Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Key cannabis compounds may help in the battle against one of the deadliest diseases

Talk about a new joint effort in cancer care.

A promising treatment approach for one of the most dangerous cancers has been identified by a team of researchers in Thailand exploring the effects of key cannabis compounds.

The research team looked at the two most well-known compounds in weed plants — THC and CBD — and discovered that both produced significant anti-cancer activity when tested on ovarian cancer cells.

Each slowed cell growth, formed fewer and smaller clusters and prevented them from spreading.

The results were most notable when CBD and THC were used as a combined treatment, proving highly effective at killing a large number of cancerous cells.

While more research is needed, a medication derived from marijuana could be developed to treat ovarian cancer, the 5th deadliest female cancer in the US, affecting more than 20,000 women each year.

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The Siren Song of War

In October of 2002, I shocked many in my Congressional District and beyond by voting against giving President George W. Bush authorization to use military force in Iraq.

The night before that vote, my older sister told me a Knoxville television station had conducted a poll which found that in its viewing area 74 percent were for the war, 9 percent were against, and 17 percent were undecided.

When I pushed the button at about 3:00 the next day to cast that vote, I wondered if I might be ending my political career. My vote was so highly publicized that it was clearly the most unpopular thing I had ever done.

However, after three or four years and much to my amazement, that vote became the most popular of the more than 16,000 I cast during my 30 years in the U.S. House.

Unfortunately, the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) that the Congress passed then is once again relevant because President Trump and his advisers seem to think it gives them authority to go to war in Venezuela without the declaration by Congress called for in our Constitution.

When we went to war in Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein’s total military budget was about 2/10 of one percent of ours. Venezuela’s is even less. Neither of those two countries were or are capable of attacking us in any serious way. Neither has even threatened to do so.

Two polls in late November by CBS News/YouGov and Reuters/Ipsos both showed that about 70 percent of the American people were opposed to going to war in Venezuela, and probably most of the other 30 percent did not really want such a war but just did not want to oppose President Trump.

While the overwhelming majority of the American people do not want more dangerous illegal drugs coming into this Country, far more drugs are coming from China and Mexico and various other places. If we take action against Venezuela, which country is next?

Just before we went to war against Iraq, U.S. News & World Report had a story headlined “Why The Rush To War?” We should be asking the same thing today.

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Psychedelic treatments show promise for OCD while cannabis doesn’t, review finds

A recent review of alternative treatments for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) indicates that psychedelic treatments show promise for the disorder while cannabis does not.

Dr Michael Van Ameringen, a psychiatry professor at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada and lead author of the review published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, said that 40-60 % of OCD patients get either partial or no relief with available treatments, including SSRIs and exposure and response prevention therapy.

While psychedelics and cannabinoids have become part of the conversation surrounding OCD – a disorder characterized by intrusive, obsessive thoughts and/or compulsive behaviors – there is a much larger body of published evidence on the efficacy of these substances for more common conditions, like depression and anxiety.

“We wanted to hone down and really understand, is there evidence for these things that have been talked about to be used as the next step treatments?” Van Ameringen explained.

Given the paucity of existing literature, Van Ameringen said he didn’t know what to expect. To make up for the lack of published information, he included conference presentations and preliminary, unpublished findings in the review paper.

Upon compiling available evidence, Van Ameringen and his team found “stronger signals” for the efficacy of psychedelics, specifically psilocybin (the psychoactive component of “magic mushrooms,”) than for cannabinoids like THC and CBD.

Van Ameringen theorizes that the difference is related to how these substances interact with areas of the brain related to OCD. While cannabinoids activate the brain’s CB1 receptors, which regulate symptoms like compulsions and anxiety, available evidence shows they don’t offer lasting relief from OCD symptoms.

Psilocybin, on the other hand, can reduce connectivity in the brain’s default mode network, which “essentially is involved in self referential thinking and rumination. The default mode network is really activated in OCD”, he says.

A difference in the methodology of cannabis and psilocybin studies might also have contributed to the different results, says Dr Mohamed Sherif, a psychiatrist and computational neuroscientist at Brown University who will lead a future clinical trial on psilocybin for OCD. Psychedelic clinical trials, like the one Sherif is planning, tend to offer patients not only medication but also encouragement to frame their experience as a therapeutic “journey”.

“This was not done in cannabinoids [studies,]” Sherif explained.

Dr Terrence Ching, a clinical psychologist at the Yale School of Medicine, similarly wondered if the way people use cannabis versus psilocybin might explain the different outcomes. While people tend to use cannabis for temporary relief, psilocybin can help facilitate actual changes in the brain and in patients’ perception of their OCD.

“One could use cannabis for the same therapeutic reason, of confronting something deeper about their OCD or their obsessive fears. But conventionally, people tend to use cannabis for an avoidance function,” Ching explained.

Preliminary results from Ching’s clinical trial on a single dose of psilocybin for OCD were included in Van Ameringen’s review paper, and showed that psilocybin was effective for OCD symptoms compared to placebo. Ching is now preparing the results of the trial for publication, and planning a second clinical trial where OCD patients will receive two doses of psilocybin at different times.

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Socialist LA City Council Member Who Makes $240K Per Year Overseeing Area With Drug Infested Public Park Skips Meeting With Angry Residents

Eunisses Hernandez is a socialist city council member in Los Angeles. She makes almost a quarter of a million dollars a year and one of the public parks at the heart of her district is plagued by open-air drug use and crime.

Angry residents recently showed up at a public meeting, ready to voice their concerns, but Hernandez blew them off and didn’t show up.

If New Yorkers want a preview of their future, this is it. This is what they have to look forward to.

The New York Post reports:

Meet the socialist LA leader making $240K to reign over drug-infested park as it crumbles

Meet Eunisses Hernandez — the progressive, permissive councilwoman raking in far more money than the average Angeleno each year, plus gold-plated benefits — even as MacArthur Park, the historic heart of her district, rots into a fentanyl-soaked nightmare.

The Post spent the last week inside the park, witnessing and reporting on open-air drug use, pipe smoking, hand-to-hand deals and city-funded paraphernalia — needles, crack pipes and food handouts — being distributed in broad daylight. That scene now defines the park.

Hernandez, who makes $240,000 a year, had an opportunity to make nice with her district Thursday at a packed public meeting with the very constituents forced to live with the consequences of her policies … and she was a no-show.

MacArthur Park parents were there. Neighborhood residents were there. Local small business owners were there. But she wasn’t there.

“I need to introduce someone to you,” challenger Maria “Lou” Calanche told the crowd, hoisting a life-size cardboard cutout of Hernandez. “This is our current council member — who’s MIA.” The room erupted in laughter.

This is the elitist left in a nutshell.

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Decades of Global Drone War Made Trump’s Caribbean Killing Spree Possible

On September 2, 2025, a small fishing boat carrying 11 people was targeted by a U.S. Reaper drone off the coast of Venezuela. Hellfire missiles were fired. Two survivors clung to the wreckage. Their identities and motives were unknown. Their behavior showed no hostility. Moments later, the drone operator launched a second strike — the so-called “double tap” — killing the final survivors. This scene is shocking, but it should not be surprising to anyone who has followed the trajectory of the U.S.’s drone wars. This tactic is familiar from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and, most recently, Gaza, where the Israeli military has used much worse violence to conduct genocide.

The U.S.’s first drone strike in the Caribbean, and the footage of the incident, reignited a debate about a conflict that Washington refuses to call a war — because it isn’t one. Instead, the Trump administration is using sheer violence to terrorize non-white populations and, as usual, has normalized lethal force far from declared battlefields and without any legal mandate.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved at least 21 additional strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September, killing at least 87 people. He has aggressively defended the very first operation, insisting he would have authorized the second strike as well — despite claiming he did not see it. Hegseth even misinterpreted the visible smoke on the video as the “fog of war,” seemingly unaware that the term refers to uncertainty in conflict, not the physical aftermath of a missile strike.

The details matter because they reveal something essential: the senior leadership overseeing these operations does not appear interested in the law, accuracy, or the basic meaning of proportionality. Instead, it has embraced escalation and mass murder as official policy.

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Bill On Ohio Governor’s Desk Will Put Hemp Companies Out Of Business, Owners Say

Ohioans in the intoxicating hemp industry fear a bill heading to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s (R) desk will put them out of business.

Ohio Senate Bill 56 is on its way to DeWine after Ohio Senate Republicans passed the bill Tuesday. The Ohio House passed the bill last month after it went to conference committee.

Ohio’s bill complies with recent federal changes by banning intoxicating hemp products from being sold outside of a licensed marijuana dispensary. If DeWine signs the bill into law before the new year, the ban could take effect as soon as March.

“This bill is going to put businesses like me and families like me out of business,” said Ahmad Khalil, one of the owners of Hippie Hut Smoke Shop, with locations in Ohio and Washington.

“Overnight, we’re going to see tens of thousands of people directly impacted, which will ripple effect into 50,000 of families that are also dependent on this person.”

Khalil has been in the hemp industry for nine years.

“This was my American dream, so to see it get taken away from you, kind of hurts,” he said.

Jason Friedman, owner of Ohio CBD Guy in Cincinnati, said this is extremely frustrating.

“My tentative plan will involve eventually closing my East Walnut Hills location resulting in less hours and likely loss of jobs for some of my employees,” he said.

Instead of a ban, Friedman wants regulations for the hemp industry such as age-gating, packaging restrictions, and testing requirements.

“For the state to say that they are changing their stance to banning from regulating because of what the federal government has done in banning intoxicating hemp in the recent spending bill, makes no sense because marijuana has been illegal federally the whole time,” he said.

Mark Fashian, president of hemp product wholesaler Midwest Analytical Solutions in Delaware, Ohio, said this will put him, and hundreds of others out of business, if this becomes law.

He works with more than 500 stores around Ohio that sell intoxicating hemp products.

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The Case Against American Intervention in Venezuela

As the USS Gerald R. Ford—the largest aircraft carrier afloat—casts its shadow along the Venezuelan coast, the United States must confront an uncomfortable question: What national interest is being protected by threatening a country that poses no military, territorial, or existential danger to the American republic?

The answer, made clear by an array of respected American scholars, former officials, and ex-military insiders, has nothing to do with security. Instead, it arises from a familiar mixture of ideology, geopolitical control, and the old reflex of imperial overreach. This is not defense. This is theater—one part provocation, one part political opportunism, and no part necessity.

Among the clearest voices cutting through the rhetoric is professor John Mearsheimer, perhaps the most prominent American realist in international relations. He does not mince words: Venezuela is not a threat to the United States. Its military lacks both the capacity and the intention to project power beyond its borders. Suggesting otherwise is “laughable,” he notes, because the true irritant is ideological. Venezuela’s Bolivarian model—imperfect and embattled as it is—represents a deviation from Washington’s preferred political order, a deviation the US has repeatedly sought to crush in Latin America for decades. For Mearsheimer, even if one entertained the fantasy of using force to change the regime, the idea collapses immediately under logistical absurdity and moral bankruptcy. Invading a nation of 28 million people, and then attempting to occupy and “stabilize” it, would be catastrophic in cost, chaotic in outcome, and impossible to justify.

The national security pretext collapses further under the testimony of Sheriff David Hathaway, a former Drug Enforcement Administration supervisory agent with firsthand experience in Latin America. He dismisses the drug-trafficking narrative not just as false, but as deliberately false. Cocaine originates in Colombia and Peru, not Venezuela, and the US fentanyl crisis has nothing to do with Caracas. There is no vast Maduro-led drug conspiracy, Hathaway explains, only a political fiction designed to mimic past excuses for intervention. He is blunt in stating that Washington has repeatedly used narcotics accusations as camouflage for intrusion, sabotage, and coercion. This is not about drugs. It is about dominance.

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Trump: Strikes on Venezuelan land could begin ‘pretty soon’

President Donald Trump indicated on Thursday that U.S. military strikes on Venezuelan soil could come “pretty soon,” following a recent seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.

On Thursday, President Trump was asked by a reporter whether the military campaign against Venezuela is still about stopping drugs from entering the United States, or if the administration is motivated by the nation’s oil resources after the interdiction of a Venezuelan oil tanker.

“Well, it’s about a lot of things, but one of the things it’s about is the fact that they’ve allowed millions of people to come into our country from their prisons, from gangs, from drug dealers, and from mental institutions, probably proportionately more than anybody else,” Trump responded.

“We had 11,888 murderers come into our country, many of them are from Venezuela. We had thousands of Tren de Aragua – the gang – come in from [Venezuela], which they say is the most violent gang,” he continued. “So it has to do with a lot of things, they’ve treated us badly, and I guess now we’re not treating them so good. If you look at the drug traffic, drug traffic by sea is down 92%… anybody getting involved in that right now is not doing well.”

“… And we’ll start that on land too, it’s gonna be starting on land pretty soon,” Trump added without providing further detail.

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Legal Marijuana Access Reduces Suicide Rates For Older Adults, New Study Suggests

States that opened recreational marijuana dispensaries saw suicide rates decline among older adults, according to a new scientific analysis of more than two decades of nationwide data. Correlating state legalization to the decline, the researchers note a “modest yet statistically significant reduction” in states with legal access to cannabis.

The research, conducted by a team of public health economists, examined monthly suicide counts from U.S. states between 2000 and 2022. Their aim was to better understand whether easier access to marijuana, specifically through licensed retail stores, might have any measurable effect on mental health outcomes. Their working paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows that may be the case.

The study found that in states where recreational cannabis dispensaries began operating, suicide rates among adults ages 45 and older declined. The effect was strongest among men, who historically have had significantly higher suicide rates and are more likely to use cannabis to manage chronic pain, a health challenge that increases the risk of suicide.

“Given that older adults are more prone to chronic pain and various physical and mental health issues, it is not surprising that this demographic is increasingly turning to marijuana for its medicinal properties,” the paper noted.

The researchers found no similar pattern among younger adults or in states that legalized recreational cannabis but had not yet opened retail stores. That distinction, they say, suggests that actual access to marijuana, rather than legalization via state law changes alone, may be the more influential factor.

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The Global War You’ve Never Heard Of

American actions involving Venezuela have stirred up a flurry of theories and narratives around the United States’ strategic intentions.  Some theories highlight apparent contradictions between rhetoric and policy, such as President Trump’s pardons of major drug-traffickers despite his public anti-drug stance. Others frame potential U.S. military threats against Venezuela as being driven primarily by America’s dependence on oil.  Additional narratives have revived allegations of Venezuelan interference in U.S. elections, including claims from a former Maduro regime official about a “narco-terrorist war” against the United States.

In my effort to better understand the factors driving the building tensions around Venezuela, I decided to strip away all the explanations and start with what we know is happening.  The United States is striking small vessels, referred to as go-fast boats, reportedly carrying cocaine meant to be transferred onto ships bound for the Gulf of Guinea.  This sea route and the next step of the voyage have come to be known as Highway 10 because Venezuela is connected to the Gulf of Guinea via the 10th Parallel North on the globe.  The gulf includes several countries that tend to lack the resources necessary to patrol for and prevent the shipments.  From there, the payload can be passed on to the even poorer countries of the Sahel desert, where al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Russian mercenaries of the Africa Corps (not to be confused with the German unit of World War Two) have a certain level of autonomy and can move the cocaine to the Mediterranean Sea.  From there it enters the hands of Europe’s various iterations of the Mafia.  This drug route and the players involved has been laid out in a pretty detailed manner by the Argentine independent journalist Ignacio Montes de Oca under his X handle, @nachomdeo.

With this new information in mind, we can then apply events that we know have happened.  At the starting point of Highway 10, you have the United States destroying the go-fast boats before they can liaison with the ships bound for the Gulf of Guinea.  In the middle of the drug route you have the countries on the Gulf of Guinea, two of which have had coups in the last two months.  The first took place on November 26 in Guinea-Bissau, a key stopping point on Highway 10.  The second appears to be a failed coup that took place on December 7 in Benin, another country known to be on the Highway 10 route.

So at the starting point of the route, you have the U.S. striking go-fast boats.  In the middle, you have coups.  What’s happening at the finish point?  Well, in Italy, the Carabinieri are carrying out large-scale operations against the unpronounceable ’Ndrangheta.  The ’Ndrangheta happens to be one of the criminal organizations the independent journalist Montes de Oca cites as central to this route.  For his part, French president Emmanuel Macron has been leading the call to intensify the fight against organized crime in Europe.  France even sent a battleship to the Caribbean.

I have no idea if the strikes on boats, the coups along the Gulf of Guinea, and the crackdown on organized crime in Europe are all coordinated or even connected, but I do know that within a small time frame, a series of events have taken place that make it difficult to be involved in the drug trade at the beginning, middle, and end of Highway 10.

So how do you condense all of this into a concept we can discuss without getting lost in tropes about war for oil or American imperialism?  Well, the first thing to do is give it a name to make it more manageable.  The Highway Ten War feels succinct to me.

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