Tag: the war on (some) drugs

White House Refuses to Confirm or Deny If Biden Plans to Use Drugs to Enhance Performance in Debates

The White House has refused to confirm or deny whether or not Joe Biden plans to use drugs to enhance his debate performance.

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Biden to be drug tested before each debate, claiming that he was “high” during the State of the Union.

“I am going to demand a drug test, I really am. I don’t want him coming in like the State of the Union,” Trump said during a speech in Minnesota on Friday. “He was high as a kite. I said, ‘Is that Joe up there, that beautiful room? And by the end of the evening, he’s like” — Trump made a guttural sound — “He was exhausted, right? No, we’re going to demand a drug test.”

“He can’t talk, he can’t walk, can’t find his way off a stage. Can’t put two sentences together,” Trump continued. “Although he has agreed to debate, so I don’t know, maybe they know something. He’s going to be so jacked up for those debates, you watch.”

Politico asked the White House about whether or not Biden intends to use drugs as part of his debate prep.

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What’s the Difference Between Big Tobacco and Big Pharma?

The psychiatric drug industry and big tobacco share striking similarities in their tactics, particularly when it comes to downplaying the risks associated with their products and targeting vulnerable populations like youth. The psychiatric community has gotten away with pretending it is based in science and medicine to sell its snake oil, while the tobacco industry wasn’t so lucky.

A key difference lies in the government’s stance – while tobacco companies face increasing regulations and warnings, the psychiatric drug industry enjoys substantial government support and promotion despite the existence of black box warnings on many of their medications. Both industries have a history of misleading marketing practices and minimizing potential harms.

Big tobacco companies notoriously concealed evidence linking smoking to lung cancer and other diseases for decades. Similarly, psychiatric drug manufacturers have been accused of selectively publishing favorable trial data and underreporting adverse effects.

Despite black box warnings – the FDA’s strongest safety alert – on many psychiatric medications, big pharma’s marketing often portrays an overly rosy picture. A prime example is antidepressants carrying a black box warning about increased suicidality risk in youth. Yet, these drugs continue to be heavily promoted, with limited emphasis on this severe side effect. Worse yet, antidepressants are not approved for under 18’s and still they are prescribed off-label to the age group in increasing numbers. Atypical antipsychotics like Seroquel and Zyprexa also bear a black box warning about increased mortality risk in elderly dementia patients, but their use in this vulnerable population remains widespread.

Moreover, both industries have targeted youth, securing future customers through early exposure and addiction. Big tobacco’s calculated efforts to market to adolescents are well-documented. Many of us remember getting boxes of candy cigarettes as children. The tips of the candy cigarettes were even painted red to simulate they were lit. Likewise, the psychiatric drug industry has been criticized for driving the dramatic rise in childhood psychiatric diagnoses and medication use, despite limited long-term safety data.

However, a crucial difference emerges in the government’s approach. Tobacco companies face intense scrutiny, with advertising restrictions, graphic health warnings on packaging, and mounting litigation. In contrast, the psychiatric drug industry enjoys considerable government financial support, 10.8 billion in the 2024 budget, and lack of stringent oversight.

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Biden’s Spin on Marijuana’s Rescheduling Exaggerates Its Practical Impact

President Joe Biden describes the Drug Enforcement Administration’s proposal to reclassify marijuana under federal law as “monumental.” How so? “It’s an important move toward reversing longstanding inequities,” Biden claims in a video posted on Thursday. “Today’s announcement builds on the work we’ve already done to pardon a record number of federal offenses for simple possession of marijuana, and it adds to the action we’ve taken to lift barriers to housing, employment, small business loans, and so much more for tens of thousands of Americans.”

Even allowing for 60 days of public comment and review of a final rule by Congress and the Office of Management and Budget, marijuana’s rescheduling could be finalized before the presidential election. And even if it does not take effect before then, Biden is hoping the move will help motivate younger voters whose turnout could be crucial to his re-election. But he also had better hope those voters are not paying much attention to the practical consequences of rescheduling marijuana, which are much more modest than his rhetoric implies.

“Look, folks,” Biden says in the video, “no one should be in jail merely for using or possessing marijuana. Period. Far too many lives have been upended because of [our] failed approach to marijuana, and I’m committed to righting those wrongs.” Yet rescheduling marijuana will not decriminalize marijuana use, even for medical purposes. It will not legalize state-licensed marijuana businesses or resolve the growing conflict between federal prohibition and state laws that authorize those businesses. It will not stop the war on weed or do much to ameliorate the injustice it inflicts.

In accordance with a recommendation that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made last August, the DEA plans to move marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, a list of completely prohibited drugs, to Schedule III, which includes prescription medications such as ketamine, Tylenol with codeine, and anabolic steroids. Schedule I supposedly is reserved for drugs with a high abuse potential and no accepted medical applications that cannot be used safely even under a doctor’s supervision.

When Biden directed HHS to review marijuana’s legal status in October 2022, he noted that “we classify marijuana at the same level as heroin” and treat it as “more serious than fentanyl,” which “makes no sense.” On Thursday, he likewise noted that “marijuana has a higher-level classification than fentanyl and methamphetamine—the two drugs driving America’s overdose epidemic.”

Biden is right that marijuana’s current classification makes no sense, as critics have been pointing out for half a century and as HHS belatedly acknowledged in explaining the rationale for rescheduling. HHS found “credible scientific support” for marijuana’s use in the treatment of pain, nausea and vomiting, and “anorexia related to a medical condition.” It also noted that “the risks to the public health posed by marijuana are low compared to other drugs of abuse,” such as heroin (Schedule I), cocaine (Schedule II), benzodiazepines like Valium and Xanax (Schedule IV), and alcohol (unscheduled).

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Kamala Harris Implausibly Claims Biden’s Marijuana Pardons Number in the ‘Tens of Thousands’

“We have pardoned tens of thousands of people with federal convictions for simple marijuana possession,” Vice President Kamala Harris bragged on Thursday. It was not the first time she had offered that estimate, which she also cited during an appearance in South Carolina last February and at a “roundtable conversation about marijuana reform” the following month.

Where did Harris get that number? From thin air, it seems. “While Harris said ‘tens of thousands’ have been pardoned under President Joe Biden’s October 2022 and December 2023 clemency proclamations,” Marijuana Moment noted in February, “the Justice Department estimates that roughly 13,000 people have been granted relief under the executive action.” And only a tiny percentage of those people have bothered (or managed) to obtain evidence of their pardons: This week the Justice Department reported that “the Office of the Pardon Attorney has issued 205 certificates of pardon” to people covered by Biden’s proclamations.

In October 2022, President Joe Biden announced pardons for people who had possessed marijuana in violation of 21 USC 844 or Section 48–904.01(d)(1) of the D.C. Code. That proclamation applied to “all current United States citizens and lawful permanent residents” who had “committed the offense of simple possession of marijuana” on or before October 6.

According to a count by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC), about 7,500 citizens and 1,200 “resident/legal alien offenders” (only some of whom would be eligible for pardons) were convicted of marijuana possession under 21 USC 844 from FY 1992 through FY 2021. Those numbers include some people who also were convicted of other offenses.

That count did not include D.C. Code violations. “We estimate that over 6,500 people with prior federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana and thousands of such convictions under D.C. law could benefit from this relief,” a White House official said during a press background call on the day Biden announced the pardons.

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Rep. Greg Murphy Says He Has ‘Some Evidence’ Biden Was ‘Jacked Up’ on Drugs For His Bizarre State of the Union Address

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) says that Joe Biden was “jacked up” on drugs during his State of the Union Address earlier this year and that he has the evidence to prove it.

In an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Murphy, also a practicing urologist, said that Biden must have taken drugs in order to sustain himself through the speech.

The conversation went as follows:

MURPHY: I’ll just be very plain and simple. I was in the State of the Union address, and Joe Biden must’ve been jacked up on something that day. I absolutely believe that from a medical viewpoint, and actually have a little bit of good knowledge that that happened. He can’t stand it. He can’t stand under the lights for that long, and I don’t think he can keep a concept in his brain that long.

It is going to be important that President Trump stays presidential, he did that during the last debate, he did not do that during the first debate. That he stays on track, that he shows the American people how much worse they are from four years ago and what this president has done to destroy this country. He just has to stay in his lane and act presidential, sometimes he can get off on a wheel, we all know that and love that about him. But Biden will falter and falter if he doesn’t have things right in front of him telling him what to do.

BARTIROMO: What do you mean when you say he was jacked up at the State of the Union?

MURPHY: I believe they gave him something to help him sustain the lights and sustain the vigor that he had. That was not Joe Biden. I was in there. He screamed for two hours. He screamed for two hours. And maybe we can talk offline and I’ll show you something that I think that proves that.”

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Hemp Industry Pushes Back Against Marijuana Companies Advocating For Intoxicating Cannabinoid Ban In Farm Bill

Hemp businesses, marijuana companies, state regulators, prohibitionists and congressional lawmakers are all vying to have their cannabis priorities represented in the forthcoming Farm Bill. But while there are shared interests among certain stakeholders, some competing proposals have created tension in unexpected ways.

The hemp industry, for example, is at odds with select marijuana companies that are aligned with prohibitionists—with the strange bedfellows in agreement on proposed restrictions on intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids such as delta-8 THC.

“Policy challenges related to hemp are complex, and several steps are required to fully address them,” U.S. Cannabis Council (USCC) Executive Director Edward Conklin said in a letter to congressional leaders last month. “However, the most important and time-sensitive of those steps is within your control and well within the authority of the Farm Bill: Close the loophole created by the current definition of hemp established by the 2018 Farm Bill and create a regulatory pathway for non-intoxicating products.”

The language recommended by USCC, which represents major cannabis companies, would remove intoxicating cannabinoid products intended for consumption from the definition of federally legal hemp and reclassify them as federally illegal marijuana products.

Likewise, the prohibitionist Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) sent out an alert to supporters last week saying they “strongly recommend that the loophole caused by the 2018 Farm Bill definition of hemp be closed by adding clarifying language to the 2024 Farm Bill definition of hemp to explicitly exclude intoxicating semi-synthetic cannabinoids derived from hemp.”

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Texas Senate Considers Ban On Intoxicating Hemp-Derived Delta-8 And -9 THC Products

Austin hemp entrepreneur Shayda Torabi is looking at a year filled with uncertainty.

For the six years they’ve been in business, Torabi and her two sisters have operated Restart, their hemp dispensary, in a modest neighborhood in North Austin within an entirely lawful framework—evolving as the laws changed, and staying comfortably and legally off the radar of state lawmakers who authorized the sale of consumable hemp in Texas in 2019.

But all of that is about to change.

Some Texas lawmakers have marked hemp dispensaries for what could be some radical changes in regulations next year. Since their products were legalized, there’s been an overnight proliferation of shops offering baked goods, gummies, oils and smokable buds made with cannabis derivatives—some containing small amounts of psychoactives.

Once the darling of a burgeoning wellness industry, the purveyors of legal cannabis products now face questions from critics who remain unconvinced of the safety of their products and want tighter regulations—or even partial bans.

Consumable hemp products come in forms that include smokable vapes and flower buds, oils and creams, baked goods, drinks, gummies and candies.

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Ohio Lawmakers Approve Rules Allowing Adult-Use Marijuana Sales To Start Next Month

An Ohio legislative panel has approved a regulatory framework for the state’s marijuana market that pushes up the implementation timeline, creating a licensing scheme that could allow adult-use sales to launch next month in current medical cannabis dispensaries.

The legislature’s Joint Committee On Agency Rule Review (JCARR) gave final approval to the proposed cannabis regulations on Monday.

While regulators have until September to start issuing cannabis business licenses under the ballot initiative that voters approved last November, the Division of Cannabis Control (DCC) devised a plan to start granting dual licenses to existing medical marijuana operators to begin serving adult consumers early this summer.

That plan, as well as other rules setting up the basic infrastructure for legalization, was accepted by the committee. Applications for prospective dual licensees will be opened up no later than June 7, and they could start selling cannabis to patients and adults alike once they’re approved.

Rep. Jamie Callender (R), vice chair of JCARR, thanked the head of DCC for “the work you’ve put in on this—for doing this timely and to help move forward the will of the voters, and we look forward to watching these rules go into effect in a couple of weeks.”

He said regulators have assured him that they will have applications online prior to the new rules’ June 7 deadline, and he’s optimistic that means sales could begin by mid-June.

The expedited application launch should be welcome news for Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R). While he doesn’t personally support legalization, he’s repeatedly criticized the delay in access to regulated products since voters made that choice and possession became legal in December.

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Alaska House Passes Marijuana Tax Reform Bill

A decade after Alaska voters legalized recreational marijuana, the Alaska Legislature is advancing the first major change to the law that opened commercial sales here.

On Friday, the Alaska House of Representatives voted to change the state’s $50 per ounce marijuana tax to a 7 percent sales tax.

If House Bill 119 is accepted by the Senate and Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R), it would impose Alaska’s first statewide sales tax. That pioneering concept troubled some legislators, but the bill still passed the House by a 36-3 vote.

The tax change was recommended by the state’s recreational marijuana task force, which Dunleavy convened in 2022 to analyze the marijuana industry and determine whether aspects of the industry’s enabling law—passed by voters in 2014—should be changed.

Ten years ago, Alaska joined Oregon as the third and fourth states to legalize recreational marijuana use. Since then, many other states have followed suit, but Alaska’s marijuana tax—levied at the wholesale level—is the highest in the country.

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Chemical tweaks to a toad hallucinogen turns it into a potential drug

It is becoming increasingly accepted that classic psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and mescaline can act as antidepressants and anti-anxiety treatments in addition to causing hallucinations. They act by binding to a serotonin receptor. But there are 14 known types of serotonin receptors, and most of the research into these compounds has focused on only one of them—the one these molecules like, called 5-HT2A. (5-HT, short for 5-hydroxytryptamine, is the chemical name for serotonin.)

The Colorado River toad (Incilius alvarius), also known as the Sonoran Desert toad, secretes a psychedelic compound that likes to bind to a different serotonin receptor subtype called 5-HT1A. And that difference may be the key to developing an entirely distinct class of antidepressants.

Uncovering novel biology

Like other psychedelics, the one the toad produces decreases depression and anxiety and induces meaningful and spiritually significant experiences. It has been used clinically to treat vets with post-traumatic stress disorder and is being developed as a treatment for other neurological disorders and drug abuse. 5-HT1A is a validated therapeutic target, as approved drugs, including the antidepressant Viibryd and the anti-anxiety med Buspar, bind to it. But little is known about how psychedelics engage with this receptor and which effects it mediates, so Daniel Wacker’s lab decided to look into it.

The researchers started by making chemical modifications to the frog psychedelic and noting how each of the tweaked molecules bound to both 5-HT2A  and 5-HT1A. As a group, these psychedelics are known as “designer tryptamines”—that’s tryp with a “y”, mind you—because they are metabolites of the amino acid tryptophan.

The lab made 10 variants and found one that is more than 800-fold selective about sticking to 5-HT1A as compared to 5-HT2A. That makes it a great research tool for elucidating the structure-activity relationship of the 5-HT1A receptor, as well as the molecular mechanisms behind the pharmacology of the drugs on the market that bind to it. The lab used it to explore both of those avenues. However, the variant’s ultimate utility might be as a new therapeutic for psychiatric disorders, so they tested it in mice.

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