Tag: the war on (some) drugs

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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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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