Tag: moral panics

GOP Senator Paints Dire Picture Of Medical Marijuana Legalization In His State, Saying Voters Didn’t Understand ‘Consequences’

U.S. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said at an event on Friday that voters in his home state didn’t understand what they were doing when they legalized medical marijuana in 2018.

Pointing to a new report from the Texoma High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program, which covers north Texas and Oklahoma, Lankford said the state has been overrun by growers and dispensaries and has “seen rising crime, human trafficking [and] illegal migration coming into our state” since the law took effect.

Although citizens voted in favor of medical marijuana legalization, he said, “I don’t think a lot of Oklahomans realized, when that vote actually occurred, what the consequences of that would be.”

The senator’s comments are in keeping with criticisms that Republican politicians in Oklahoma have levied against medical marijuana for years. In 2022, for example, Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) similarly suggested that state residents misunderstood the cannabis initiative they voted to enact.

Stitt said at the time that he was directing law enforcement to “crack down hard on the black market,” adding that “drug cartels, organized crime, foreign bad actors have no place in the state of Oklahoma.”

But in comments on Friday, Lankford—a longtime critic of legalization—painted a dire picture of what’s happening in the state.

“The findings that are coming out are stark,” he said of the new HIDTA report. “We have Chinese criminal organizations and organized crime that has moved in to Oklahoma in just the last six years, in numbers that have skyrocketed.”

That’s led to what he described as “execution-style murders in rural areas of the state” that are connected “directly to marijuana grows and what is happening here on the ground.”

“We, as a state, have to decide what we’re going to do about it,” the federal lawmaker said. “We have hard decisions to be able to make on what we’re going to do to be able to protect our kids in the days ahead… This is a very serious issue that we need to be able to take on and to be able to address.”

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DEA Promotes ‘Anti-420 Day’ Contest For Young People To ‘Flood’ Instagram With Marijuana Warnings

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is promoting an “Anti-420 Day” campaign that’s recruiting students to send short videos warning their peers about marijuana use.

In a bulletin that was distributed on Tuesday, DEA’s JustThinkTwice.com site shared details about the campaign, which is being run by the anti-cannabis nonprofit organization Johnny’s Ambassadors.

“Be an Instagram Influencer for Anti-420 Day,” the message says. “Johnny’s Ambassadors is hiring teens and young adults (high school and college students) to create original videos about the harms of youth THC use for Anti-420 Day.”

The plan is to “flood” Instagram with the short-form videos that would feature students talking about “why young people should not use THC.”

Students would be eligible for a $25 Amazon gift card for a personal video, $35 for a group video and $50 for a “professionally produced educational video or skit with adult sponsor supervision.”

“Your video should either be an educational Youth THC Prevention video on why young people shouldn’t use THC products (vapes, dabs, weed, edibles, gummies) OR a personal story of how you have been impacted by THC use (yourself, a friend, a family member, or a loved one),” the organization said.

It also provided examples of potential prompts, including explainers on “why THC impacts athletic performance on a team” and busting “commonly-held but incorrect myth about THC.”

“Tell a personal story about how you’ve been negatively impacted by THC use” or perform a “skit or drama to educate other teens why using products with THC is bad for you,” the description from Johnny’s Ambassadors—which was founded the parents of a child who died by suicide after consuming high potency marijuana concentrates—says.

There are some restrictions on the content, including a ban on “swearing” in the videos. And no content is allowed that “depicts, imitates, or promotes the possession or consumption of any THC product.”

“DO NOT IMITATE THE USE OF THC/MARIJUANA OR PARAPHERNALIA OF ANY KIND, EVEN AS A JOKE,” it emphasizes.

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GOP Congressman Tells Welfare Recipients To ‘Stop Buying The Medical Marijuana’ And Eating Cheetos

A GOP congressman is peddling a stigmatizing message to justify a new bill on adding work requirements for certain federal benefits, implying that it’s necessary to prevent people from buying marijuana with taxpayer dollars and lazing around on the couch while eating Cheetos.

During an appearance on Fox Business on Wednesday, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) was asked about recently filed Republican legislation that would impose restrictions on access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—specifically mandating that able-bodied people under 65 work at least 20 hours per week in order to receive the assistance.

That’s already part of federal law, but lead bill sponsor from Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) claims his America Works Act would close “loopholes” that have been exploited in certain states.

Fallon, for his part, decided to justify the legislation by playing into cannabis stereotypes and arguing that federal dollars are going toward medical cannabis purchases by welfare recipients.

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Trump Says He’s ‘Ready’ To Impose Death Penalty On People Who Sell Illicit Drugs, Calling Policy ‘Very Humane’

President Donald Trump is again promoting his support for executing people who sell currently illicit drugs, calling it a “very humane” policy to prevent overdose deaths that he’s “ready” to implement.

He also ambitiously projected that his administration will cut drug use in the U.S. by 50 percent during his new term by launching an aggressive advertising campaign to warn Americans about the harms of substance misuse.

During a White House event with governors from across the U.S. on Friday, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) told Trump about his concerns with fentanyl trafficking, to which the president responded by offering his extreme capital punishment proposal of following the lead of countries like China that impose the death penalty on people involved in selling illegal drugs.

While he said he’s unsure whether the U.S. as a whole is similarly “ready” to move forward with the policy, Trump encouraged governors to push for it at the state-level.

“If you notice that every country that has the death penalty has no drug problem. They execute drug dealers,” Trump said. “And when you think about it, it’s very humane, because every drug dealer, on average they say, kills at least 500 people—not to mention the damage they do so many others. But they kill large numbers of people.”

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RFK Jr. Says Marijuana Can Have ‘Catastrophic Impacts’ On Consumers, But State-Level Legalization Can Spur Research On Its Harms And Benefits

Fresh off his Senate confirmation vote to become the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Thursday that he is “worried about” the normalization of high-potency marijuana and that he feels its use can have “really catastrophic impacts” on people, but that state-level legalization can facilitate research into its harms and benefits.

Kennedy, who was vocal about his support for marijuana legalization when he was running for president—as well as during his time on the Trump transition team—has been notably silent on cannabis policy issues over recent months as he worked to win over senators to secure confirmation for the country’s top health role.

Now, during his first major media interview since receiving that final vote to secure the cabinet position earlier in the day, Kennedy told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that he believes cannabis does hold serious harm potential.

The HHS secretary, who personally struggled with drug addiction during his youth, was asked about his cannabis policy position and noted that he’s been in recovery for over 40 years and attends daily 12-step meetings.

“I hear stories all the time of the impacts of marijuana on people—and the really catastrophic impacts on them,” he said.

However, Kennedy said “that worry also has to be balanced [with] the impacts that we’ve had before” as it relates to criminalization.

“Twenty-five states [have] now legalized marijuana, but we had about a third of our prison population that was in jail because of marijuana offenses,” he said. “That’s something we don’t want either.”

“Because of the legalization of recreational marijuana in 25 states, we have now a capacity to really study it and to compare it to states,” he said. “We need to do studies. We need to figure it out, and then we need to we need to implement policies to address” any health concerns.

Of course, HHS has already completed a comprehensive scientific study into cannabis that led the agency under the Biden administration to recommend moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

The new comments come on the same day that Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) said he received a commitment from Kennedy to “follow the science on the harms of marijuana.”

Ricketts had already disclosed last week that he spoke to Kennedy about the the “importance” of “preventing the expansion of marijuana.” Now he says “RFK committed to me that he would follow the science on the harms of marijuana.”

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GOP Florida Lawmaker Wonders If State’s Medical Marijuana Program Is ‘Causing More Harm Than Good’

With nearly 900,000 registered patients, Florida has the largest medical marijuana program in the country. While campaigning against a proposed constitutional amendment that would have legalized recreational cannabis last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) hailed the medical program, boasting that he had legalized smokeable weed in the state in 2019.

But that doesn’t mean the Florida GOP-controlled legislature is all in with medical marijuana, and on Tuesday one House member asked a state doctor charged with analyzing the effectiveness of cannabis as medicine if its use by Floridians poses more of a risk than a benefit.

“You’ve made it very clear that there needs to be more research across the gamut of this area, but you’ve also made it clear that a lot of the research that you do have shows this program to be of questionable medical value,” said Northeast Florida Republican Dean Black to Dr. Almut Winterstein, a professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Florida and director of the Consortium for Medical Marijuana Outcomes Research.

“My question is, do you fear that we’re causing more harm than good?”

Winterstein replied that the question illuminated the “conundrum” that exists when it comes to the medical efficacy of cannabis, which because it is listed as a Schedule I controlled substance by the federal government has always had restrictions placed on research. (The Biden administration proposed last year to reclassify the substance as a Schedule III controlled substance).

“That is concerning,” she said in response to Black’s query. “That doesn’t mean that there are not patients who might massively benefit from this, but we haven’t defined the benefit of this.”

In her presentation to the House Professions & Programs Subcommittee, Winterstein reported rapid growth among young adults up to age 25 in Florida in listing anxiety as the medical condition motivating them to seek a medical marijuana prescription. She said that was “fairly strong evidence that marijuana attacks the developing brain negatively—specifically, cognitively.”

But she said that was very different than looking at patients suffering from chronic pain or other medical conditions. 

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GOP Congressman Wants To Talk With RFK Jr. About How ‘Marijuana Is Harmful’ As Trump’s Cabinet Pick Heads To Confirmation Vote

A GOP congressman says it’s “definitely” time to have a talk with President Donald Trump’s pick for head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to convince him that “marijuana is harmful” and that the way to make Americans healthy is by “limiting” its use.

After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was cleared in an initial confirmation vote in the Senate Finance Committee, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) told Marijuana Moment that he wanted to have a chat with the potential HHS secretary, who has previously voiced support for cannabis legalization prior to being selected for the top federal health role by Trump.

“Marijuana is harmful,” Harris said in an interview at the Capitol on Wednesday. “We should definitely have a talk with RFK Jr. I mean, the bottom line is: We should keep Americans healthy by limiting the use of marijuana.”

But Harris—a staunchly anti-cannabis lawmaker who has championed legislation to block adult-use marijuana sales in Washington, D.C.—expressed a softer tone when asked about the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, which is another issue that Kennedy has pushed.

The congressman said it “might be possible” that psychedelics could be used in the treatment of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“We may want to do some more research, but we don’t want to do what D.C. did, which is just make them widely available,” he said, referencing a voter-approved initiative to decriminalize certain psychedelics—which would not inherently increase availability given the lack of any regulated sales component of the reform.

Meanwhile, despite Harris’s apparent concerns about Kennedy’s history of advocating for cannabis legalization, the nominee said last week that he will defer to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on marijuana rescheduling if confirmed.

That could complicate rescheduling given the fact that the current acting administrator of DEA, Derek Maltz, has made multiple comments expressing hostility to cannabis reform.

Relatedly, prior to Kennedy’s written responses to the Finance Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently pressed Kennedy to reiterate his position on marijuana legalization amid the ongoing effort to federally reschedule cannabis.

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Analysis: Steep Declines in Teen Marijuana Use in States With Regulated Cannabis Markets

Marijuana use by teens has fallen sharply in the majority of states that have legalized the adult-use market, according to an analysis of state and federal survey data by the Marijuana Policy Project.

MPP’s analysis acknowledges steady declines in self-reported marijuana use by young people in 19 of 21 states for which data is available. Federally funded survey data shows similar nationwide declines in teen marijuana use over the past decade.

“Over a decade into state-level cannabis legalization, the data is unequivocal: Legalization does not increase youth cannabis use. In fact, evidence suggests the opposite,” said Karen O’Keefe, Director of State Policies at the Marijuana Policy Project. “By transitioning cannabis sales from the illicit market to a regulated system with age-restricted access, we’ve seen a decrease in youth cannabis use.”

Last month, national data provided by the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future study reported that marijuana use by teens fell to historic lows in 2024. Specifically, it determined that the percentage of 8th graders, 10th graders, and 12 graders who reported having ever consumed cannabis declined 32 percent, 37 percent, and 23 percent since 2014.

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Trump’s New DEA Head Says Marijuana Is A ‘Gateway Drug’ That Causes Psychosis And Other Mental Health Problems

The official named to run the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as acting administrator subscribes to the “gateway drug” theory for marijuana and believes most people living in states that have legalized cannabis will continue to obtain it from illicit sources such as cartels due to high taxes in regulated markets.

As the Trump administration takes shape, marijuana reform advocates and stakeholders are getting to learn more about the newly announced acting administrator, Derek Maltz. And so far, a review of his record has done little to assure the cannabis community that he would serve as an ally in the push for reform at DEA.

Maltz, who retired from the agency in 2014 after 28 years of service, has made a series of sensational comments about cannabis—at one point linking marijuana use to school shootings, for example. But he evidently also holds a more common prohibitionist position: He thinks cannabis is a gateway to harder drugs, despite numerous studies contradicting that theory.

“Marijuana is not the marijuana from the 70s or the 80s or the 90s. This is higher, pure-THC marijuana,” he said during an interview with NTD at a Turning Point USA event last year. “I’ve talked to doctors about this. It’s actually causing psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety—so it’s really a gateway drug for these kids that don’t know any better.”

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Trump’s New DEA Head Blamed Marijuana For School Shootings And Claimed Rescheduling Push Was Politically Motivated

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has a new interim leader—and he’s no fan of marijuana, previously linking cannabis use to school shootings and repeatedly insisting that the Biden administration”hijacked” the rescheduling process from the agency for political purposes.

DEA announced on Monday that Derek Maltz, who retired from the agency in 2014 after 28 years of service, will be serving as acting administrator. With President Donald Trump still having yet to name his choice to run DEA as administrator, it’s unclear if Maltz is positioned to receive that nomination or if he will ultimately be replaced.

But for cannabis advocates and stakeholders, Maltz’s return to DEA for now—especially as anxieties around the fate of the ongoing marijuana rescheduling process grow—represents a troubling development.

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