Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Advocate Thinks ‘Marijuana Bomb’ Will Hit Ohio Because of Legal Weed

An anti-weed advocate believes a “marijuana bomb” will hit Ohio as the state proceeds with legalizing weed. 

Ohio already has legal medical weed but voters recently passed a measure legalizing possession, growing, and sales for anyone over 21. 

Despite the fact that Ohio is following in the footsteps of nearly two dozen other states, Aubree Adams, director of anti-weed organization Every Brain Matters, had some rather creative doomsday predictions about the impact of the new policy. 

“Ohio voters were fooled into thinking marijuana was less harmful than alcohol. It’s not. One swallow of alcohol can’t induce psychotic behaviors, but one swallow of a marijuana edible can. One hit off a potent THC vape can. And two hits from a marijuana bong can,” she said, speaking to a Senate General Government Committee meeting earlier this week. 

“Thankfully, members of this committee are the gatekeepers that can lessen the impacts of this marijuana bomb before it’s detonated on Ohio families.” 

While a marijuana bomb sounds scary—or fun, depending on your stance—Adams’ claims are misleading at best. 

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Ohio Congressman To File Federal Cannabis Legalization Bill

Republican U.S. Representative David Joyce of Ohio will soon introduce a new bill to legalize cannabis at the federal level, according to a report from Forbes published on Wednesday. 

The new legislation is characterized as a “modernized” version of a bill Joyce introduced in 2019 known as the STATES Act. Although the measure has not yet been formally introduced in the House of Representatives, a draft of Joyce’s new bill is titled the STATES 2.0 Act. 

If passed, the legislation would remove cannabis from Schedule l of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA). However, cannabis products that are grown or manufactured outside of a state-regulated market would remain illegal under federal law, allowing states that do not want to legalize marijuana a way to maintain prohibition within their jurisdictions.

“States and [Native American] tribes have had enough with the federal government’s half-in-half-out approach that is applied without rhyme or reason,” Joyce, the co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, told Forbes in an interview. “Numerous tribes and over 40 states now, including my own, have made it clear that the federal government needs to support their cannabis laws. I’m hopeful this legislation will do just that.”

Despite the popularity of cannabis legalization, political leaders in many states would prefer to keep recreational marijuana illegal. With provisions that maintain the federal illegality of marijuana produced outside of a regulated market, Joyce’s bill allows states to take the lead on cannabis policy.

“This legislation would make it the federal government’s policy to recognize and legitimize the decisions of each state,” said a spokesperson for the congressman. “If the state decides they want to remain prohibitory, the federal government will provide enforcement, if a state decides they want to legalize, the federal government will provide regulation.”

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Colorado Governor Says Marijuana Prohibition Created A ‘Chicken And The Egg’ Research Dilemma That’s Blocked Federal Reform

The governor of Colorado says that while marijuana reform is “not really a partisan issue” anymore, there are still “stodgy nanny state Republicans who want to control it.” Meanwhile, he says, ongoing prohibition has inhibited research into the science of cannabis that’s kept it strictly criminalized at the federal level.

Gov. Jared Polis (D) is hoping that will change sooner rather than later. He and the governors of five other states sent a letter to President Joe Biden this week, urging officials to reschedule marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) by the end of the year.

In an interview that aired on Fox News Radio’s “The Guy Benson Show” on Thursday, Polis said he would’ve liked to see a federal policy change five or 10 years ago as states such as Colorado enacted adult-use legalization, but he theorized that prohibition itself created a “chicken and the egg” situation that has effectively stymied reform by making it harder to conduct research on the effects of cannabis, a stalemate that has been reinforced by congressional politics.

The administrative marijuana scheduling review that Biden directed last year could help break that policy logjam, he said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already determined that cannabis should be moved from Schedule I t0 Schedule III, and now it’s up to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to make a final determination.

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Are psychedelics a treatment for long COVID? Researchers probing this mystery don’t have answers yet

It was March 2020 and Ash was the healthiest she’d been in 15 years. She had just started an exciting new job and COVID was still a nameless “novel coronavirus” mainly appearing on cruise ships. One evening, after getting home from the gym, Ash was suddenly struck with a wave of feverish delirium. She passed out and eventually came to a couple of hours later on the kitchen floor with her dog staring down at her.

The next two weeks were a blur, but eventually Ash started to feel better. About a month after the initial illness she had pretty much recovered. And then things started getting strange. She had this feeling her teeth were rotting. A painful pressure began building in her head.

“And it just took over my nerves,” Ash explained in a conversation with Salon. “About six weeks after COVID, I started losing the use of my hands.”

Everything from opening a ziploc bag to using scissors became profoundly difficult. Multiple GPs, dentists, clinical specialists and even a Chinese acupuncturist all had no idea what was going on. By the end of 2020 Ash had stopped working altogether. Alongside the neuropathic problems all the now common neurological long COVID issues had become entrenched: Brain fog, dissociation, extreme fatigue, memory troubles.

Alienated by mainstream medicine’s denial of her condition, Ash became her own guinea pig for the next couple of years. With a deep knowledge of science and a pool of friends in the entheogenic community Ash tried anything and everything to overcome her debilitating symptoms. Steroids, low-dose naltrexone, melatonin, lecithin, goldenseal, sceletium and a whole world of anti-inflammatory botanical ferments like kefir. Some helped temporarily, some didn’t help at all. Ash kept a detailed treatment diary, tracking the effects of everything she consumed.

“People were just sending me random obscure stuff. And I’m like, yep, that doesn’t work. That works. That doesn’t work. Oh, that doesn’t work for more than three days.”

Then in early 2023, Ash tried something completely different. Something she described as a game-changer for her condition: A powerful hallucinogenic plant called iboga that originates from Africa. It’s active ingredient is known as ibogaine and it’s being explored for addiction treatment. It’s not clear yet if it will really help — but even more questions remain about its potential for alleviating long COVID.

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LSD And Psilocybin Could Be Powerful Treatments For Pain—Without Opioids’ Dwindling Effects Over Time, Study Says

LSD and psilocybin could offer promising therapeutic potential for the treatment of chronic pain “on a mechanistic and experiential level,” according to a newly published literature review that highlights scientific findings happening as part of the “psychedelic renaissance”—a recent thawing of stigma and opposition into psychedelics research after decades of prohibition.

What’s more, authors note, the pain-relieving effects of LSD and psilocybin seem to increase with repeated treatment, unlike opioids, which display “decreased therapeutic effect” over time.

The narrative review, published last month in the South African Medical Journal, charts both the history of the two substances as well as scientists’ emerging understanding of their methods of action. It notes that the drugs seem not just to reduce pain but also better manage the experience of pain.

“Recent neuroimaging studies combined with small sample interventions with classic psychedelic agents,” authors wrote, “may point towards a possible means of improving the treatment of chronic pain on a mechanistic and experiential level.”

Classic psychedelics, the literature review explains, are those that bind to the central nervous system’s 5-HT2A receptors. They include both LSD and psilocybin.

The way psilocybin binds to receptors in the central nervous system “has similar effects to LSD on cognition, emotional processing, self-awareness and the perception of pain,” says the literature review, “which underpins its potential therapeutic benefit in treating people suffering with pain. Numerous small trials of LSD and psilocybin for chronic pain have already shown a good safety profile, with minimal physical dependence, withdrawal syndrome, or compulsive drug seeking compared with other analgesic agents.”

While the two drugs are part of the same family of alkaloids, their history is, of course, much different. The review describes explains that LSD was first synthesized in 1938, meaning humans have used it for less than a century. Psilocybin’s use stretches back thousands of years. In the modern U.S., psilocybin use was popularized in the late 1950s, while LSD grew to prominence in the ’60s and ’70s.

While there have been no reports of direct mortality from either substance and no withdrawal following chronic use, the study says, “the use of psilocybin in clinical research ended at the same time as LSD research as the Controlled Substances Act was enforced.”

Associations with counterculture and anti-government sentiment meant LSD and psilocybin research was abandoned, authors wrote. “From 1977 until the early 2000s, no more LSD research was published, despite overwhelming evidence pointing towards therapeutic benefit.”

Prior research had indicated LSD might be useful in treating depression, pain, and physical suffering in cancer patients and others. Among seven patients with phantom limb pain, participants treated with LSD reduced their analgesic requirements, and two patients’ pain was resolved.

During what the review refers to as the modern “psychedelic renaissance” or “the new wave of psychedelic research,” studies have found that psilocybin or LSD may help reduce cluster headaches, end-of-life depression in cancer patients and chronic pain.

In a pain study, a small sample of patients who self-medicate with the psychedelics “revealed a decrease in the experience of pain during the psychedelic session and for up to 5 days after treatment, before their pain returned to baseline.”

“The most exciting revelation from these interviews relates to the lasting psychological and emotional effect the psychedelics had on those interviewed,” the review says. “They describe increased resilience, body-self-awareness and psychological flexibility and psychological flexibility, which led to feelings of acceptance, agency and hope.”

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Medical Marijuana Growers And Caregivers Can Own Guns, But Patients Can’t, FBI Says In Little-Noticed Memo

Being a state-registered medical marijuana caregiver or grower doesn’t automatically disqualify a person from owning a firearm, the FBI says. But merely possessing a medical cannabis card as a patient does render a person ineligible.

Amid the growing tension between federal gun policies and the ever-expanding state marijuana legalization movement, a little-noticed FBI memo from 2019 offers a lens into the byzantine legal interpretations surrounding cannabis and firearms—an issue that’s recently been raised in multiple federal court cases.

The government has several different ways it assesses firearm eligibility in the context of cannabis, according to the memo from FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, which was briefly noted in a report from The New York Times last week. In some cases, that involves affirmatively restricting gun rights based on activities or documentation that doesn’t necessarily mean a person is an active marijuana consumer.

At their core, the federal rules say that being an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance, including marijuana, means a person cannot buy or possess a gun. Would-be gun purchasers are required to disclose such use as part of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) form before making a purchase, and lying on that form is a felony offense.

The statute behind that prohibition has been challenged in a number of federal courts over the past couple of years, with more than one judicial body determining that the restriction is unconstitutional. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has steadfastly defended the ban, however, contending that medical marijuana patients and everyday consumers pose unique dangers to society that justify withholding Second Amendment rights.

But the federal government’s interpretation of the policy is apparently more nuanced, as evidenced by the memo from CJIS’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System Section that’s gone largely unscrutinized since being published more than four years ago.

A person’s firearm eligibility is partly determined by whether their use of a controlled substance is deemed “current.” FBI says that’s “not limited to the use of drugs on a particular day, or within a matter of days or weeks before, but rather that the unlawful use has occurred recently enough to indicate the individual is actively engaged in such conduct.”

“ATF has determined that the present time is represented by the time frame of within the past 12 months,” the memo says.

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Feds Release 250+ Pages Of Redacted Documents On Marijuana Rescheduling Recommendation, Detailing Cannabis’s Medical Value

More than three months after news leaked that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) was recommending that marijuana be moved to Schedule III under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the agency has finally released a tranche of documents related to its recommendation and the detailed review it undertook on cannabis’s accepted medical value.

Among the materials newly made public are correspondence from HHS officials to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram as well explanations of the health agency’s reasoning for the recommended change after conducting a required eight-factor analysis under the CSA. Most pages are heavily redacted, however, and some were withheld completely.

The documents were posted online Thursday by attorneys Shane Pennington and Matt Zorn, coauthors of the blog On Drugs. Zorn previously submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain the records.

“We haven’t had a chance to wade through it all,” the two lawyers wrote, “but are putting it up here now and will follow up as soon as we’ve studied everything more deeply.”

In response to the FOIA request, HHS “reviewed 252 pages of records,” releasing just two pages in their entirety. Another 236 were redacted in part, while 14 pages were withheld completely. All the released documents are embedded at the end of this article.

Broadly, the documents outline new scientific information that’s come to light in recent years subsequent to an earlier denial of a rescheduling petition, which HHS suggests might now necessitate rescheduling marijuana.

“The current review is largely focused on modern scientific considerations on whether marijuana has a CAMU [currently accepted medical use] and on new epidemiological data related to the abuse of marijuana in the years since the 2015 HHS” evaluation of marijuana under the CSA’s eight-factor analysis.

HHS also notes that it “analyzed considerable data related to the abuse potential of marijuana,” but added that it’s a complicated consideration.

“Determining the abuse potential of a substance is complex with many dimensions,” HHS wrote, “and no single test or assessment provides a complete characterization. Thus, no single measure of abuse potential is ideal.”

Most subsequent pages of the document were withheld completely.

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Ohio Senate Marijuana Bill Keeps Criminalization And Undermines Equity, Despite Expungements And Home Grow, Advocates Warn

Ohio’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law took effect on Thursday—but as lawmakers continue to push changes, advocates are calling attention to key provisions of a Senate-passed proposal that they say threatens to perpetuate criminalization and undermine social equity even while it walks back other significant alterations that were initially proposed such as a removal home cultivation rights.

At the same time, House lawmakers held a second hearing on Thursday about a separate measure to amend the legalization law.

After weeks of discussing revisions to the initiated statute, Republicans first unveiled legislation this week that would have done away with home grow, hiked marijuana taxes and re-criminalized possession of cannabis that wasn’t obtained from licensed retailers, which couldn’t open for at least one year. Some advocates were tentatively encouraged, therefore, when a significantly revised version with seeming improvements, including the restoration of home grow rights and addition of expungements provisions, was released and quickly advanced through the Senate with near-unanimous support on Wednesday.

But the brief discussion of the bill in committee prior to the full chamber vote—which also came amid House consideration of a separate GOP-led measure—did not adequately reflect the substantive changes that would be made to the law voters passed with 57 percent support, equity advocates say.

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House And Senate Reach Deal To Require Psychedelics Clinical Trials For Active Duty Military Service Members Under Defense Bill

Bipartisan and bicameral congressional lawmakers have reached an agreement on a large-scale defense bill that contains a House GOP-led section to fund studies into the therapeutic use of psychedelics such as psilocybin and MDMA for military service members.

Following negotiations, lawmakers released the conference report for the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Wednesday evening, maintaining psychedelics research provisions championed by Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX) that were attached to the House version over the summer. The report notes, however, that the House negotiators receded on a separate section to create a medical cannabis pilot program for veterans.

The psychedelics provisions that have been adopted would require the Department of Defense (DOD) to establish a process by which service members with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or traumatic brain injury could participate in clinical trials involving psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT. The list of covered psychedelics was also expanded to broadly include “qualified plant-based alternative therapies.”

DOD would need to facilitate that process within 180 days of enactment. It could partner with eligible federal or state government agencies, as well as academic institutions to carry out the clinical trials, with $10 million in funding.

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