Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Margaret Mead’s LSD Memo

With her paper-cluttered desk spotlit underneath a pendant lamp, Margaret Mead’s office in the western turret in the American Museum of Natural History resembled a Broadway theater set. All around her in the shadows hung masks and carved figures, as if the museum dioramas from the floors below had begun to creep into her workspace.

Back in her spiritual home after spending the last six months of 1953 in Manus, she felt refreshed, confident. She was already thinking through her book about her experience; New Lives for Old would be the title, and it would describe the Noise, an apocalyptic religious movement which spread through the island of Manus, which lies northeast of New Guinea, in the aftermath of World War II. In 1947, a prophet had emerged on Manus who predicted a coming age of abundance, even immortality. But first, the old ways had to be cast out. Reports poured in of visionary experiences, trance states, even seizures. Hats of colonial officials were ritually burned, and a coming age of abundance was proclaimed. Mead found the Noise fascinating because she saw it as a prelude to other new cultural forms which she believed would appear elsewhere as a response to the rapid changes of the 20th century—including in the United States. She saw the movement in relatively benign terms. True, it really was an apocalyptic cult, she wrote, complete with mystical “prophetic dreams” and the promise of “a utopia to be immediately established on earth.” But who said utopian dreams were entirely bad?

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Washington State Marijuana Homegrow Proposal Dies In House Committee Without Getting A Vote

Adults in Washington State who grow marijuana at home will continue to face the threat of felony charges for at least another year following a House committee’s failure to advance a cannabis homegrow bill ahead of a legislative deadline this week.

HB 2194 was not called for a vote in the House Appropriations Committee before the February 5 deadline for bills to pass out of fiscal panels, meaning it’s no longer eligible to move forward. The marijuana home cultivation measure passed out of a separate House committee last month, though lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said they were wary of the change.

Washington was one of the first U.S. states to legalize adult-use marijuana, passing a ballot initiative in 2012. Growing marijuana for personal use without a state medical card, however, remains a Class C felony, carrying up to five years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines.

Legislative efforts to allow personal cultivation stretch back to at least 2015, but so far each has failed.

Lead sponsor Rep. Shelley Kloba (D) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“This bill is actually a long time coming,” Kloba told colleagues at last month’s committee hearing. “This is something that many other states have done, and it is time for us to do it, as well.”

If passed, HB 2194 would have allowed adults 21 and older to grow up to four plants per person, with no more than 10 allowed per household.

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Maine Democratic Governor And GOP Senate Leader Oppose Bill To Decriminalize Drugs And Invest In Treatment

Maine saw a reduction in the number of overdose deaths in 2023. But with hundreds upon hundreds of drug-related deaths last year, advocates and lawmakers say the state is still in the midst of a serious crisis.

In total, there were 607 confirmed or suspected overdose deaths in 2023, a 16 percent drop from the record total of 723 in 2022. Along with the 607 deaths, there were 9,047 confirmed nonfatal overdoses last year (compared to 9,760 in 2022).

“I think it’s hard to talk about this because that’s still 607 people who died last year and I don’t want to celebrate that whatsoever,” said Courtney Gary-Allen, organizing director of the Maine Recovery Advocacy Project. “That being said, there is a reduction, and I think we should be proud of the work that we’ve all collectively done on this issue.”

Gary-Allen cited investments in treatment by Gov. Janet Mills’ administration, the bipartisan consensus that substance use is a serious crisis that needs to be addressed, and the passage of the Good Samaritan law—which created enhanced protections from prosecution at the scene of an overdose to encourage people to call for help—as possible reasons for the reduction in deaths in 2023. Others have also cited the increased availability of the opioid overdose reversal naloxone.

Still, Gary-Allen said there is much more to do to address the overdose epidemic.

“I still have the faces in my head” of those who have died from drug overdoses, she said.

One proposal, backed by advocates in the recovery community and sponsored by Rep. Lydia Crafts (D-Newcastle), is to decriminalize the personal possession of illegal drugs and invest in an array of treatment options.

Supporters of the measure argue that criminalizing drug use pushes people into the shadows, making it harder for them to get help. Policing drug use and imprisoning people for substance use-related crimes also takes money away from a treatment-based approach, proponents of the bill say.

In all, policy analysts estimate the state could save around $45 million a year from not punishing people for possession of small amounts of drugs. Under the terms of the proposal, that money would then be invested into expanding what advocates say are often scant treatment options around the state.

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VP Kamala Harris Claims Administration ‘Changed Federal Marijuana Policy’ While Using Incorrect Map Of State Legalization Laws

Vice President Kamala Harris cited the Biden administration’s moves toward reforming federal marijuana laws in a new video appealing to young voters—though her specific claim that policies have already been “changed” is premature. Meanwhile, the video also features a map that purports to highlight states that have legalized cannabis but that contains misinformation about which jurisdictions have actually ended criminalization.

“We changed federal marijuana policy, because nobody should have to go to jail just for smoking weed,” Harris says in the video, posted to X on Friday.

While President Joe Biden has issued mass pardons for people who have committed federal cannabis offenses and initiated a review of marijuana’s federal scheduling status, the clemency move did not free anyone from incarceration and the drug currently remains under Schedule I pending the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) ongoing consideration of a Schedule III recommendation from health officials.

As such, the vice president’s claim that federal marijuana policy has already been “changed” in order to ensure that people aren’t in jail for cannabis is inflated.

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An Alabama Couple’s Lives Were Upended by an Unconstitutional Police Raid. A Jury Awarded Them $1 Million.

Six years ago, Greg and Teresa Almond were left destitute and living in a utility shed after sheriff’s deputies in Randolph County, Alabama, illegally raided their house and seized their savings over a misdemeanor drug crime.

Now the Almonds will be made partly whole, at least financially. Last month, a jury in their federal civil rights lawsuit awarded the couple $1 million in punitive and compensatory damages after trial testimony showed the deputies never got a warrant to search the Almonds’ property.

The Randolph County Sheriff’s Department’s 2018 raid on the Almonds’ house, first reported by the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, exemplified the worst aspects of the war on drugs and civil asset forfeiture—a practice that allows police to seize property when it’s suspected of being connected to criminal activity. 

On January 31, 2018, a Randolph County sheriff’s deputy showed up at Greg and Teresa Almond’s house in Woodland, Alabama, to serve Greg court papers in a civil matter. The deputy reported that he smelled marijuana.

A county drug task force returned two hours later, busted down the Almonds’ front door, threw a flash-bang grenade at Greg Almond’s feet, detained the couple at gunpoint, and ransacked their house. The search only turned up $50 or less of marijuana, which the Almonds’ adult son tried in vain to claim as his, and a single sleeping pill outside of a prescription bottle with Greg’s name on it.

Using the paltry amount of narcotics as justification, deputies seized roughly $8,000 in cash, along with dozens of firearms and other valuables, under Alabama’s civil asset forfeiture laws. The deputies took the money right out of his wallet, Greg Almond told Reason in 2019.

More than a year after the initial raid, the Almonds were indicted on two misdemeanor charges: unlawful possession of marijuana for personal use and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia, thus violating “the peace and dignity of Alabama.” However, prosecutors dropped the charges, and a judge ordered their property to be returned.

The Almonds filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2019 alleging that the Randolph County Sheriff’s Department used excessive force; stole, lost, or failed to inventory their missing property; and violated their constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as their right to due process.

That was in addition to the other injuries they suffered. As a result of the raid and arrest, the Almonds’ missed a crucial deadline to refinance loans on their farm and lost their house. Their reputation was tarnished, and their ability to earn a living was practically destroyed.

What’s more, depositions and trial testimony showed that the deputies never obtained an official search warrant from a judge for the raid.

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Ohio Lawmaker Warns Colleagues They Risk Losing Reelection For Undermining Voter-Approved Marijuana Legalization Law

An Ohio lawmaker is warning colleagues that passing legislation to undermine voters’ decision to legalize marijuana in the state will jeopardize their reelection prospects—specifically cautioning against proposals to redirect tax revenue to law enforcement.

Rep. Juanita Brent (D)—who has previously emphasized the need to involve people who’ve been disproportionately impacted by cannabis criminalization in the legalization implementation process—spoke about the politics of marijuana policy in the legislature during a panel organized by the Ohio State University Drug Enforcement and Policy Center last week.

With a primary election in Ohio coming up next month, Brent said that “if we go against the people in the state of Ohio, I don’t expect any of us to get reelected because we are not going for what the people want.”

“I know sometimes people feel like they know best when it comes to people, but the people who know best is the people who got me here elected and the people who who voted” for legalization, she said.

Fifty-seven percent of Ohio voters passed a legalization measure at the ballot in November, but the Republican governor and GOP leadership has insisted that further changes to the law are needed, particularly as it concerns the timeline for legal sales.

Other proposed changes have proved more controversial, including a push from Gov. Mike DeWine (R) to use cannabis tax dollars to support law enforcement.

Brent said that “what we can do is we allocate this money and make sure that people have access to it, instead of giving all this money to police training.”

“It blows my mind—particularly how much money they want to put towards police training within the state—but particularly for hospital agencies which came out of the Senate. It to me is ridiculous,” she said. “People have told us time and time again when Issue 2 was passed what they want. All we’re doing right now is going against the people’s will.”

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THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF LSD

LSD is a drug which has had a bizarre inception and nuanced history. What began as a pharmacological experiment rapidly evolved into a substance which was used for a wide range of uses. From groundbreaking psychiatric work all the way to abuse in mind control military projects, let’s dive into some of the most significant examples of psychedelics’ use in society since its creation.

Hofmann’s Accidental Ingestion

Dubbed as the father of the psychedelic movement due to his work on the synthesis of LSD, Albert Hofmann was the first to produce and ingest LSD. Albert Hofmann first synthesised Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) in November 1938 when studying the medicinal properties of the ergot fungus and the Mediterranean squill. Ergot is a fungus which grows on rye and can infect the grain causing muscle spasms, delusions, hallucinations, gangrenous symptoms and ultimately death to those who consume it. This process has been linked to plagues and famines which have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the past. 

Hofmann’s boss, Arthur Stoll, managed to isolate the toxic compounds in ergot: ergotamine and ergobasine. By utilising Aotamine, the medicinal compound in ergot, Stoll was able to produce medicines for his Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz. 

Hofmann originally intended for LSD to be used as a respiratory and circulatory stimulant. However, when he accidentally absorbed the drug in his lab in 1943, he discovered that it had a far more powerful impact on his state of consciousness. Hofmann originally was unsure of how he had experienced the effects, and believed that LSD couldn’t have been the cause for his symptoms as he had been meticulous in avoiding contamination due to his knowledge of the lethality of ergot. However, he attempted to reproduce his effects by consuming what he believed to be a miniscule dose of LSD to test whether it was the cause.

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Psilocybin, LSD And Other Psychedelics Improve Sexual Satisfaction For Months After Use, New Study Finds

Psychedelic substances, including psilocybin mushrooms, LSD and others, may improve sexual function—even months after a psychedelic experience, according to a new study.

The findings, published on Wednesday in Nature Scientific Reports, are based largely on a survey of 261 participants both before and after taking psychedelics. Researchers from Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research then combined those responses with results of a separate clinical trial that compared psilocybin and a commonly prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRIs) for treating depression.

Authors say it’s the first scientific study to formally explore the effects of psychedelics on sexual functioning. While anecdotal reports and and qualitative evidence suggest the substances may be beneficial, the study says, “this has never been formally tested.”

“It’s important to stress our work does not focus on what happens to sexual functioning while people are on psychedelics, and we are not talking about perceived ‘sexual performance,’” said Tommaso Barba, a PhD student at the Centre for Psychedelic Research and the lead author of the study, “but it does indicate there may be a lasting positive impact on sexual functioning after their psychedelic experience, which could potentially have impacts on psychological wellbeing.”

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U.S. Navy Expands Marijuana Waiver Authority To Address Recruiting Shortfalls

Amid the U.S. military’s ongoing recruiting crisis, the Navy is expanding authority to grant waivers to recruits who arrive at boot camp and initially test positive for marijuana, instead of simply sending them home.

“If they fail that test and own up—’Yes, I smoke marijuana ‘—we do an evaluation of the young person to make sure there’s not something else going on,” Rear Adm. James Waters told reporters this week. “But we trust that through the process of boot camp that we have an opportunity to bring them along with our culture.”

Waters, who directs the Navy’s military personnel plans and policy division, explained that the goal of the change is to be “reflective of where legislation is in society.”

“We recognize that many states have legalized marijuana,” he said, according to the outlet Military.com.

As that publication notes, however, the policy shift is among a host of steps military officials across multiple branches have taken to address recruiting shortfalls in recent years across the armed forces. The changes have brought the current boot-camp dropout rate to about 10 percent, among the lowest in recent history.

If the Navy is going to meet its 2024 recruiting goal of bringing on 40,000 new sailors, Waters said, even losing 4,000 recruits during boot camp “is really, really unhelpful, and so we want to try to continue to work on that.”

The more lenient approach to failed drug tests is limited to initial screening for THC, Waters emphasized, noting that the policy does not apply to other drugs and adding: “We don’t do drugs in the military.”

The change comes shortly after a similar one was enacted at the Air Force, which reported late last year that it granted more than three times as many enlistment waivers to recruits who tested positive for THC as officials anticipated when they first expanded the waiver program in 2022.

The Air Force recently missed its annual recruitment goal for the first time since 1999, but Gen. Christopher Amrhein, the branch’s recruitment service commander, said last September that the situation could have been much worse if they hadn’t instituted the marijuana waiver policy.

In the first year since the waivers became available, the branch said it issued 165. That’s more than triple the 50 waivers it predicted it would grant annually. The policy covers both the Air Force and the Space Force.

For the Air Force in particular, this waiver program represents a notable development, as the branch instituted a policy in 2019 barring service members from using even non-intoxicating CBD, even if its derived from hemp and is therefore federally legal under the 2018 farm bill.

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Hawaii Governor Says Legalizing Marijuana Can ‘Blunt’ Negative Effects Of Other ‘Horrible’ Drugs

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) spoke about the state’s path to marijuana legalization this legislative session during an interview this week, calling the policy change a “big social issue that remains” to be addressed in the state and saying he’d likely sign a bill to end cannabis prohibition if one is sent to him by lawmakers.

But Green also said the change “is a little more complicated because the feds have not changed the way they schedule marijuana yet, which is really wacko.”

The governor also pushed back against opponents’ fears that legal cannabis would cause public health problems in the state, saying it could actually bring some benefits.

“I don’t think the sky would fall, honestly, if marijuana were legalized,” Green told Hawaii News Now in an interview that aired on Tuesday, adding: “I also have some thoughts that marijuana might blunt the effect, if you will, of people on these heavy drugs, these horrible drugs.”

Though Hawaii has among the lowest drug overdose death rates in the country, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, 269 people died of drug overdoses in the state in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available.

Cannabis, by contrast, “is a relative sedative,” the governor said.

“People are far less violent. They are much hungrier, but they—aside from the snacking and stealing Cheetos—will probably do less harm,” he quipped.

Legalization advocates struggled under former Democratic Gov. Dave Ige, who resisted the reform in part because he said he was reluctant to pass something that conflicts with federal law. But since Green took office, activists have felt more emboldened. He’s said since 2022 that he’d sign a legalization bill.

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