather that the unlawful use has occurred recently enough to indicate the individual is actively engaged in such conduct.”

“ATF has determined that the present time is represented by the time frame of within the past 12 months,” the memo says.

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Feds Release 250+ Pages Of Redacted Documents On Marijuana Rescheduling Recommendation, Detailing Cannabis’s Medical Value

More than three months after news leaked that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) was recommending that marijuana be moved to Schedule III under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the agency has finally released a tranche of documents related to its recommendation and the detailed review it undertook on cannabis’s accepted medical value.

Among the materials newly made public are correspondence from HHS officials to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram as well explanations of the health agency’s reasoning for the recommended change after conducting a required eight-factor analysis under the CSA. Most pages are heavily redacted, however, and some were withheld completely.

The documents were posted online Thursday by attorneys Shane Pennington and Matt Zorn, coauthors of the blog On Drugs. Zorn previously submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain the records.

“We haven’t had a chance to wade through it all,” the two lawyers wrote, “but are putting it up here now and will follow up as soon as we’ve studied everything more deeply.”

In response to the FOIA request, HHS “reviewed 252 pages of records,” releasing just two pages in their entirety. Another 236 were redacted in part, while 14 pages were withheld completely. All the released documents are embedded at the end of this article.

Broadly, the documents outline new scientific information that’s come to light in recent years subsequent to an earlier denial of a rescheduling petition, which HHS suggests might now necessitate rescheduling marijuana.

“The current review is largely focused on modern scientific considerations on whether marijuana has a CAMU [currently accepted medical use] and on new epidemiological data related to the abuse of marijuana in the years since the 2015 HHS” evaluation of marijuana under the CSA’s eight-factor analysis.

HHS also notes that it “analyzed considerable data related to the abuse potential of marijuana,” but added that it’s a complicated consideration.

“Determining the abuse potential of a substance is complex with many dimensions,” HHS wrote, “and no single test or assessment provides a complete characterization. Thus, no single measure of abuse potential is ideal.”

Most subsequent pages of the document were withheld completely.

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Florida Medical Marijuana Company Asks Court To Block Legalization Initiative That Would ‘Significantly Impact’ Its Business And Patients

A Florida medical marijuana certification company is seeking to block an adult-use cannabis legalization ballot initiative in the state Supreme Court, arguing that the reform “disproportionately prioritizes” profits from recreational sales and that it would “significantly impact our business operations and the well-being of our clients.”

My Florida Green, a service that connects patients seeking medical cannabis cards to doctors who can certify them, is asking the court to allow it to submit an amicus curiae brief in the case contesting the Smart & Safe Florida legalization measure that was brought by state Attorney General Ashley Moody (R).

The company says that it’s not opposed to adult-use legalization in principle, but it’s arguing that there are “potential consequences” of the 2024 constitutional amendment that could impact “patient care and public health.”

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DEA Threatens Georgia Pharmacies Over Dispensing Medical Marijuana Under State Law

Georgia recently became the first U.S. state to allow pharmacies to sell medical marijuana, with nearly 120 facilities applying to sell cannabis oil as of October. But now the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is warning pharmacies that dispensing THC is unlawful because it remains a Schedule I drug.

“All DEA registrants, including DEA-registered pharmacies, are required to abide by all relevant federal laws and regulations,” says a copy of a letter sent to a Georgia pharmacy by Matthew J. Strait, a DEA deputy assistant administrator in the agency’s Diversion Control Division. “A DEA-registered pharmacy may only dispense controlled substances in Schedules II-V of the Controlled Substances Act. Neither marijuana nor THC can lawfully be possessed, handled, or dispensed by any DEA-registered pharmacy.”

The letter, dated November 27, was first posted online by Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), an anti-cannabis advocacy group. DEA did not immediately respond to emails from Marijuana Moment attempting to confirm its authenticity.

One potential complicating factor around DEA’s advisory is a congressional budget rider that prevents the the Department of Justice from spending resources to interfere with the implementation of state medical marijuana laws. The provision was first enacted into law in 2014 and was extended last month to at least February 2024.

It’s not immediately clear how DEA squares its threat against state-authorized pharmacies that provide medical cannabis oil to patients with the agency’s obligation to follow the congressionally enacted federal law.

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US States With Medical Cannabis Access See Decline in Nonmedical Opioid Prescriptions

Medical cannabis legalization is associated with a decrease in the frequency of nonmedical prescription opioid use, according to a Rutgers study.

The study, published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, examined data from a nationally representative survey of adults who reported nonmedical prescription opioid use – or using prescription medications without a prescription or in a manner other than prescribed.

According to the study, when states implement medical cannabis laws, there is a 0.5 to 1.5 percentage point decrease in regular to frequent (up to or greater than once per week on average) nonmedical prescription opioid use among people who reported using opioids in the previous year. However, these reductions were concentrated in people who met diagnostic criteria for cannabis addiction.

Still, the pros of legalizing marijuana to address risky opioid use should be considered alongside the cons, according to Hillary Samples, faculty member at the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science in the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and lead author of the study.

“There might be some benefits to allowing legal access to medical cannabis in the context of opioid-related harms, ”Samples said. “However, from a policy perspective, there are much more effective interventions to address the ongoing overdose crisis, such as increasing access to treatment for opioid addiction.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of drug overdose deaths rose more than 14 percent from 2020 to 2021 in the United States. To understand approaches to mitigate this crisis, researchers have examined whether cannabis serves as an alternative to opioid use as cannabis might help with pain and symptoms of opioid withdrawal.

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Marijuana And Opioids Are ‘Equally Efficacious’ In Reducing Pain, With Cannabis Offering Additional ‘Holistic’ Benefits, Study Shows

Medical marijuana and opioids are “equally efficacious” at mitigating pain intensity in patients with chronic pain, according to a new study in the Journal of Cannabis Research—but cannabis also provided more “holistic” relief, such as by improving sleep, focus and emotional wellbeing.

Researchers said their findings support the hypothesis that medical cannabis (MC) “alleviates pain through holistically altering the pain experience” rather than “only targeting pain intensity.”

“The results of the present study support the hypothesis that the effects of MC on pain experience are more holistic than those of opioids,” their report says. “MC may alleviate pain through affecting a broad range of pain-related experience experiential factors such as relaxation, improved sleep and mood, being able not to react to the pain, as well as a sense of control.”

The nine-person Finnish team, led by Åbo Akademi University psychology professor Jussi Jylkkä, looked at a sample of 201 chronic pain patients, 40 of whom used medical marijuana and 161 of whom used opioids to treat pain. There was some crossover, with about 45 percent of medical marijuana patients reporting also using opioids for their pain and about 4.3 percent of opioid users having used medical cannabis.

Subjects completed retrospective surveys on the “positive and negative phenomenological effects of the medicine,” and researchers then compared scores from the two groups.

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Medical Marijuana Legalization Led To Reduction In Frequent Use Of Nonmedical Prescription Opioids, Study Finds

Legalizing medical marijuana is associated with a “lower frequency” of nonprescribed pharmaceutical opioid use, according to a study published this month in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction.

While the decrease was rather small—between about 0.6 percent and 1.5 percent for regular to frequent opioid use—and was concentrated in people who met diagnostic criteria for cannabis use disorder, the researchers said it could signal “substitution effects with partial replacement of opioids by cannabis.”

The research team, from the schools of public health at Rutgers and Columbia universities as well as the University of Arizona’s School of Government and Public Policy, said the results highlight “the importance of identifying tradeoffs of cannabis legalization as an intervention to reduce opioid-related harms.”

The study used national survey data from 2004 to 2014 to examine nonmedical prescription opioid (NMPO) use—specifically, prescription opioids used without a prescription or in a manner other than prescribed.

Despite the decrease in regular and frequent opioid use, the study also found that medical cannabis legalization (MCL) was associated with a 2.1 percent increase in the occasional use of nonmedical prescription opioids, defined as between once and 12 times per year.

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Medical Marijuana Prescriptions Rise Sharply In Israel Amid War With Hamas, Government Says As Patients Seek Relief From PTSD And Pain

A month into the war between Israel and Hamas, data from Israel’s Ministry of Health shows a sharp expansion in the reach of the medical marijuana program in that country. Patient enrollments have spiked, especially those tied to PTSD and pain, and doctors have prescribed more cannabis by weight than ever before.

Patient enrollment in Israel’s medical cannabis registry rose by 2,202 people in October, according to the newly released government numbers. That’s roughly twice the recent monthly average, though it’s not quite the rapid growth seen in early 2021, when nearly 3,000 patients were registering each month.

Regardless, Israel now has more registered medical cannabis patients than ever. And with more enrolled patients, there’s been a corresponding uptick in the amount of marijuana that is being prescribed. The country’s medical cannabis rules specify that a patient can purchase only up to a certain amount of specified products. In October, those products totaled 5,173 kilograms—not only a record in itself, but also the largest monthly increase ever recorded in the system, according to a local Israeli cannabis news publication. Data also showed an increase in the number of patients prescribed relatively high doses of marijuana.

Enrollment by qualifying condition, the local report noted, reflects an uptick in violence and wartime stressors. For example, data show an increase for the first time in at least a year in the number of marijuana prescriptions for “post-trauma,” or PTSD. Chronic pain continued to be a leading condition for marijuana patients, making up nearly three quarters of new enrollees, while another 400 patients in October enrolled for unspecified “other” conditions.

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Senate Approves Bill Allowing Doctors To Issue Cannabis Recommendations to Veterans

A bipartisan congressional bill – the Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (MilCon-VA) Appropriations Act – has been approved by the Senate that allows military veterans to receive medical cannabis recommendations issued by government doctors.

Doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will be able to recommend medical cannabis to their patients in states where it’s legal.

The bill provides support for critical housing, infrastructure, and facilities for U.S. military forces and their families, as well as increased funding for veterans health care and benefits.

The measure was advanced by a bipartisan vote of 28-0.

Vice Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Susan Collins, stated: “The significant investments this legislation makes in America’s military are critical to our national security, helping to ensure our military’s readiness and safety while reducing maintenance costs.

“The bill also supports much-needed funding to improve medical care and housing for our nation’s veterans. As the Vice Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I will continue to champion this funding as the appropriations process moves forward.”

Previously, VA doctors were not authorised to issue recommendations on medical cannabis, even in states that have legalised the plant for medical or recreational use.

Supporters of the Bill have said that it provides a modest but meaningful reform for the veteran community.

Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley reintroduced the legislation in April.

Speaking on the passage of the bill, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, stated: “…despite the tough funding constraints, these bills move our country forward—not back—with important investments to keep our promise to our nation’s veterans, to get Americans where they need to go safely, to increase our housing supply, address the homelessness crisis, support our farmers and ranchers, keep American families healthy and safe, and much more.”

Speaking at the time of the legislation’s reintroduction, Wyden stated: “Veterans in Oregon and nationwide are unfairly and unacceptably stuck in a legal gray zone when discussing medical cannabis with their doctor.

“Veterans deserve the opportunity to explore various treatments with their doctor without fear of prosecution or employment ramifications.

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Florida Attorney General Defends Firing Of Corrections Officer For Using Medical Marijuana To Treat PTSD

A case filed with the Florida Supreme Court tests whether the Department of Corrections properly fired a corrections officer because of his use of medical marijuana while off work.

Florida’s First District Court of Appeal upheld the firing, but Samuel Velez Ortiz now argues before the state Supreme Court that the action violates both the Florida Constitution’s sanction of medical marijuana and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings establishing a broad right to bear firearms.

The state Public Employees Relation Commission upheld the firing, reasoning that his medical marijuana use rendered him unqualified to carry a firearm—a condition of his employment—under federal law prohibiting use of the drug.

A petition that Velez Ortiz’s attorneys filed with the state Supreme Court cites 2022’s New York State Rifle Pistol v. Bruen, in which the justices in Washington established a public right to carry firearms outside the home for self protection. Subsequent rulings by a federal trial judge in Oklahoma and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the right of sober persons to carry guns even if they smoked marijuana on other occasions.

“This lower court’s [First DCA] opinion permits a sanction on medical marijuana patients, which results in loss of employment for being a qualified patient and strips a person’s right to bear arms for being a qualified patient,” it says. “The opinion states because he uses medical marijuana ‘he cannot lawfully possess a firearm. Each time he does, he is committing a felony.’”

The brief notes that Velez Ortiz was a qualified medical marijuana user because of his PTSD and never worked while under the influence. A random drug test flagged him for cannabis metabolites.

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