Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Senators Approve Bill To Let VA Doctors Recommend Medical Marijuana To Veterans In Legal States

A key U.S. Senate committee has approved a spending bill with a new amendment allowing doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to discuss and recommend medical marijuana to patients living in legal states.

The Senate Appropriations Committee passed the cannabis amendment from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) in a voice vote on Thursday, also advancing the overall legislation, which provides funding for Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (MilConVA) for the 2025 Fiscal Year.

“The only healthcare system in America where a doctor cannot discuss medical marijuana with patients in states where it’s legal is the veterans system,” Merkley told the panel. “We’re discriminating against our veterans. This is really unacceptable.”

The same committee similarly passed the senator’s veterans and cannabis amendment last session and in prior years.

“This committee has approved this amendment in every single markup since 2015 for the last decade, because we want to have our veterans have the same fair access to the full range of medical advice that every other individual in America already has,” Merkley said.

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Legalizing And Regulating Drugs Is The Only Way Out Of The Overdose Crisis

Should heroin and cocaine be legally available to people who need and want them? If we are serious about stopping the crisis of drug overdose deaths, that is exactly the kind of profound change we need. Yes, extensive regulations would be necessary. In fact, the whole point of regulating drug production and sales is that we can better control what is being sold and to whom.

After British Columbia’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry testified to the all-party health committee in Ottawa in May that regulating these controlled drugs would minimize harms, B.C. Premier David Eby said he disagreed. He is quoted saying that “in a reality-based, real-world level, (it) doesn’t make any sense.” But does our current approach of drug prohibition “make sense?”

Since the overdose crisis was declared in 2016, illicit drug toxicity deaths have become the leading cause of unnatural death in B.C. and the leading cause of death from all causes for those aged 10 to 59. More than 44,000 people have died from drug poisoning in Canada since 2016, and more than one-third of those were in B.C. An average of 22 people are dying every day in Canada because the illicit supply of drugs is toxic.

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Hawaii Governor Signs Bill Creating Expungement Task Force That’s Expected To Consider Marijuana Conviction Relief

Hawaii’s governor has signed into law a bill to create a task force charged with crafting legislation that would expunge certain criminal records, likely including some past marijuana arrests and convictions.

Gov. Josh Green (D) signed the so-called Clean Slate Expungement Task Force bill on Tuesday, a day before a signature deadline for measures passed this session by lawmakers. The legislation does not explicitly mention cannabis, but marijuana-related offenses are widely expected to be included in the task force’s discussions, and organizations named as members of the new body have focused significantly on cannabis this session.

Reform advocates welcomed the news, saying that removing blemishes from peoples’ criminal records would help remove barriers to housing, education and employment.

“I believe in redemption. I believe in second chances,” Rep. David Tarnas (D), the bill sponsor, said at a press conference alongside the governor on Tuesday. “And in Hawaii, we have a system for record clearance and expungement, which is very challenging. There are tens of thousands of individuals who qualify to have their records expunged, and yet it is so difficult to do that. Very few people do it.”

The new law will “bring together people in a task force to figure out what is the best way for us to have a comprehensive framework for all clemency efforts in the state, including pardons, expungement and record sealing, so that we make it more accessible to people.”

Carrie Ann Shirota, policy director for ACLU of Hawai’i, told Marijuana Moment that the group strongly supports Clean Slate laws that expand expungement and record-sealing through the use of technology.

“SB 2706 creates an Expungement Task Force that brings us one step closer to ensuring that all people have access to opportunity,” she said. “Having a record should not be a barrier to helping individuals provide for themselves and their families, nor should it be a life sentence to poverty. At its heart, Clean Slate is about a shot at redemption and facilitating workforce development.”

Research shows that a year after record clearance, people are more likely to be employed and earn higher wages, Shirota added.

The new body will include state officials—including the attorney general, chief justice, public defender and some prosecutors—as well as representatives from various advocacy groups, including ACLU, the Last Prisoner Project (LPP), the Hawaii Innocence Project and others.

In a statement to Marijuana Moment, LPP said it’s “honored to be part of the expungement task force to ensure all Hawaiians with cannabis charges have their records expunged.”

“Our appointment to the Clean Slate task force will help ensure the state-initiated cannabis expungement bill signed by Governor Green is implemented with fidelity,” said LPP Policy Manager Adrian Rocha, “and can serve as the foundation for broader record relief moving forward.”

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Legalizing Marijuana Leads To ‘Substantial Decrease’ In Intimate Partner Violence, Study Shows

A new analysis of violence between intimate partners concludes that legalizing marijuana for adult use “results in a substantial decrease in rates of intimate partner violence.”

The finding also indicate that recreational cannabis legalization “substantially impacts the relationship between heavy drinking” and intimate partner violence (IPV), possibly as the result of people substituting marijuana for alcohol.

Author Samantha Gene Baldwin, a Georgetown master of public policy student, wrote in the thesis that the findings are “surprising,” saying the links between recreational marijuana legalization (RML) and IPV “require careful consideration.”

“As marijuana use is a known risk factor for IPV and legalization of recreational marijuana typically increases usage, RML could be expected to increase rates of IPV,” Baldwin wrote, adding: “Reduced alcohol use could complicate this relationship if marijuana acts as a substitute to alcohol. As alcohol consumption is a greater risk factor for IPV than marijuana use, any reduction in alcohol consumption would lessen the impact of RML on IPV.”

The study drew on data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which includes details of crimes that are reported to police. Baldwin used data from 2013–2019, deciding not to include data from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The analysis found that “legalization of recreational marijuana results in 56.6 fewer reported incidents of IPV per 100,000 people.”

GOP Congressional Committee Approves Bill To Block Marijuana Rescheduling, While Rejecting State Cannabis Protections Amendment

A key GOP-led House committee has approved a large-scale spending bill that would block the Justice Department from rescheduling marijuana, while also amending a longstanding rider protecting medical cannabis states from federal interference by adding new language to authorize enhanced penalties for sales near schools and parks. Members also rejected an amendment that would have extended those protections to all state and tribal cannabis programs, including those allowing recreational use and sales.

At a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, the panel passed the legislation covering Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) with the hostile marijuana provisions attached.

The bill as approved in committee would block the Justice Department from using its funds to reschedule or deschedule marijuana. This comes amid an active rulemaking process to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), as DOJ formally proposed earlier this year.

SEC. 623. None of the funds appropriated or other wise made available by this Act may be used to reschedule marijuana (as such term is defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802)) or to remove marijuana from the schedules established under section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812).

GOP senators have separately tried to block the administration from rescheduling cannabis as part of a standalone bill filed last September, but that proposal has not received a hearing or vote. Including such a ban in key annual spending legislation is a way for opponents to force the issue forward. It’s far from clear that the Democratic-controlled Senate would go along with proposal, however.

The legislation as approved by the panel on Tuesday still includes a longstanding rider to prevent DOJ from using its funds to interfere in the implementation of state medical marijuana programs that has been part of federal law since 2014, but the committee added new language stipulating that the Justice Department can still enforce a section of U.S. code that calls for increased penalties for distributing cannabis within 1,000 feet of an elementary school, vocational school, college, playground or public housing unit.

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Federal Science Agency Begins Selling ‘Most Carefully Quantified Cannabis Ever Sold’—For $174 A Gram

As part of an ongoing effort to help testing laboratories more reliably determine the potency and purity of marijuana and hemp, a federal science agency has begun selling packages of what it’s calling “some of the most carefully quantified cannabis ever sold.”

Picking up 4.5 grams of the stuff will cost $783, or $174 a gram—far more expensive than the cannabis that’s commercially available in states across the country.

The hemp product, sold by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), isn’t intended for consumption. Rather, it’s a tool to help labs calibrate their analyses of cannabinoids and toxic elements in both hemp and higher-THC marijuana.

“To ensure that their measurement methods are working properly, labs can analyze a bit of this material,” NIST said in a press release about its new offering, known as hemp plant reference material, or RM 8210. “If their numbers match those from NIST to within an accepted margin of error, all is well. If not, they’ll know they need to recalibrate their instruments or otherwise troubleshoot their methods.”

For just under $800, a lab receives three 1.5-gram sample packages of hemp. The samples are carefully measured by NIST for a variety of chemical components, including eight individual cannabinoids such as CBD and delta-9 THC, as well as 13 different toxic elements, like arsenic and heavy metals.

“Although this reference material is composed of hemp,” NIST said in its release, “labs can use it to validate their measurements of both hemp and marijuana, and it will help companies in the fast-growing cannabis industry and state regulators ensure that cannabis products are safe and accurately labeled.”

NIST biologist Colleen Bryan, who was part of the team the developed the reference material, said that consumers ought to be able to rely on what’s printed on product labels.

“If you buy a product that claims to have 25 milligrams of CBD per dose, you should be able to trust that number,” Bryan said, noting that some people use cannabis for medical reasons and may be particularly concerned about safety. “This reference material will help ensure that the cannabis they buy does not contain unsafe levels of toxic elements.”

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Social Workers Push Biden To Fully Decriminalize Marijuana Under Federal Law, Not Just Reschedule It

Nearly 150 social workers have signed on to a letter urging President Joe Biden to fully remove marijuana from the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), arguing that despite the administration’s proposal to downgrade cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, there’s nevertheless a “critical need for decriminalization.”

“The criminalization of marijuana has torn apart families, with overwhelmingly disparate impact in communities of color,” says the letter, sent to the president by 148 social workers last week. “If marijuana remains scheduled under the CSA, the individual and collective suffering caused by prohibition will continue growing.”

The letter points out that under current law, people convicted of drug offenses can lose public benefits, including welfare aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as well as access to housing.

“By virtue of our profession, we have witnessed the grievous harm that marijuana criminalization has caused,” it says. “If marijuana remains scheduled, parents will lose their children, children will lose their homes, and beloved members of our households will be deprived of essential benefits.”

Despite overwhelming support for legalization, it adds, “the use of marijuana remains a federal crime”—which would still be true in most cases even after federal rescheduling.

The current patchwork of state and local laws has also led to sharply different circumstances across the country, the letter continues, arguing that the “piecemeal approach towards legalization has created significant disparities in opportunities and outcomes.”

“While communities in legal states can build wealth from legal marijuana sales and benefit from regulations that ensure a safe, unaltered product,” it says, “other communities are subject to losing their homes, their occupations, their families, and their freedom over the same substance. The disparities in marijuana laws stand in stark opposition to the 88% of Americans who support legalization.”

“Approximately 80% of all children in the foster care system are removed from their homes for drug-related causes,” it adds.

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U.S. Supreme Court Sends Marijuana And Gun Case Back To Lower Court, Emboldening DOJ’s Defense Of Firearm Ban

The U.S. Supreme Court has sent a case concerning gun rights for marijuana consumers back down to a lower court after issuing a potentially relevant ruling in a separate Second Amendment case, and the Justice Department is now reiterating its position that cannabis use warrants a ban on firearm ownership.

The high court has remanded several gun cases to their respective lower courts in light of the ruling in United States v. Rahimi, which affirmed the government’s right to restrict gun rights for a man with restraining orders for domestic violence. The cases heading back to lower levels include at least one related to the cannabis ban, and DOJ is now arguing that the SCOTUS decision “undermines” a federal court’s ruling that deemed the prohibition for marijuana consumers to be unconstitutional last year.

In a supplemental letter brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where the United States vs. Daniels case was remanded by SCOTUS, the Justice Department said history “supports the government’s authority to disarm categories of persons whose firearm possession would endanger themselves or others.”

“Consistent with that principle, Congress may temporarily disarm unlawful users of controlled substances during periods of active drug use, when they present a special danger of firearm misuse,” it said. “The Supreme Court’s decision in Rahimi also is in tension with this Court’s opinion in United States v. Daniels, which made some of the very methodological errors that Rahimi corrected to find Section 922(g)(3) unconstitutional as applied to a marijuana user. The district court’s judgment should be reversed.”

DOJ has argued in multiple federal cases over the couple year that the statute banning cannabis consumers from owning or possessing guns is constitutional because it’s consistent with the nation’s history of disarming “dangerous” individuals.

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The Long Sordid Career of Creepy Joe Biden

I get complaints from people that I concentrate too much on Donald Trump. Basically, the message is, “But what about Biden?” I do write more about Trump, because he’s the face of the perceived opposition. The only Emmanuel Goldstein in town. I assume everyone reading me understands just who and what Joe Biden is.

But people might not remember quite everything about Joe Biden’s lengthy career as a beloved resident of the Washington, D.C. swamp that Trump promised to drain. Biden was first elected as a U.S. Senator from Delaware in 1973. Even I was very young then. In 1981, the great “liberal” senator strongly supported the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, passed in the wake of CIA whistleblower Philip Agee’s disclosures about the Agency is his best-selling book Inside the Company. Biden declared that “I do not think anybody has any doubt about Mr. Agee. We should lock him away in my opinion.” The good senator really liked locking people up, it seems. As a strong supporter of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, he took credit for a draconian provision that mandated a five year sentence for possessing small amounts of crack cocaine.

Little did Biden know that, decades later his own troubled son Hunter would be caught with enough crack cocaine to garner a long prison sentence under the original 1986 Act, which was softened a bit in 2010. With every ounce of “liberal” ardor that he could muster, Biden bragged at the time, “If you have a piece of crack cocaine no bigger than this quarter that I’m holding in my hand, one quarter of one dollar, we passed a law — with leadership of Sen. Thurmond and myself and others — a law that says: you’re caught with that, you go to jail for five years. You get no probation, you get nothing, other than five years in jail. Judge doesn’t have a choice.” Senator Biden also authored the horrendous 1994 crime bill which featured “three strike you’re out” and mandatory sentencing, significantly increasing the prison population.

A JFK assassination researcher attended a Joe Biden seminar in 2005. He was able to briefly question Biden about the assassination. As recounted on a discussion forum, this was the short conversation: “Senator Biden, do you believe JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy?” Answer:  “No.” “So do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, alone and unaided, killed President Kennedy?” Answer:  “Yes.” This is hardly surprising, of course, but reflects Biden’s ironclad establishment mindset. In 2019, the American Prospect published a piece headlined, “Joe Biden’s Love Affair With the CIA.” Biden was very helpful to Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey, who praised him in a classified early 1980s memo to his intelligence staff. Biden would state, in a speech at Stanford, that the intelligence community had been compromised by leaks.

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Gullibility 101

We watch Washington D.C. like we’d watch a ship steaming way too fast toward a crowd on the pier.  Our nation’s capital is so filled with corruption, ladder-climbing, and plain stupidity that it’s embarrassing to watch. This is America?!?

Yet the Democrats we know personally are not guilty of those sins. Many are smart, hard-working, kind, educated people and yet they voted for the wasted shell in the oval office — a man who is not only suffering from dementia, but has never been very bright, or very good. A lot of these lovely people appear to be planning to vote for him again. How can that be? How can even a third of our compatriots think Biden is okay? I believe it to be one of the most startling paradoxes of our time. These proud, sophisticated, overeducated folks are, unlike the power brokers of the party, simply naive. They’re hopelessly gullible. How they can possibly be both — naïve and sophisticated — is beyond me. For these lefty-leanies, the Brooklyn Bridge is always for sale at half price and someone else will pick up the difference. Let us list the facets of the Democrat fairytale:

  1. They assume that other people are just like them — hardworking, clean, healthy, nice, fun-loving. It just doesn’t occur to them that the man dragging two kids across the border isn’t their father and is only interested in selling them. The fact that most of these illegals are young men of military age doesn’t ring any bells for the average Democrat. Somehow the only reaction to these intruders is to feel sorry for them — not to be cautious about their motives, or to be concerned about what diseases they may carry or where their education stopped.
  2. They think people are what they portray themselves to be. To them, there is no angry, sexually abused, misfit of a young man behind the exuberant makeup and the green sequined dress. From their point of view, college professors are wise, good, and superior and have no intention of disabusing your child of his upbringing. No priest or Boy Scout leader has any perverse designs on your kids. How cynical to suspect that they’re anything other than caring and compassionate. Ambrose Bierce, in his hilarious book The Devil’s Dictionary, defines cynic as a person “who sees things as they really are.” Then I guess I’m a cynic. Won’t you join me?
  3. This attitude slithers out from the left’s assumption that there is basically no evil, no sin, that people are all basically good (except Republicans, of course). A middle-class leftist can look at a drag queen reading to three-year-olds and not see anything perverse and nasty. A thief is just someone overreacting to some 200-year-old atrocity done to someone else’s ancestor. A rapist just needs counseling. The 85,000 missing kids? Oh look! There’s a squirrel!
  4. Speaking of naivete — this one is a doozy. These fanciful folk think that a law passed is a law obeyed — to the letter. Don’t like guns? Ban them and they will be no more. In fact, there will be no more violence. Look at what happened with bipartisan Prohibition — did everyone just suck it up and quit drinking? No. The Mafia was born.

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