Tag: the war on (some) drugs

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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South Dakota Law Banning Intoxicating Hemp Products Takes Effect After Judge Declines To Block It

A new law barring the production or sale of high-inducing, hemp-derived cannabis products will take effect Monday after a judge declined to block it.

Hemp Quarters 605, a Pierre-based shop that sells those products, filed a lawsuit earlier this month in U.S. District Court in South Dakota. The business claims the new law’s provisions are unconstitutional and in conflict with federal law.

The 2018 federal Farm Bill legalized the production and sale of industrial hemp and hemp-derived products, provided they contain less than 0.3 percent of the intoxicating compound delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, known as THC, by dry weight.

House Bill 1125, signed into law in March by Gov. Kristi Noem (R), targets five types of chemicals that appear at low levels in hemp plants. The chemicals can be synthesized and added in amounts large enough for hemp products to ape the intoxicating effects of the delta-9 THC found in marijuana.

Marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, even though it’s legal in some states and medical marijuana is legal in South Dakota.

A violation of the new law will be a class 2 misdemeanor, the state’s lowest-level criminal offense. Like most laws adopted by the Legislature, its effective date is July 1.

Products like gummies, vape pens and smokable hemp containing the chemicals targeted by the new law are widely available across South Dakota. They’re sold in gas stations, grocery and liquor stores and in specialty smoke shops like Hemp Quarters 605.

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Oakland Corruption Scandal: Democrat Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Government Officials Allegedly Funded by Sex Trafficking Drug Ring

An FBI raid has exposed a complex web of alleged illicit activities involving high-ranking government officials and a notorious local business in Oakland, California.

Andy Duong, a key member of the Duong family and the self-proclaimed proprietor of the now-defunct Music Cafe, is accused of using the cafe as a front for a sex trafficking and drug operation. This establishment, which also functioned as a karaoke lounge, was linked by state authorities to drug dealing, pimping, and human trafficking before its closure in early 2019, the Mercury News reported.

The recent FBI operations on June 20 encompassed searches at several locations, including the residences of Andy Duong, his father David Duong, Mayor Thao, and the offices of CWS. These raids have brought to light alleged financial dealings and contributions made to various political campaigns in the Oakland and South Bay areas.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that FBI agents raided a home owned by Democrat Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao. An FBI spokesperson told the press that agents were conducting “court-authorized law enforcement” at Thao’s property.

The focus of the investigation is on David Duong, CEO of California Waste Solutions, and his son, Andy Duong. Both have deep-seated ties to Democratic politicians and businesses, NBC Bay Area reported.

Their business dealings and political connections are under intense scrutiny following evidence that suggests they orchestrated a complex scheme to circumvent campaign finance laws and funnel illegal donations to various Democratic candidates.

A quick look at Andy Duong’s Instagram page reveals frequent posts with high-profile figures in the political world – including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Governor Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and Health and Human Services Secretary and former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra. The list also includes elected leaders from other states such as Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, according to abc7 News.

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Does Weed Cause Strokes and Heart Attacks?

Thirty years ago, the sociologist Craig Reinarman observed that there’s something “woven into the very fabric of American culture” that makes us susceptible to believing that a “chemical boogeyman” is to blame for “society’s ills.” He added that every moral panic about drugs since the 19th century has been fueled by “media magnification” in which the danger of a particular substance is dramatized and distorted.

Now that recreational marijuana is legal in about half of U.S. states, and more Americans are consuming weed than ever before, the chemical bogeyman is back, and he’s armed with a new paper in the Journal of the American Heart Association by researchers from Harvard and the University of California, San Francisco.

This study, which was amplified in The New York Times and The Washington Post, commits so many egregious statistical errors that it’s a poster child for junk science. The paper would be comical if it didn’t offer bad medical advice. The researchers did almost everything wrong.

Which is not to say that the authors committed fraud or misconduct. In fact, they did exactly what Ph.D. students are taught to do, what journal editors look for, what referees approve, what universities reward, and what granting agencies fund. Because the paper uses conventional methods to arrive at false conclusions, it speaks to the profound crisis in academic research.

We’ve forgotten that the point of scientific studies isn’t seeking the approval of institutions. It’s the pursuit of truth.

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