Tag: the war on (some) drugs

The DEA Wants To Ban Scientifically ‘Crucial’ Psychedelics Because People Might Use Them

You probably have never heard of 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI), let alone heard that it is commonly abused. Yet the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) wants to ban the synthetic psychedelic, a promising research chemical that has figured in more than 900 published studies, by placing it in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, a category supposedly reserved for drugs with a high abuse potential and no recognized medical applications—drugs so dangerous that they cannot be used safely, even under a doctor’s supervision. Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), which defeated a previous DEA attempt to ban DOI in 2022, is determined to stop that move again.

On Tuesday, acting on behalf of more than 20 scientists, SSDP filed a prehearing statement objecting to DOI’s placement in Schedule I. That step, SSDP notes, would impose “onerous financial and bureaucratic obstacles on researchers,” since “obtaining a Schedule I license involves a daunting array of red tape and substantial costs, which can be prohibitive for many research institutions, particularly smaller labs and academic departments.” SSDP also opposes the scheduling of another psychedelic, 2,5-dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine (DOC), that is covered by the same proposed rule, which the DEA published on December 13.

“DOI and DOC are important research chemicals with basically no evidence of abuse,” says SSDP attorney Brett Phelps. “We are excited to fight on behalf of SSDP scientists so that they can continue the critical work they are doing with these substances.”

Phelps is working with Denver attorney Robert Rush, who represents University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientist Raul Ramos. “The DEA’s attempt to classify DOI, a compound of great significance to both psychedelic and fundamental serotonin research, as a Schedule I substance exemplifies an administrative agency overstepping its bounds,” Rush says. “The government admits DOI is not being diverted for use outside of scientific research yet insists on placing this substance in such a restricted class that it will disrupt virtually all current research.”

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Lesser-Known Marijuana Components Can Be ‘Promising Anticancer Agents,’ Study On Multiple Myeloma Finds

A new study on the possible therapeutic value of lesser-known compounds in cannabis says that a number of minor cannabinoids may have anticancer effects on blood cancer that warrant further study.

The research, published in the journal BioFactors, looked at minor cannabinoids and multiple myeloma (MM), testing responses in cell models to the cannabinoids CBG, CBC, CBN and CBDV as well as studying CBN in a mouse model.

“Together, our results suggest that CBG, CBC, CBN, and CBDV can be promising anticancer agents for MM,” authors wrote, “due to their cytotoxic effect on MM cell lines and, for CBN, in in vivo xenograft mouse model of MM.”

They also noted the cannabinoids’ apparently “beneficial effect on the bone in terms of reduction of MM cells invasion toward the bone and bone resorption (mainly CBG and CBN).”

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Marijuana Rescheduling Would Create Over 50,000 New Jobs, Industry Group Tells DEA On Last Day Of Public Comment Period

If the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) ultimately decides not to move forward with marijuana rescheduling, many small and minority-owned cannabis business will have to close shop, “resulting in major economic losses and unemployment,” according to a new industry report. But enacting the reform, in contrast, would grow the sector, adding more than 50,000 jobs by 2030.

The Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA) included the data from the report that was conducted by Whitney Economics in a public comment submitted to DEA ahead of Monday’s deadline for stakeholders to weigh in on cannabis rescheduling, offering a detailed economic analysis as the agency had specifically requested in its call for expert input.

The MCBA survey of 206 marijuana licensees across 32 states revealed some troubling trends in the cannabis industry, with just 27 percent of respondents reporting that their operations are profitable, compared to 41 percent that are breaking even and 36 percent that are losing money.

More than 80 percent of the businesses cited finances and tax issues as major economic problems. And MCBA said those issues could be largely resolved in DEA does move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) as the Justice Department has proposed because it would mean that the sector could finally take federal tax deductions they’re currently barred from under an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code known as 280E.

The “economic data indicates this Proposed Rule would positively impact all 42,125 state-issued marijuana licenses, and in particular small and minority-owned businesses,” it says. “The excess tax payments imposed as a result of IRC § 280E currently prevent marijuana businesses from deducting ordinary business expenses, resulting in higher taxable income and federal tax expense.”

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GOP Congressman Says ‘I Don’t Care’ If Rolling Back Marijuana Rescheduling Would Hurt Republican Party

A GOP congressman says “I don’t care” whether rolling back the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling move under a potential Trump presidency would hurt the Republican party, because he feels more strongly that the modest reform would endanger public health.

At the Republican National Committee conference last week, longtime prohibitionist Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) was asked about the potential political ramifications of a rescheduling reversal under a second Trump administration and GOP-controlled Congress.

He put it bluntly: “I don’t care whether it’s good for the party or not. I don’t care. It’s not good for your health.”

“My opinion is always the same: It’s not healthy for you. It’s bad. I think it’s bad policy,” Harris told Marijuana Moment.

The congressman is well known for his opposition to cannabis reform. In addition to championing a long-standing appropriations rider that’s blocked Washington, D.C. from legalizing marijuana sales for a decade, he’s also pushed the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reject the Justice Department proposal to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), for example.

But while Harris suggested that the rescheduling move would increase access to a substance he views as dangerous, a Schedule III reclassification would not federally legalize marijuana. The main effects of the policy change would be removing research barriers linked to Schedule I drugs and allowing state-licensed cannabis businesses to take federal tax deductions available to other industries.

The congressman said in the new interview with Marijuana Moment that he has “no idea” how former President Donald Trump, who was officially named the party’s presidential nominee for the third time at the GOP convention, will approach marijuana policy issues. “You’ve got to ask Mr. Trump,” he said.

Pressed on the fact that red and blue states alike have increasingly moved to enact legalization, Harris claimed that he’s “in the company” of experts such as National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Director Nora Volkow in opposing the policy.

“If we’re outliers, well, you know, sometimes outliers are right,” he said.

Harris has previously suggested that the NIDA director “adamantly opposed” the rescheduling proposal—despite the fact that her agency officially concurred with the recommended policy change, as well as the Volkow’s repeated public comments criticizing research barriers imposed by cannabis’s current Schedule I status.

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Kamala Harris’s Distinguished Career of Serving Injustice

Sen. Kamala Harris is rising in the polls after dramatically confronting former Vice President Joe Biden during the Democratic primary debate about his opposition to federally mandated busing for desegregation.

The following week, however, Harris backed away from saying that busing should always be federally mandated, calling it just one “tool that is in the toolbox” for school districts to use. When asked to clarify whether she would support federal mandates for busing, she said: “I believe that any tool that is in the toolbox should be considered by a school district.” But Biden’s poll numbers are falling as a result of Harris’s theatrical attack.

Harris, who served as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and California attorney general from 2011 to 2017, describes herself as a “progressive prosecutor.” Harris’s prosecutorial record, however, is far from progressive.

Through her apologia for egregious prosecutorial misconduct, her refusal to allow DNA testing for a probably innocent death row inmate, her opposition to legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to independently investigate police shootings and more, she has made a significant contribution to the sordid history of injustice she decries.

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Trudeau’s Signature Pot Legalization Is Failing On All Fronts

Isaac Newton said he lost money on the South Sea Bubble financial collapse because, although he could track the movement of stars, he could not calculate the madness of men.

In Canada, the legalization of cannabis in October 2018, unleashed a mania that has seen nearly 1,000 companies receive federal production licences and retailers open nearly 3,500 stores selling cannabis products across the country. It is a short street indeed that doesn’t have a pot shop on it.

The Cannabis Act was a cornerstone piece of legislation for the Trudeau government — a welcome end to 94 years of failed prohibition and an attempt to make Canada safer by closing down the black market in unregulated pot.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way and now there are dire warnings that the onerous federal regulatory and tax regime is in danger of killing the nascent licensed production market.

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Cannabis Is More Effective In Treating Musculoskeletal Pain Than Traditional Medications Are, Patients Say In New Study

More than 1 in 5 patients who go to orthopedic surgeons with chronic musculoskeletal pain are using or have used some form of cannabis to manage their pain, according to a new study published this month. Of those, almost two thirds said they felt cannabis was very or somewhat effective, while more than 9 in 10 said it was at least slightly effective.

“More than half (57%) claimed cannabis to be more effective than other analgesic medications, and 40% reported decreasing their use of other analgesic medications since starting cannabis use,” the research found, adding that only 26 percent reported a doctor recommended cannabinoids to them to treat their musculoskeletal (MSK) pain.

Notably, among those who said they used cannabis to manage pain, the most commonly used cannabinoid was CBD (39 percent), followed by a hybrid of multiple cannabinoids (20 percent). Almost a quarter (23 percent) said they were unaware of their cannabis’s composition.

Further, among patients who were not cannabis users, roughly two thirds (65 percent) said they were interested in using marijuana to manage their pain but reported barriers to use such as “lack of knowledge regarding access, use and evidence, and stigma,” although stigma was, contrary to previous research, not a primary concern.

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Bipartisan Lawmakers Seek To Remove Marijuana Rescheduling Ban From Key Spending Bill

Bipartisan congressional lawmakers are seeking to remove a controversial section of a spending bill that would block the Justice Department from rescheduling marijuana—one of several cannabis- and psychedelics-related amendments to appropriations legislation that have been filed in recent days.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) announced on Wednesday that she introduced the amendment to strike the rescheduling restriction that’s currently included in the 2025 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) spending bill.

In a video filmed with cannabis lobbyist Don Murphy at the Republican National Committee (RNC) convention, Mace said that “we want to make sure rescheduling happens,” even if her preference would be to fully deschedule marijuana as would be accomplished under her States Reform Act.

“We’re doing all we can,” the congresswoman said.

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Your brain on shrooms — how psilocybin resets neural networks

Taking psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in magic mushrooms, temporarily resets entire networks of neurons in the brain that are responsible for controlling a person’s sense of time and self, finds a study that repeatedly imaged the brains of seven volunteers before, during and after they took a massive dose of the drug.

The findings, published in Nature on 17 July1, could offer insights into why the compound might have a therapeutic effect on some neurological conditions.

Researchers “saw such massive changes induced by psilocybin” that some study participants’ brain-network patterns resembled those of a different person entirely, says Shan Siddiqi, a psychiatric neuroscientist at Harvard School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. “I’ve never seen an effect this strong.”

Most of these changes lasted for a few hours, but one key link between different parts of the brain remained disrupted for weeks.

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DeSantis Rails Against Florida Marijuana Ballot Measure In Republican National Convention Speech

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) on Wednesday again lashed out against Amendment 3, a marijuana legalization initiative that’s set to appear on his state’s November ballot, making hyperbolic claims about what the reform would allow.

Speaking to the Florida Republican delegation at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, DeSantis called the proposed constitutional amendment “limitless,” arguing that it would establish a right to marijuana that would be more fundamental than First Amendment or Second Amendment protections for free speech and guns, respectively.

“It gives you limitless constitutional right to possess and smoke,” DeSantis asserted before turning to the proposal’s three-ounce limit on marijuana possession.

“I think it’s up to like, what, 40 joints? Is that the what the three ounces would be, 40—more than that? Eighty joints, something like that,” the governor said. “It will be bad for quality of life, and it will make Florida more blue.”

DeSantis urged the assembled Florida Republicans to oppose the marijuana measure and a separate constitutional amendment that would expand legal access to abortion. “We’ve got to be united as Republicans and do what’s right,” he said at the event, first reported by Florida Politics.

The Florida Republican Party formally came out against Amendment 3 in May.

DeSantis claimed the marijuana legalization measure would establish “a broader constitutional right than your First Amendment rights to speech, free exercise of religion and assembly, broader than the Second Amendment, broader than any other constitutional right.”

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