Tag: the war on (some) drugs

AOC Faces House Ethics and FEC Complaint for Spending Campaign Funds on Doctor who Specializes in Ketamine Therapy

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has come into the crosshairs of an ethics complaint for using campaign contributions for personal use after allegedly spending almost $19,000 on a psychiatrist who is known for specializing in Ketamine therapy.

The National Legal and Policy Center filed a joint complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and the House Ethics Committee on Friday.

It reads, “NLPC alleges that AOC’s expenditure of almost $19,000 of campaign funds in 2025 to psychiatrist Dr. Brian W. Boyle ostensibly for ‘leadership training and consulting’ was expended instead for personal psychiatric services provided to AOC or members of her campaign staff. Accordingly, those expenses were also misreported by the campaign committee with the FEC. NLPC requests that the FEC and OCC immediately investigate the facts and circumstances of these payments and impose appropriate penalties and disciplinary sanctions against AOC.”

However, “there is reason to believe that Dr. Boyle does not provide campaign ‘Leadership Training and Consulting,’” the complaint continues, highlighting his specialty in depression and his status as a “leading authority” on Ketamine therapy.

The complaint further provides receipts of the expenditures from FEC data.

Paul Kamenar, the group’s general counsel, told the New York Post, “AOC’s spending almost $19,000 in campaign funds for a shrink appears to violate both the FEC and House Ethics rules prohibiting use of such funds for personal purposes.”

He added, “While AOC has been in therapy in the past, she should spend her own money if she needs psychiatric treatment from Dr. Brian Boyle, whose specialty includes narcissistic personality disorder.”

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China’s Hubei province arrests 7 and shuts websites in fentanyl crackdown

A Chinese province has launched a crackdown on the fentanyl trade — a contentious issue in U.S.-China relations — arresting seven people and shutting down more than 200 websites in recent months, state media reported Thursday.

The announcement came shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would postpone a highly anticipated trip to China because of the Iran war. Trump has used tariffs to try to pressure China to do more to stem the export of fentanyl precursors — the chemical ingredients that go into the synthetic opioid blamed for tens of thousands of overdose deaths annually in the U.S.

The Hubei Daily News said in an online report that a fentanyl precursor task force established in December had investigated 22 cases in Hubei province through February. Besides the seven arrested, a dozen other people have been subjected to “coercive measures,” which can include being summoned or detained. Four companies have been penalized, the newspaper said.

Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, issued a similar report. It said the task force had been set up to follow a directive from China’s Ministry of Public Security. The operation followed an agreement by China at the end of October to take steps to stop the precursor trade in return for a halving of the fentanyl-related tariff on U.S. imports from China to 10%.

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Republicans Are Twice As Likely As Democrats To See Marijuana Use As Morally Wrong, Poll Shows

Americans across every demographic—age, gender, religion and political affiliation—all agree that using marijuana is not morally wrong, according to a new polling report from the Pew Research Center. However, Republicans are still twice as likely as Democrats to say consuming cannabis is a moral no-no, the survey results show.

The analysis was based on a recent poll that asked Americans about their views on the morality of a variety of behaviors and policies. Overall, 76 percent of U.S. adults said using marijuana is either morally acceptable or not a moral issue at all, compared to 23 percent who said the activity is immoral.

That puts marijuana use in roughly the same moral standing as getting a divorce and spanking children, at least from the average American perspective.

More Americans believe using marijuana is not morally wrong than those who feel the same about gambling, watching pornography, having an abortion, being gay, the death penalty and more.

Cannabis is considered decidedly less moral than alcohol, however, with only 16 percent of respondents calling it morally wrong to drink.

That said, a closer look at the demographic data on the marijuana question shows that, by and large, the prevailing opinion is that smoking marijuana doesn’t make someone a bad person.

The age breakdown for those who said cannabis use isn’t morally wrong shows little deviation among younger and older adults: 18-29 (79 percent), 30-49 (76 percent), 50-64 (77 percent) and 65+ (73 percent).

There’s also general uniformity in the belief that cannabis use is not morally wrong among people who subscribe to different religious denominations: Christian (72 percent), Protestant (73 percent), Catholic (74 percent), Jewish (85 percent). Atheists and agnostics were even less likely to regard marijuana use as immoral, with 98 percent and 94 percent percent describing the activity as morally acceptable or not a moral issue, respectively.

Men and women were equally likely to say using cannabis isn’t immoral, at 76 percent.

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Army raises enlistment age to 42, removes waiver for marijuana possession

A major update to Army recruiting regulations this week raises the maximum age a recruit can join to 42, and removes a barrier to joining for recruits with a single legal conviction for marijuana or drug paraphernalia possession.

The Army’s previous limit was 35, though exceptions are occasionally made. The higher age limit brings the Army in line with other services’ limits of 41 in the Navy and 42 in the Air Force and Space Force, Kate Kuzminski, who studies military recruiting for the Center for a New American Security, told Task & Purpose.

Army recruiting officials have noted in recent years that the average age of recruits is increasing, with officials telling reporters in 2024 that the average recruit was 22 years, 4 months, and that it was still “going up.” 

Kuzminski said the change has positives and negatives. According to a report she authored for the RAND Corporation, many older recruits scored higher on enlistment qualification tests than recruits who joined before 20. Those older recruits were also more likely to reenlist and be promoted than their younger peers.

However, older recruits were also less likely to graduate from basic training and had higher attrition rates.

The older enlistment cap is the latest in the military’s multi-billion-dollar overhaul of recruiting, launched after years of missed recruiting goals. The Army, the largest branch in the military, failed to meet annual recruiting goals in 2022 and 2023. Changes in recent years to the Army’s recruiting enterprise include installing a pre-boot camp prep course for recruits who do not initially meet fitness and academic standards and creating marketing schemes to move the Army’s messaging past the post-9/11 wars and appeal to Gen Z. 

The changes also reflect a changing Army workforce with more education and job skills. In 2024, then-Army Secretary Christine Wormuth announced that the Army’s goal was to have one-third of the entire force to hold college degrees. For officers, the service has expanded its direct commissioning program for professionals who have worked in the tech sector for a few years and have expertise in artificial intelligence and space, in order to help bolster the Army’s technical knowledge across its formations. 

Col. Angela Chipman, chief military personnel accessions & retention division said the enlistment age increase reflects the need for technical talent, even in the enlisted force.

“We’re kind of looking at a more mature audience that might have experience in technical fields,” Chipman said. “We need warrant officers with extreme technical capabilities, and those will come from the enlisted ranks.”

Marijuana laws vary between states

The Army also changed a specification in its waiver process for drug offenses. According to the regulation, recruits no longer need a waiver for a single conviction of possession of marijuana or possession of drug paraphernalia like bongs, roach clips, miniature spoons, and various pipes.

Under the previous regulation, a recruit with one conviction for possession of marijuana or drug paraphernalia required a waiver from officials in the Pentagon. Recruits previously had to wait 24 months to enlist, and would have to pass a drug test at a Military Entrance Processing Stations facility before their waiver could be approved.

Kuzminski said the waiver modification “accounts for changes in society.” She noted that the change is for a single offense but that recruits with a “pattern” of convictions or behavior would still need a waiver. 

“The updated regulation allows for one mistake, which likely represents the bulk of potential recruits considering service in the Army,” Kuzminski said. “Reducing the number of characteristics that need to be reviewed for waivers frees up capacity for other candidates who need waivers, thus speeding up the process across the board and helping to ensure that the Army does not lose interested candidates.”

The looser approach to marijuana use comes as the broader military tightens its drug policies for troops currently serving. In recent years, the military added psychedelic mushrooms and products with kratom and related substances to its list of banned substances.  Earlier this week, the Army said it will begin flagging all soldiers with positive drug tests — not just those with security clearances — to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.

And both Republican and Democratic in Congress have signaled a more lenient approach to recruits’ marijuana use — which is legal for recreational use in almost half of the U.S. and legal for medical use in the majority of states.

“It’s just us looking at, as the states continue to legalize marijuana versus those that don’t, and the federal government not yet legalizing,” Chipman said, “at what point are we hindering ourselves by holding people to this type of conviction that in some states is okay and some states isn’t?”

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Alcohol Industry Group Launches Push To Regulate Hemp THC Drinks Instead Of Banning Them

A major alcohol industry trade association is launching a new campaign pushing Congress to call off a scheduled ban on hemp THC beverages and instead regulate the products for consumer access.

Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) on Tuesday announced it has created an educational microsite on the issue that offers resources on the issue and argues that “the same regulatory system that has worked for alcohol should be applied to intoxicating hemp products.”

In particular, the group is supporting an approach for hemp drinks that would include federal licensure of suppliers and distributors, a federal tax, independent testing requirements and the regulation of trade practices such as a prohibition on slotting fees, while allowing states to regulate the products in their own markets.

“This framework should prioritize a safe and reliable marketplace by supporting public safeguards and consumer choice,” the WSWA microsite says. “Alcohol regulation has been an unparalleled success and can serve as a model for the regulation of intoxicating hemp products, including beverages.”

At the state level, the alcohol lobby group is calling on states to create their own licensing structures and regulatory systems with components such as an age limit of 21, excise taxes, bans on synthetic cannabinoids, testing requirements, marketing restrictions and product tracking.

In the meantime, WSWA wants lawmakers to pass pending legislation to delay the scheduled ban on hemp THC products for two years, which it says will provide enough time for a regulatory approach to be crafted. As it stands now under legislation signed by President Donald Trump late last year, hemp THC products are set to be federally recriminalized on November 12. They initially became legal under the 2018 Farm Bill that Trump signed during his first term.

The wine and spirits group’s microsite also provides facts and figures about the intoxicating hemp market, saying it supports 320,000 jobs, has $28.4 billion in potential market activity and $1.5 billion in potential state tax revenue.

It also has a countdown timer showing how long lawmakers have to act until the ban goes into effect.

“If Congress fails to act, these products face a real risk of being removed from the shelves of licensed, responsible retail stores in November, but would still be available to consumers through multiple other unregulated channels” WSWA President and CEO Francis Creighton said in a press release. “Intoxicating products, including hemp beverages, need a clear, workable framework that protects public health and public safety while allowing responsible businesses to operate. This resource is designed to inform that conversation with facts, not confusion.”

Earlier this month, the House Agriculture Committee advanced a Farm Bill that hemp industry stakeholders hoped could be used to delay the pending federal ban on cannabinoid products containing THC. But while the legislation does contain certain hemp provisions aimed at assisting farmers, it did not include any reforms to the impending recriminalization.

WSWA recently hosted a conference at which industry stakeholders and a former congressman who owns an alcohol retail chain discussed hemp product issues.

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DEA Admits Teen Cannabis Use Has Drastically Decreased Since 1995, Despite Dozens of States Legalizing Cannabis

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is acknowledging that teen cannabis use has fallen sharply over the past three decades, despite 40 states legalizing medical cannabis and 24 legalizing adult-use cannabis within that period.

The admission comes through DEA’s Just Think Twice platform, where the agency includes an online quiz covering drug trends, overdose risks and substance use. One of the questions asks whether past-year marijuana use among adolescents and teens declined between 1995 and 2025. DEA says that statement is a fact.

According to the agency, past-year cannabis use among 8th grade students dropped from 15.8% in 1995 to 7.6% in 2025. Among 10th graders, it fell from 28.7% to 15.6%. For 12th graders, it declined from 34.7% to 25.7%.

Those figures undercut one of the most common arguments used by prohibitionists for years: that allowing marijuana to become legal at the state level would inevitably cause youth use to rise. DEA’s own materials now make clear that the opposite trend has played out over time.

That matters because the legalization movement expanded dramatically during the same period. California became the first state to legalize medical cannabis in 1996. Since then, 39 other states have followed with medical marijuana laws, and 24 states have also legalized cannabis for adult use.

In other words, marijuana laws have loosened in dozens of states since the mid-1990s, while teen use has moved in the other direction.

DEA says the figures come from the Monitoring the Future survey, a long-running national study backed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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New Mexico Will Fund Psychedelic Treatment for Patients on Low Incomes

On March 11, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) signed the budget for the upcoming fiscal year into law, and in doing so, underlined the state’s position at the vanguard of alternative mental health treatments.

Embedded within the finalized appropriation is a late addition: a pioneering directive to allocate $630,000 to the state’s Psilocybin Treatment Equity Fund, newly established under New Mexico’s Medical Psilocybin Act.

Confirmation of the funding represents a big step forward in the state’s efforts to integrate psychedelic-assisted therapies into its broader behavioral health infrastructure. And the formal allocation of state funds to pay for psychedelic treatments for patients on low incomes is seen as a world first. 

State Senator Jeff Steinborn (D) was one of the legislative champions of the 2025 legalization of psilocybin for medical purposes. He emphasized that the state’s financial support is what will ultimately dictate the efficacy and fairness of the entire enterprise.

“I’m excited that New Mexico has taken the next step in support of our Medical Psilocybin Treatment Program,” Sen. Steinborn told Filter following the budget’s approval. “An important part of our state law was the creation of an equity fund, to ensure all New Mexicans who qualify for the program would have access to it, not just those with financial resources. Through this funding provided by the legislature and governor, as well as additional investment in research into end-of-life anxiety, we are working to launch the best evidence-based program possible.”

In addition to the equity fund allocation, the budget authorizes a supplementary $300,000 earmarked for clinical research at the University of New Mexico into treating end-of-life anxiety with psilocybin—the hallucinogenic compound found in certain mushrooms. 

New Mexico will be a critical testing ground for medical access to psychedelics as it navigates the challenges of implementation.

Its schedule is ambitious. In December 2025, state health officials announced concrete plans to launch the program by the end of r 2026. This means rolling out the regulatory and clinical framework a full year ahead of the initially imposed legislative deadline.

When the program opens its doors to patients, New Mexico will become the third state to launch a state-regulated psilocybin program after Oregon and Colorado. However, while Oregon and Colorado have adopted models that allow for supported adult use and broader therapeutic access outside of strict medical confines, New Mexico’s program will be fundamentally clinical and medicalized.It’s designed to provide highly supervised treatment for specific, severe qualifying medical conditions—including major treatment-resistant depression, severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic substance use disorders, and specialized end-of-life care.

But in the United States, a medicalized model immediately raises questions around whether people will be able to access it on the basis of need, rather than ability to pay. That’s what the Psilocybin Treatment Equity Fund is intended to address.

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Owners and CEO of Wholesale Pharmaceutical Company Sentenced for Distributing More Than $92M of Black-Market HIV Drugs

Two owners of a pharmaceutical wholesale company were sentenced Friday to a total of 38 years in prison for orchestrating a complex, nationwide drug diversion scheme that harmed vulnerable HIV-positive patients, placed countless others at risk, and corrupted the supply chain for prescription drugs in the United States.

“Patrick and Charles Boyd did not just commit fraud and cost taxpayers millions of dollars, they preyed upon some of the most vulnerable members of our society: HIV patients who depend on life-saving treatments to manage their disease,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Fraud schemes like this one undermine the integrity of our supply chain for necessary prescription drugs. These defendants will rightly spend years in prison for their reprehensible conduct, which took advantage of people for illicit profit. This case is another example of how the Criminal Division, our United States Attorney partner in the Southern District of Florida, and law enforcement will pursue and seek convictions of those who defraud our systems, endanger our citizens, and seek to line their pockets with fraud proceeds.”

“These defendants treated life-saving HIV medication like street contraband,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida. “They bought drugs off the street from black-market suppliers, shipped them in dirty boxes and discarded packaging, falsified paperwork, and pushed those medications back into the legitimate pharmaceutical supply chain. The consequences were real. HIV patients received bottles containing the wrong drugs, and at least one patient lost consciousness after ingesting medication that should never have been in that bottle. As a former military prosecutor, federal prosecutor, and trial judge, I have seen how greed can drive dangerous schemes. When criminals gamble with patient safety for profit, federal prison is the result.”

“Friday’s sentence underscores the extreme danger these defendants created,” said Acting Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Scott J. Lampert of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS‑OIG). “They took life‑threatening actions that showed an alarming disregard for human life in service of nothing more than a payday. Their criminal scheme endangered vulnerable patients, put entire communities at risk, and undermined the integrity of Medicare and Medicaid. HHS‑OIG will continue working with our law enforcement partners — and using every tool in our arsenal — to pursue and dismantle illegal black‑market rings that seek to corrupt the nation’s drug supply and exploit taxpayer‑funded health care programs.”

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‘TRIANGLES’: DOJ-Released Files Show Disgraced Former British Ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, Getting Illegal Drugs and Botox From Jeffrey Epstein

The fallout from the ‘Epstein files’ was particularly hard on former Labour peer Peter Mandelson.

While British elite member ‘Petie’ felt he was powerful and untouchable over his Jeffrey Epstein ties, the reality proved much different.

Mandelson was fired from his US ambassadorship, had to resign from the Labour Party and the House of Lords, his consulting firm collapsed, and to top it all, he was arrested over his Epstein ties, as he is criminally investigated for ‘Misconduct in Public Office’.

And, as bad as things already are, the revelations keep popping up from the documents released by the US DOJ.

Now, a report, appearing first on the Daily Mail, shows how late pedophile Epstein allegedly supplied illegal drugs and Botox to Mandelson.

Metro reported:

“Messages show the two men discussing the use of anti-anxiety pill Xanax, with Mandelson relying on his disgraced friend for medical advice, according to the Mail on Sunday.

In the UK, Xanax is a Class C controlled substance, making it illegal to buy or supply. It is also controlled in the US due to the risk of addiction.”

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