Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Most Consumable Hemp-Based Cannabinoid Products Would Be Banned Under Another GOP Committee’s New Bill

A GOP-led House committee has put forward a large-scale spending bill that contains language that would effectively ban most consumable hemp-derived cannabinoid products, including delta-8 THC and CBD items containing any “quantifiable” amount of THC.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies posted the text of the legislation on Monday—just one day before a scheduled vote.

If enacted into law, cannabinoids that are “synthesized or manufactured outside of the plant” would no longer meet the definition of legal hemp.

The language is virtually identical to a provision of the 2024 Farm Bill that was attached by a separate committee late last month via an amendment from Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL).

The proposed ban faced sizable pushback from the hemp industry, though certain key marijuana businesses have joined prohibitionists in supporting the proposed policy change.

Many observers expect that the timeline for advancing the Farm Bill will be pushed back until next year, however, so the hemp provision’s inclusion in a must-pass spending bill raises the stakes for hemp industry advocates.

Supporters of the ban have described the language as a fix to a “loophole” that was created under the 2018 Farm Bill that federally legalized hemp.

While they’ve focused on the need to address public safety concerns related to unregulated “intoxicating” cannabinoid products such as delta-8 THC, some hemp industry advocates say the effect of the proposed language could be a ban on virtually all non-intoxicating CBD products as well, as most on the market contain at least trace levels of THC, consistent with the Farm Bill definition of hemp that allows for up to 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.

Hemp industry stakeholders have recognized that there’s a need to address legitimate concerns related to the unregulated market that’s proliferated since hemp was federally legalized, but the solution they’ve put forward is to enact strategic regulations to ensure product safety and prevent youth access.

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Woman Faces Possible 30-Year Prison Sentence In Minnesota For Possessing Bong Water

Last year the Legislature decriminalized drug paraphernalia, even if it contains drug residue. The change represented a step back from the drug war tactics of previous decades, with an eye toward treating substance abuse as a public health problem, rather than a criminal justice concern.

But one obscure relic of the war on drug paraphernalia got overlooked, and was not included in the decriminalization bill: a provision in state law that treats bong water—the water at the bottom of a smoking device, used to cool and purify the intoxicating smoke—as a controlled substance, no different than the uncut version of whatever illicit drug the bong was used to smoke.

People don’t consume bong water, but some prosecutors still use it as evidence to charge drug defendants with more serious crimes than they otherwise would be eligible for.

Just ask Jessica Beske.

On May 8, the 43-year-old Fargo resident was pulled over for speeding on Highway 59 in Polk County, Minnesota, according to charging documents. Deputies smelled marijuana and searched the car, where they allege they found a bong, a glass jar containing a “crystal substance” and some items of paraphernalia, including pipes.

The residue on the paraphernalia tested positive for methamphetamine, as did the water in the bong and the substance in the glass jar. Deputies further reported that the bong water weighed 8 ounces and, somewhat confusingly, that the crystal substance weighed 13.2 grams “in total with the packaging.”

Beske says the “packaging” is the glass jar, and that the reason deputies included the jar in the weight is that there wasn’t a measurable quantity of substance in it. She maintains she had no drugs on her, only paraphernalia containing residue. That’s precisely the sort of offense that lawmakers decriminalized in the 2023 bill.

But the Polk County prosecutor has instead charged her with first-degree felony possession, which carries a penalty of up to 30 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine.

It’s because of the bong water.

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Connecticut Officials Vote To Add Female Orgasmic Disorder And Autism As Medical Marijuana Qualifying Conditions

Connecticut is on track to allow access to medical cannabis for the treatment of female orgasmic disorder (FOD) following a decision on Friday by the state Medical Marijuana Program Board of Physicians.

Doctors on the state panel unanimously agreed that cannabis is more likely than not to have a beneficial effect on FOD, which they acknowledged as a debilitating condition. Orgasms in people with FOD are delayed, infrequent or entirely absent.

The body also signed off on a separate proposal to add autism spectrum disorder as a qualifying condition for Connecticut’s medical cannabis program.

The push to add FOD as a condition for marijuana access stems from a petition submitted last year by Suzanne Mulvehill, a clinical sexologist who’s working to expand access to cannabis for people with FOD.

The executive director of the Female Orgasm Research Institute and the related Women’s Cannabis Project, Mulvehill has published research indicating that cannabis use increased orgasm ease and frequency in more than 70 percent of patients with FOD. Her study also found that marijuana improved sexual satisfaction in about two thirds (67 percent) of those with FOD.

Despite the promising results, Mulvehill told the panel, discussing women’s sexual satisfaction still carries stigma.

“We rarely talk about this topic, but I think it’s time,” she said, “because up to 41 percent of women suffer from it, and that statistic has not changed for more than 50 years.”

Referencing drugs for erectile dysfunction, such as Viagra, Mulvehill argued that “there is a solution for men, you know, but there really isn’t one for women.”

“This can be that solution,” she said of medical marijuana.

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Dallas Voters Could See Marijuana Decriminalization On November Ballot Under New City Council Plan

Dallas voters could decide whether to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana if City Council members approve a plan to put the measure on the November ballot, several council members said Friday.

Council member Chad West will propose the Dallas Freedom Act at a June 26 meeting, he said in a news release. A petition supporting the change garnered more than 50,000 signatures, organizers said.

“Voters in our city and across the country want to decriminalize marijuana,” West said. “Our already burdened police should focus their attention on serious crime, not arresting people with small amounts of marijuana. Bringing this to voters through a City Council-proposed Charter amendment instead of a petition will save the city time and resources.”

The proposal would direct police to stop writing tickets or making arrests for less than four ounces of marijuana. Possessing two to four ounces is a class A misdemeanor that can carry a one-year jail term and holding under two ounes is a classor B misdemeanor that can come with a 180-day sentence.

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Trump says death sentences for dealers will solve U.S. drug problem

Former President Donald Trump said soft sentences for drug dealers have helped fuel fentanyl overdose deaths in the U.S.

Trump, 77, is running against President Joe Biden in the presidential election this November.

“So many are dying where they think they’re getting something and going to have a little fun on a Friday night and all of sudden their dead,” Trump said on Fox News.

“You’ll never really solve the drug problem unless you do what other countries do – and that’s the death penalty for drug dealers,” Trump said during the interview. “A drug dealer on average will kill, during that person’s life, 500 people. Unless you have a death penalty. Right now, they don’t even get charged with anything.”

Thirty-four countries apply the death for some drug crimes, according to a 2023 report from Harm Reduction International. The report noted that Pakistan removed the death penalty as a possible punishment for certain violations of its Control of Narcotics Substances Act.

Illicit fentanyl killed nearly 38,000 Americans in the first six months of 2023, according to a 2024 DEA report. Synthetic opioids were involved in 74,225 deaths in 2022 – 68% of the total 111,036 deaths that year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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New Jersey Panel Approves Amended Psilocybin Bill, Removing Broad Legalization To Focus On Therapeutic Program

A New Jersey Senate panel approved an amended psilocybin bill on Thursday, advancing substitute language that removed earlier provisions that would have broadly legalized possession, use and cultivation by adults in order to instead focus exclusively on therapeutic access to the psychedelic.

The Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee voted 6–2 to release the bill, S.2283, sponsored by Senate President Nick Scutari (D) and others.

Initially, the legislation was introduced this year in identical form to what Scutari proposed last session—a plan that included personal legalization provisions, which the recent amended version takes out. Those components would have made it legal for adults to “possess, store, use, ingest, inhale, process, transport, deliver without consideration, or distribute without consideration, four grams or less of psilocybin.”

The new measure would nevertheless significantly expand on legislation Scutari introduced in late 2020 to reduce penalties for possession of up to one ounce of psilocybin. That reform that was signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy (D) in 2021.

In its amended version, the bill would charge the Department of Health (DOH) with licensing and regulating the manufacture, testing, transport, delivery, sale and purchase of psilocybin. There would be five license types: manufacturer, service center operator, testing laboratory, facilitator and psilocybin worker.

A Psilocybin Advisory Board would establish qualifying medical conditions for use, propose guidelines for psilocybin services and dosage, craft safety screenings and informed consent practices and oversee facilitator education, training and conduct.

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Washington State Law Exempting Some Medical Marijuana Purchases From Steep 37% Tax Takes Effect

Some purchases of medical marijuana in Washington State will no longer be subject to the state’s 37 percent cannabis tax under a new law taking effect on Thursday. The exemption, signed into law in March by Gov. Jay Inslee (D), applies specifically to products that have been certified to higher testing standards than typical state-legal products.

Medical marijuana cardholders were already eligible for exemptions from Washington’s sales and use taxes on cannabis, but they were not exempt from the state’s excise tax, one of the highest in the country.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Sharon Wylie (D) and two other Democrats allows state-registered patients and caregivers to avoid the tax when purchasing products that are compliant with Department of Health (DOH) testing standards, which are more rigorous than typical state cannabis standards. Manufacturers in the state are required to submit all medical and adult-use products to labs for testing, but producers can voluntarily have additional testing done—to screen for heavy metals, for example—that isn’t otherwise required.

Marijuana that passes the additional testing can be labeled with a DOH-developed logo, which now also serves as an indication that the product is tax-free for patients and caretakers.

Many states with both adult-use and medical marijuana already exempt patients from taxes.

Washington’s tax break is only temporary. As written, the new law is set to expire on June 30, 2029. A report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee on the revenue impacts of the change is due in 2028.

One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. Shelley Kloba (D) also sponsored a cannabis homegrow bill this session—the latest in a series of such measures introduced over the past several years—but the proposal ultimately died in committee. If passed, HB 2194 would have allowed adults 21 and older to grow up to four plants per person, with no more than 10 allowed per household. Home cultivation of marijuana without a medical marijuana card remains a felony in the state.

Kloba told Marijuana Momentthat she’s co mmitted to continued advocacy for the policy change and plans to introduce yet another homegrow measure next year.

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Louisiana Lawmakers Make Big Changes To State’s Medical Marijuana And Hemp Laws

Louisiana’s edible hemp industry survived a close call with state lawmakers who chose stricter regulations over a complete dismantling. Also, the state has forced the two public universities with exclusive rights to medical cannabis farming in Louisiana to transfer their duopoly to two private companies.

The revamped hemp products proposal, House Bill 952, sponsored by Rep. Dustin Miller (D-Opelousas), passed the House in a 72–30 vote and cleared the Senate 26–11 in the final hour of the legislative session Monday.

Miller’s legislation will, among other things, lower the potency of recreational hemp edibles from 8 milligrams to 5 mg of THC per serving and ban them from convenience stores that sell fuel. THC is an acronym for tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive compound in cannabis.

Restaurants and bars that currently hold alcohol and hemp permits will be able to continue selling hemp products, but the bill will stop the state from issuing any new hemp permits for alcohol establishments.

Final passage came after a compromise that left both sides disappointed.

“No one likes it,” Miller told his colleagues as they peppered him questions and expressed frustration with the final version. He said he was backing the compromise proposal because that was the commitment he made with some lawmakers who supported a competing proposal that would have criminalized all recreational THC products and dismantled the entire hemp industry.

Rep. Jason DeWitt (R-Boyce) criticized the legislation for arbitrarily banning hemp only from convenience stores that sell fuel.

“We’re gonna discriminate against stores that sell fuel versus ones that do not?” DeWitt asked. “We gave them a permit, and we’re basically gonna put them out of business?”

Miller agreed the ban doesn’t make much sense but said it was a way to appease the bill’s opponents who wanted hemp banned from all convenience stores.

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GOP Congressman Will Attempt To Remove Marijuana Banking Protections From Spending Bill Due To ‘Overwhelming’ Concerns

A GOP congressman says he’s “overwhelmingly concerned” with a provision of a spending bill that would provide limited protections for banks that work with state-legal marijuana businesses, and he’s threatening to file an amendment to strip the language as the underlying measure advances.

During a markup of the Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) appropriations measure on Wednesday, Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) spoke out against the cannabis banking section, which subcommittee chairman Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH) secured in the base bill.

“I understand it’s not in order to propose amendments at this level, but I certainly intend to raise that issue at the appropriate time,” Edwards said, signaling that he will propose an amendment to remove the section in the full committee or on the floor.

He said that the proposal is not germane to an appropriations bill because, he argues, it is “an affirmative authorization disguised as a limitation” on the spending of funds. But his primary contention is with the policy substance of the measure, which would prevent federal regulators covered under the FSGG bill from using their funding to penalize financial institutions that service state cannabis businesses.

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Florida Marijuana Legalization Campaign Releases New Statewide Ad Warning Of Dangers Of Unregulated Cannabis

The campaign behind a marijuana legalization ballot measure in Florida released a new ad in support of Amendment 3 this week, arguing that cannabis currently available on the state’s illicit market is dangerously unregulated.

“Most Florida marijuana is illegal, produced by criminals and can be laced with dangerous drugs like fentanyl,” a woman says, described in a campaign press release as “a Florida mom and voter who believes adult Floridians deserve the individual freedom to consume safe, tested adult-use marijuana.”

Titled “Fact,” the 30-second ad is set to air statewide “across broadcast, cable, streaming, radio and digital platforms,” according to the campaign, Smart & Safe Florida.

“Millions of Floridians use marijuana. It’s a fact,” it says. “Most Americans have access to legal marijuana that is regulated and tested for safety, but not Florida.”

Amendment 3, which will appear before voters in November, “gives adults access to legal, safe marijuana and the freedom to make their own choices while generating billions for schools and police,” it adds.

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