Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Kentucky Governor Pushes DEA To Reschedule Marijuana, Saying It’s An “Alternative To Deadly Opioids’

The governor of Kentucky has added his voice to the chorus of people urging the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to follow through on the Biden administration’s plan to reschedule marijuana.

Gov. Andy Beshear (D) on Wednesday submitted a public comment on the proposed rule, which would move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). There are currently more than 31,000 comments submitted on the proposal, with the deadline to weigh in coming up on Monday.

“As Governor, my job is to move our state forward,” Beshear said, referencing his state’s medical cannabis legalization policy that he signed into law. “Rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III is a significant, common-sense step forward for all Kentuckians, especially those with significant medical conditions.”

He added that the reclassification will have “substantial and meaningful impacts” on patients, communities, businesses and research.

While he argued that the reform would provide an “alternative to deadly opioids,” that’s not necessarily the case. As a Schedule III drug, marijuana would still be federally illegal unless the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it as a medicine, which is unlikely for a botanical substance.

Beshear added that rescheduling will promote “fair markets” for cannabis, as it will allow state-licensed marijuana businesses to take federal tax deductions that they’ve been barred from under an Internal Revenue Service code known as 280E. The policy change would also mean “real opportunities for research on marijuana” since certain barriers imposed on studying Schedule I drugs would be lifted.

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DOJ Doubles Down On Claim That Medical Marijuana Patients ‘Endanger Public Safety’ If They Own Guns

The Justice Department is doubling down on its position that medical marijuana patients who possess firearms “endanger public safety,” “pose a greater risk of suicide” and are more likely to commit crimes “to fund their drug habit”—justifying, in the government’s eyes, a federal ban on gun ownership by cannabis consumers.

Following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that upheld the constitutionality of governments setting certain gun restrictions in a case centered around domestic violence-related prohibitions, the justices remanded a pending cannabis and Second Amendment rights case back to the lower court for reconsideration.

Late last week, plaintiffs and DOJ submitted briefs in a separate case that responded to the potential implications of the high court’s latest decision for the federal statute barring gun ownership by cannabis consumers.

In the filings submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, DOJ urged the panel to affirm an initial district court ruling that deemed the cannabis and firearms ban to be constitutional, while appellants are requesting a reversal of the order.

This is the latest development in the two-year case, with a group of Florida medical cannabis patients arguing that their Second Amendment rights are being violated because they cannot lawfully buy firearms so long as they are using cannabis as medicine, despite acting in compliance with state law.

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While Alcohol Might ‘Facilitate’ Sexual Encounters, Marijuana Better Enhances Sexual Satisfaction, Study Finds

A new study examining the influence of intoxicating substances on sexual encounters says that while alcohol might “facilitate” sex in the first place, marijuana is better at enhancing sexual sensitivity and satisfaction.

Based on an online survey of 483 people who had previously used both alcohol and cannabis, the newly published research found that while alcohol increased some elements of sexual attraction—including making people feel more attractive, more extroverted and more desirous—people who used marijuana “have more sensitivity and they are more sexually satisfied than when they consume alcohol.”

“Therefore, it is concluded that, although alcohol facilitates the sexual encounter, with cannabis they feel more satisfied,” wrote the three-author team from the University of Huelta and University of Cordoba, in Spain, according to a translation.

The study, published this month in Revista Internacional de Androlgía, claims to be the first research in Spain to compare the effects of alcohol and cannabis—the country’s two most popular drugs—on sexual experiences in the same participants. Despite the influence of alcohol and other drugs on sexual experience, it says, scant research globally has been carried out on comparative effects.

Participants were given a series of statements and asked to answer them about both alcohol and cannabis.

Asked how the consumption of alcohol or cannabis affected their sexual experience in general, 19 percent said marijuana improved the experience, compared to just 8.4 percent of respondents who said alcohol improved their experience.

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Top Federal Drug Official Wants U.S. To Move ‘Away From Criminalization’ And Focus On Treatment

A top federal drug official is calling for the government to move “away from criminalization” under the drug war, saying that the country’s failure to offer drug treatment to incarcerated people only exacerbates the ongoing opioid overdose crisis.

“It remains a common belief that simply stopping people from taking drugs while in jail or prison is an effective approach to treatment,” Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) wrote in a new opinion article. “But that belief is inaccurate and dangerous.”

In fact, drug overdose “is the leading cause of death among people returning to their communities after being in jail or prison,” Volkow continued. “Providing addiction treatment in these settings could change that.”

In addition to calling for wider access to medication-assisted treatment—using the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone—the NIDA leader also said a shift away from the criminal drug war could help improve outcomes and help families.

“Fundamentally, an individual’s best or only option to receive addiction treatment should not have to be during incarceration,” Volkow wrote in the piece, which appeared last week in the life sciences publication STAT and was republished Monday on NIDA’s website. “In an ideal world, treatment and prevention systems in the U.S. would proactively address social drivers of health and mental health needs to stop the cycle between addiction and incarceration.”

“Moving away from criminalization of substance use disorders toward a public-health approach would remove a key structural practice that perpetuates equalities,” she said. “It would improve lives for people and their families.”

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Psychedelic Mushrooms May Have Contributed To Early Development Of Human Consciousness, Study Concludes

A new paper exploring the role of psilocybin mushrooms in the evolution of human consciousness says the psychedelic has the “potential to trigger significant neurological and psychological effects” that could have influenced the development of our species over time.

The literature review, which authors said draws on “a multidisciplinary approach spanning biology, ethnobotany and neuroscience,” examined studies involving psilocybin and human consciousness published in multiple journals in different fields. Their 12-page report highlights views that mushrooms played a crucial role in getting humans to where we are today.

“The hypothesis that psilocybin mushrooms may have intervened as a factor in the evolution of human consciousness, either as catalysts of mystical experiences or as drivers of cognitive processes, raises profound reflections on the ancestral interaction between human beings and their environment,” the authors wrote, according to a translation from the original Spanish. “The origin of human consciousness is one of the great questions facing man, and the material collected indicates that psilocybin may have contributed to its early development.”

As humans’ ancestors moved from forested environments into grasslands, they encountered more hoofed animals—and their excrement. In that excrement, they likely found mushrooms, including psilocybin mushrooms, says the study, citing researchers such as Terrence McKenna, who explored the so-called “stoned ape” theory that psychedelics helped spur human development.

Consuming mushrooms may have subsequently influenced pre-human hominids’ brains in all sorts of ways, authors wrote, such as improving hunting and food-gathering as well as increasing sexual stimulation and mating opportunities.

Changes like those, combined with the effects of psilocybin on human consciousness and brain function, could have expanded the human mind, “allowing us to transcend our basic perception and embrace creativity, introspection and abstract thinking” and potentially influencing language development, the study, published last month by the Miguel Lillo Foundation, a research organization in Argentina, says.

“Considering the importance of psilocybin mushrooms in the interaction with human consciousness, it is crucial to explore both their brain and evolutionary implications,” the authors—Jehoshua Macedo-Bedoya of the University Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, Peru, and Fatima Calvo-Bellido of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru—concluded.

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Congress Accidentally Legalized Weed Six Years Ago

Drive through durham, north carolina, where I live, and you might get the impression that marijuana is legal here. Retail windows advertise thc in glittery letters and neon glass, and seven-pointed leaves adorn storefronts and roadside sandwich boards. The newest business near my house is the Stay Lit Smoke Shop, where an alien ripping a bong invites you to use the drive-through.

In fact, neither medical nor recreational marijuana is legal in North Carolina. Technically, we’re getting high on hemp.

This is probably not what Congress had in mind when it passed the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, commonly called the 2018 Farm Bill, which made the production of hemp—cannabis’s traditionally nonpsychoactive cousin—legal for the first time in nearly a century. Lawmakers who backed hemp legalization expected the plant to be used for textiles and nonintoxicating supplements, such as CBD oil and shelled hemp seeds (great on an acai bowl). They didn’t realize that, with some chemistry and creativity, hemp can get you just as high as the dankest marijuana plant.

The upshot is that although recreational marijuana use is allowed in only 24 states and Washington, D.C., people anywhere in the U.S. can get intoxicated on hemp-derived THC without breaking federal law. These hemp-based highs are every bit as potent as those derived from the marijuana available in legalization states. I know this because I’ve tried recreational pot in California and Colorado, as well as 11 different hemp-derived intoxicants legally available here in North Carolina. I am not exaggerating when I say that they are indistinguishable in effect. In other words, six years ago, Congress inadvertently legalized weed across the entire United States.

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DeSantis Anti-Marijuana Legalization Campaign Gets $100K Donation From Cannabis Exec As Hemp Businesses Pledge $5M To State GOP

Amid new reporting that Florida-based hemp businesses are rallying behind Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) campaign to defeat a marijuana legalization initiative—with an apparent pledge from hemp executives to donate $5 million to the Republican party as it works to oppose the effort—one particular cannabis-affiliated company has come under the spotlight after contributing a $100,000 boost to the governor’s so-called “Florida Freedom Fund” after its initially tepid fundraising start.

This comes weeks after the governor vetoed a bill to ban most consumable hemp products in a move that some suspect was at least partly meant to garner the industry’s favor in his anti-marijuana crusade.

DeSantis launched the political action committee—which is targeting both the legalization measure and a separate abortion rights initiative that will appear on the November ballot—last month. It has about $121,000 on hand, the bulk of which comes from POB Ventures, which is linked to a medical cannabis worker training institution and a chain of hemp businesses.

In an exclusive interview with Marijuana Moment, the CEO of POB Ventures, Patrick O’Brien, said he’s not against adult-use cannabis legalization in principle—but is instead troubled by the specific language of the ballot initiative because it provides an option, rather than a mandate, for regulators to approve additional licenses. He suggested the framework could create a monopolized cannabis economy that primarily benefits the state’s existing medical marijuana companies, including the multi-state operators such as Trulieve that have primarily financed the legalization campaign.

“If you look very closely at the writing, they just messed up—and it was with full intent to mess this up,” O’Brien, who also runs the education platform Sativa University and the cannabis product company Chronic Guru, argued. “All they had to do was make a simple change from ‘may’ issue more licenses to ‘must’ issue more licenses, and we would have had a recreational market.”

By giving regulators that licensing discretion, the measure could effectively kneecap prospective businesses outside of the existing medical cannabis space, he claims.

But there’s been criticism of the major contribution to the DeSantis PAC, which O’Brien says he will continue to support beyond the initial donation.

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Congress ‘Can Regulate Virtually Anything’

Two years after Harvard gave him the boot and three years before Congress banned LSD, Timothy Leary set out on a road trip from Millbrook, New York, in a rented station wagon. The 45-year-old psychologist and psychedelic enthusiast was accompanied by his girlfriend, Rosemary Woodruff, and his two teenaged children, Susan and Jack. They had planned a month-long family vacation in Yucatan, Mexico, after which Leary and Woodruff would stay behind to work on his newly commissioned autobiography. Leary and his companions arrived in Laredo, Texas, on the evening of December 22, 1965, and crossed the international bridge to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

At the customs station on the Mexican side of the bridge, Leary recalled in his 1983 memoir Flashbacks, he learned that the visa he needed would not be approved until the next day. That turned out to be the least of his troubles.

“All the grass is out of the car, right?” Leary asked as he started driving the station wagon back across the bridge. Jack had flushed his, but Woodruff said she had been unable to retrieve her “silver box” of pot from her bag because “there were two uniformed porters leaning against the car.” Since trying to toss the contraband off the side of the bridge seemed inadvisable, Susan hid it in her clothing.

At the inspection point on the U.S. side, Leary explained that he “didn’t enter Mexico” and had nothing to declare. After a suspicious customs agent picked up what looked like a cannabis seed from the car floor near Leary’s feet, the encounter escalated into searches of the vehicle, the passengers, and their luggage. A “personal search” of Susan discovered what the U.S. Supreme Court would later describe as “a silver snuff box containing semi-refined marihuana and three partially smoked marihuana cigarettes”—about half an ounce, all told.

Leary claimed ownership of the stash, which earned him a 30-year prison sentence. That astonishingly severe penalty was based on two federal charges: transportation of illegally imported marijuana and failure to pay a transfer tax on the contraband.

Those puzzling charges provide a window on the constitutionally dubious origins of federal drug prohibition, which was smuggled into the U.S. Code disguised as tax legislation. Federal gun control laws followed a similar route, expanding along with conventional conceptions of congressional power.

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GOP Lawmakers Push Justice Department To Reverse Course On Marijuana Rescheduling

Republicans in Congress sent a public comment letter this week opposing the Biden administration’s planned rescheduling of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), alleging the government’s recommendation was based on politics rather than science.

Led by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the letter opposing the move of cannabis to Schedule III was signed 23 other House and Senate GOP congressional lawmakers. It was addressed to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice (DOJ).

“The decision to disregard public safety and medical concerns to reclassify marijuana is strictly political,” Sessions claimed in a press release about the letter. “This egregious proposed rule fails to provide sufficient science and data in support. Senator Lankford and I are leading the charge in raising the alarm from Congress.”

The letter itself says it should be irrelevant to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) analysis of marijuana that 38 states and Washington, D.C. have legalized medical cannabis under state law.

“It is clear that HHS and DOJ chose the desired conclusion first and worked backwards, since the rule does not provide sufficient reason to move marijuana to schedule III,” the letter says, further alleging that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) “was not properly consulted in the drafting of the Proposed Rule.”

To that end, the letter amplified rumors that DEA is not on board with the administration’s rescheduling plan.

“DEA Administrator [Ann] Milgram did not sign the rule, and it states many times that DEA believes additional information is needed regarding the appropriate schedule for marijuana,” it says. “The Proposed Rule references DEA’s findings from 2016, when it rejected two petitions to remove marijuana from schedule I. It seems that DEA stands by its findings from 2016- all the more reason why this rule should not have been published without sign off from the DEA Administrator.”

Since the government’s rescheduling plan was made public in April, SAM and others have amplified rumors that DEA officials might oppose the proposed change—rumors that a top Biden administration official appeared to acknowledge last month.

Asked by a reporter whether there was resistance to the move at DEA, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra responded: “Talk to the DEA.”

“Our scientists reviewed the evidence,” he added. “FDA bases its action on the science and the evidence before us. We took action.”

The GOP lawmakers claim in the new letter that despite the popularity of medical marijuana nationwide, cannabis isn’t medicine.

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Marijuana Use Linked To Better And More Frequent Sex, Study Finds—But Dosage Is Critical

A new scientific review of academic research on cannabis and human sexuality concludes that while the relationship between marijuana and sex is a complicated one, use of cannabis is generally associated with more frequent sexual activity as well as increased sexual desire and enjoyment.

The article, published this week in the journal Psychopharmacology, also suggests that lower doses of marijuana may actually be best suited for sexual satisfaction, while higher doses could in fact lead to decreases in desire and performance. And it suggests the effects may differ based on a person’s gender.

“Reports suggest that cannabis has the potential to enhance sexual pleasure, reduce inhibitions, alleviate anxiety and shame, and promote intimacy and connection with sexual partners,” wrote the five-author research team from The Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. “Furthermore, it has been associated with increased pleasure during masturbation and enhanced sensory experiences during sexual encounters. These observations indicate that cannabis may have notable effects on sexual experiences.”

The nine-page literature review says that while sex is a complex dynamic influenced by various physical and emotional factors, marijuana “affects individuals in an integrative manner, impacting both physical and emotional aspects, which can potentially influence sexual experiences.”

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