Tag: the war on (some) drugs

It’s ‘Unclear’ How Feds Will Enforce Hemp THC Product Ban, Congressional Researchers Say, Citing Limited FDA And DEA Resources

Congressional researchers say it “remains unclear” how the federal government might enforce a newly enacted law that takes effect next year banning hemp THC products—flagging concerns about a potential lack of resources on the part of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

After President Donald Trump signed appropriations legislation late last month that included language that effectively “reimposes” hemp criminalization, the Congress Research Service (CRS) published an analysis about the policy change on Wednesday.

“While the change to the hemp definition will seemingly alter the legal status of many hemp products currently available on the market, it remains unclear if and how federal law enforcement will enforce the new prohibitions when the new definition goes into effect,” the researchers said.

Part of the uncertainty around hemp is related to the federal approach to marijuana, which has been legalized in some form in the vast majority of states but remains federally illegal as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

“In marijuana’s case, the federal response has largely been to allow states to implement their own marijuana laws despite the fact that state-regulated activities may violate the [Controlled Substances Act],” CRS said. “If intoxicating hemp products persist on the market after the change to their legal status, it is possible they could be subject to the same criminal and collateral issues as marijuana.”

The analysis added, however, that it “remains to be seen” whether FDA will “pursue additional options to remove these [hemp] items from the market.

FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration “may lack the resources to broadly enforce the laws prohibiting intoxicating hemp products on the market,” it said, adding that congressional lawmakers may also “choose to exercise oversight over federal enforcement priorities regarding state-regulated cannabis activities.”

FDA and DEA, “in coordination with the Department of Justice, have a range of civil and criminal remedies they may use in efforts to exercise control over these activities,” the report says.

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Is President Trump really so concerned about the flow of drugs ‘poisoning Americans,’ when he just pardoned a notorious drug trafficker and warp speeds harmful pharmaceuticals?

Anyone who still believes the Trump administration’s newly scheduled wars in Latin America are in any way related to stopping drugs from killing Americans is not paying attention to the full spectrum of policies coming out of this administration.

Instead of listening to Trump’s many bombastic public statements in a vacuum, let’s examine the record of his actions.

This administration has an obsession with drugs. Even known harmful drugs have been embraced and promoted by President Trump in his first and second terms.

There is now plenty of evidence that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed project, which he placed under the direction of former pharma executive General Gustav Perna and the U.S. military, led to mega-deaths in the United States and the world. Speed came at the cost of any valid clinical trials, with needles entering arms under Emergency Use Authorization with only two months of safety data on the FDA’s books. When it comes to experimental new medicines or treatments, you don’t gamble with people’s lives. There are reasons why it takes 10-15 years to get a vaccine through the approval process, but Trump was willing to make that gamble. And it paid off in the form of record profits for Pfizer and Moderna.

The latest evidence of that was just last week when Trump’s own FDA finally fessed up and told us the Covid shots led to the deaths of at least 10 children during trials (this is based on VAERS data which has been proven to be underreported by a factor of at least 10). This was kept hidden from the American public, along with all the other reams of evidence showing that the shots killed people of all ages and continues to do so.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans report suffering vaccine injuries, as even The New York Times is reporting.

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Trump’s Pardon of Convicted Drug Trafficker and Former President of Honduras Undermines His Own Reasoning for War on Venezuela

Trump’s recent pardon of convicted drug trafficker and former President of Honduras undermines his own reasoning for the escalation with Venezuela.

President Trump has stated previously that the justification for the escalation in tensions with President Maduro and Venezuela is a hard stance against drug trafficking into the U.S. from Latin American countries. If this was the case, then the recent pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández – a man convicted of working with drug traffickers to smuggle drugs into the U.S. – directly undercuts his own reasoning.

Convicted in February of 2024, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in a United States federal prison. During the 57-year-old’s two terms in office, he allowed over 400 tons of cocaine to flow through Honduras and into the United States in exchange for millions of dollars from cartel drug lords like Joaquín Guzmán, AKA “El Chapo.”

According to the Associated Press, Hernández was even caught on video boasting to drug traffickers during his trial that “together they were going to shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” Trump’s justification for pardoning Hernández is that people he respects told him Hernández was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

The problem is that pardoning a man who helped turn his country into a narco-state – while taking bribes from convicted cartel bosses – undermines the exact reasoning Trump and the United States have used to escalate pressure on Venezuela. Tensions first began in 2017 when the U.S. sanctioned Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami for drug-trafficking activity. Fast forward to 2019, and the Trump administration formally indicted President Nicolás Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials on narco-terrorism charges, arguing that they were responsible for trafficking cocaine into the United States.

These actions were presented as necessary steps to confront foreign leaders who enable cartels, threaten regional stability, and push drugs into American communities. The message from the Trump administration was simple: the U.S. will not tolerate narco-traffickers.

This is exactly why the pardon of Hernández undercuts Trump’s own argument. You cannot escalate against Venezuela because of its alleged operation of a criminal enterprise, then turn around and pardon a man who was proven – through evidence, witnesses, and beyond a reasonable doubt in a U.S. court of law – to have done the very same thing. In Hernández’s case, he did it while presenting himself as a U.S. ally to the public, all while taking cartel money behind the scenes.

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Chicago Council Committee to Consider Ordinance Restricting Hemp THC Sales to Licensed Dispensaries

On Wednesday, a Chicago council committee will discuss and potentially vote on an ordinance that would prohibit all non-dispensary businesses from selling hemp-derived cannabinoid products, limiting sales exclusively to state-licensed cannabis stores.

The measure, sponsored by Alderman Marty Quinn, would repeal the city’s existing cannabinoid ordinance and replace it with a stricter framework. The proposal creates a broad definition of “hemp-derived cannabinoid product,” covering any intermediate or final product made from hemp that contains cannabinoids of any kind, whether natural, synthetic, or manufactured. It includes items intended for inhalation, ingestion, or topical use. It also defines “concealment” as knowingly hiding or preventing the discovery of these products.

Under the proposed language, no licensed business—except for state-licensed cannabis establishments—would be allowed to possess, sell, give away, barter, exchange, or furnish any hemp-derived cannabinoid product on their premises. The ordinance also bans any act of concealment involving these products. Violations would carry fines between $2,000 and $5,000 per offense, with each day the violation continues counted as a separate offense. Repeated violations could trigger license suspension or revocation.

The Illinois Healthy Alternatives Association announced its opposition ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, arguing that the measure goes too far and would disrupt businesses offering non-intoxicating hemp products.

“We all recognize the importance of implementing responsible regulations to prevent these products from reaching minors,” said Craig Katz, President of the Board for the Illinois Healthy Alternatives Association. “Our members are actively collaborating at both the state and federal levels to create a regulatory framework that safeguards minors and ensures product safety. We can achieve these objectives while still enabling our members to offer their customers the healthy alternatives they require. We are eager to partner with the City Council to find effective solutions.”

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Psychedelics produce enduring behavioral effects and functional plasticity through mechanisms independent of structural plasticity

Activation of serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) receptors is thought to underly the long-lasting antidepressant effects of psychedelics such as psilocybin, but beyond that, the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved are not well understood. Recent preclinical studies using mice have primarily examined relatively short time points after psychedelic administration, which does not address the long-lasting effects of psilocybin in humans (i.e., several months or more). We utilized a rat experimental system to demonstrate that both psilocybin and the selective 5-HT2A receptor agonist 25CN-NBOH reduce immobility in the forced swim test without a decrease in effect size for at least three months after a single administration of the psychedelic. There were no overt behavioral differences between psilocybin and 25CN-NBOH treated animals, suggesting 5-HT2A receptor activation is sufficient to produce long-lasting behavioral changes. Functional cellular plasticity in neurons from the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of these animals was assessed using brain slice electrophysiology. Functional plasticity was evident for both psychedelics several months after treatment, and Layer 5 excitatory pyramidal neurons demonstrated significant changes in resting membrane potential, firing rates, and synaptic excitation. Recorded neurons were examined by microscopy for synaptic density and spine classification, which found no differences between control and psychedelic-treated. Gene expression studies for several presynaptic and postsynaptic markers in the mPFC indicated no differences in expression between groups. Together, our results indicate a single treatment with a psychedelic is sufficient to elicit very long-lasting behavioral and cellular changes through enduring function plasticity rather than structural plasticity.

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Feds Launch New Marijuana-Focused Ad Campaign To ‘Challenge The Dangerous Belief’ That People Drive Better While High

The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Ad Council are rolling out a new campaign to “challenge the dangerous belief that it’s safe to drive after consuming marijuana,” with a disturbing ad that they say depicts a real-life story of a child killed by a driver who was under the influence of cannabis.

In an announcement on Tuesday, the Ad Council promoted the “Tell That to Them” initiative, which includes a 60-second ad showing a person claiming they “focus” better when driving while high and then causing a fatal car accident.

“I actually drive better when I’m high,” the man says. “If anything, I’m more careful, more chill, more relaxed.”

He is then shown driving head-on into an incoming car.

DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) partnered with the Ad Council for the campaign.

“Too many young men think marijuana doesn’t affect their driving ability or even makes them safer drivers,” NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said in a press release. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Marijuana slows down a driver’s reaction time and impairs their coordination and judgement,” he said. “This new PSA reminds motorists that driving high puts us all at risk and can have deadly consequences.”

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The Same Democrats Who Said NOTHING When Obama Drone-Bombed 16-yr-Old US Citizen Al-Awlaki Are Furious About Trump Bombing Dangerous Venezuelan Cartel Members in a Boat

Al-Qaeda leader and US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen in September 2011 in a targeted strike.
Al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico and attended college in Colorado.

Obama dropped a bomb on his head.

In May 2012 The New York Times revealed that Barack Obama was the official who actually made the final call on US drone strikes.

Seven months before the New York Times report, Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen from Denver, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in October 2011.

Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi was the son of terrorist Anwar al-Aulaqi. He did not have a trial.  He was sixteen.

Barack Obama dropped a bomb on his head.

In January 2020, the United States killed General Qassim Soleimani, a top commander of Iran’s al-Quds Force, in an airstrike at Baghdad’s International Airport. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Seven people were reportedly killed in the airstrike.

Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of dozens of US military men and women in Iraq.

Speaker Pelosi, Democrats and the fake news media were outraged over the death of the world’s number one terrorist.

The media and Democrats hammered President Trump all day.

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Supreme Court Fails to Keep a Tight Leash on Police K-9 Drug-Sniff Searches That Intrude Into Vehicles, Raising Fourth Amendment Concerns

In yet another ruling that contributes to the steady normalization of police overreach, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to rein in police K-9 drug-sniff searches during traffic stops.

By declining to hear an appeal in Mumford v. Iowa, the Court let stand an Iowa Supreme Court ruling that allows police to rely on a drug dog’s intrusion into a car’s interior during a traffic stop—even when officers lack probable cause to believe the car contains contraband. In a 5-2 decision in Mumford v. Iowa, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld as constitutional a search in which a police K-9 placed its paws on a car door and inserted its snout through an open window before alerting to drugs.

The Rutherford Institute, joined by Restore the Fourth, had urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling, arguing that warrantless, nonconsensual intrusions into protected spaces violate the Fourth Amendment, which extends its protection to a person’s vehicle. The amicus brief further warned that allowing a police dog to breach the interior of a car provides no limiting principle: if a dog’s snout may trespass inside a vehicle without probable cause, then so might thermal-imaging devices, x-ray scanners, fiberscopes, or other police technologies.

“What this ruling makes clear is that no American is safe from government intrusion, not even during a routine traffic stop. This is how constitutional rights are lost—not in dramatic sweeps, but in small, incremental intrusions that courts refuse to check,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “If a police dog’s snout can be used to justify a warrantless search of a car, then there is nothing to stop the government from using ever more intrusive technologies, surveillance tools, and police instrumentalities to invade our privacy with little to no judicial oversight.”

The case arose after an Iowa police officer initiated a traffic stop of Ashlee Mumford’s vehicle, claiming the last two numbers on her license plate were obscured by dirt and grime. The officer summoned a K-9 unit, and Mumford and her passenger were ordered out of the vehicle “for their own safety” while the handler walked the dog around the car to conduct a “free air sniff.” Because Mumford’s passenger had left his window open, the dog pushed its snout through the open window into the cabin before alerting to drugs. A subsequent search of the vehicle uncovered drugs in the glove compartment which apparently belonged to the passenger. Officers then searched Mumford’s purse—which she had taken with her upon exiting the vehicle—and found marijuana and a pipe.

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They Built a Hemp Business in Good Faith but Washington Is About To Crush It

As the Senate prepared to vote on the funding bill to reopen the federal government earlier this month, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) warned that passing the legislation would “regulate the hemp industry to death.” Buried deep inside the continuing resolution was a provision that would completely reverse nearly seven years of industry progress—and potentially wipe out small hemp-based businesses.

In 2019, after the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, cousins Jim Higdon and Eric Zipperle founded Cornbread Hemp. The Kentucky-based company manufactures and sells hemp-related products directly to consumers nationwide, and it stands out in a highly competitive market thanks to the quality of its organic hemp.

Cornbread pioneered a flower-only production model that uses only cannabis flowers in extraction, yielding higher-quality products. It also enforces a strict set of growing standards.

“We’re farming land that has not had pesticides on it for three years—verified. We’re using non-GMO seeds, no pesticides, and no synthetic fertilizers,” said Higdon. “The only fertilizer input we use is chicken litter…from a certified organic chicken farm.”

That quality has earned Cornbread a loyal and growing customer base, 60 percent of whom are over 66 years old and rely on these products to relieve chronic pain.

It is estimated that the number of licensed growers rose from about 3,500 in 2018 to over 21,000 in 2020. The rush subsided, and by 2021, the market steadied and licenses fell to about 9,700. Even with that correction, the economic impact of industrial hemp is undeniable. Industry estimates suggest the hemp market supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, with one model putting the number at roughly 325,000 workers in farming, biomass processing, product manufacturing, distribution, and retail nationwide. According to Department of Agriculture data, the value of U.S. industrial hemp production was about $824 million in 2021 and approximately $445 million in 2024.

And yet, even before the most recent move by Congress, many small companies, including Cornbread, have been hit by a wave of new state regulations threatening their survival. In 2025, Tennessee passed a law placing the hemp industry under the jurisdiction of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Commission. The state’s longstanding three-tier system for policing liquor sales now extends to hemp products as well.

Beginning in January 2026, out-of-state hemp companies, such as Cornbread, wanting to do business in Tennessee must first sell their product to a Tennessee-licensed wholesaler, which must then sell it to a Tennessee retail shop. Only then can customers visit the physical store and purchase the product.

While Cornbread can set up its own wholesaler and retail facilities in Tennessee, doing so would be impractical and prohibitively expensive.

Beyond its practical business burdens, Tennessee’s law infringes on Cornbread and other companies’ fundamental right to earn a living. The law also violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause by discriminating against out-of-state businesses and shielding in-state interests from legitimate competition. 

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Weight-loss jab users are being left with debilitating new side-effect, one of the UK’s leading orthopaedic surgeons warns

Weight-loss jab users are being left with a devastating new side-effect, a top surgeon has warned.

The alarming trend spotted amongst GLP-1 users means some patients cannot lift their limbs due to nerve dysfunction.

One of the UK’s leading orthopaedic surgeons, Tim Sinnett, has said he ‘expects to see more patients presenting these symptoms over time’.

The Foot and Ankle Surgeon, who is part of the prestigious Grosvenor Orthopaedic Partners group, added: ‘In the past six months, I have seen a handful of patients with foot drop related to weight-loss jabs – a phenomenon which has only presented itself this year.

‘The sudden loss of weight, associated with this medication, is what is causing the problem.

‘All nerves have a natural rim of fat around them. Suddenly losing weight, and the fat surrounding nerves, can cause this nerve dysfunction in the foot and ankle.

‘Patients with foot drop can have difficulty lifting the front part of the foot, causing it to drag on the floor.

‘Although losing weight is generally beneficial for the feet and ankles, in terms of reducing the force on the joints, the speed of the weight loss appears to be causing the nerves to malfunction.

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