Tag: the war on (some) drugs

DEA Tells Congress It Has ‘Final Authority’ On Marijuana, Regardless Of Health Agency’s Schedule III Recommendation

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is telling lawmakers that it reserves “the final authority” to make any scheduling decision on marijuana following an ongoing review, regardless of what the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommends.

In a letter sent to Congressional Cannabis Caucus co-chair Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), DEA Acting Chief of the Office of Congressional Affairs Michael Miller gave a general overview of the scheduling review process that was initiated under a directive from President Joe Biden in October 2022.

That started with a scientific assessment from HHS that reportedly advised DEA to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Once HHS made its recommendation in August, “DEA conducts its own review,” the letter, sent last month and first reported by Punchbowl News, says.

“DEA has the final authority to schedule, reschedule, or deschedule a drug under the Controlled Substances Act, after considering the relevant statutory and regulatory criteria and HHS’s scientific and medical evaluation,” it says. “DEA is now conducting its review.”

The agency’s statement came in response to an earlier letter from 31 bipartisan lawmakers, led by Blumenauer, that implored DEA to consider the “merits” of legalization as it carried out its review. That initial letter also criticized the limitations of simply placing cannabis in Schedule III, as opposed to fully removing the plant from CSA control.

“While Congress works to send the President comprehensive cannabis legislation, the urgency of full descheduling should inform DEA’s position on overall cannabis reform and appropriate enforcement centered on advancing public safety, not unjust criminalization,” the lawmakers’ letter said. “Marijuana’s continued inappropriate scheduling is both arcane and out-of-touch with the will of the American people.”

In that context, DEA’s response offered little insight, with the agency declining to address the lawmakers’ key arguments and instead simply outlining the procedural details of the scheduling review.

Keep reading

Ohio GOP Governor Pushes Lawmakers To Allow Marijuana Sales ‘Very Quickly’ And Ban Intoxicating Hemp Products

Ohio’s Republican governor is adamant that lawmakers must pass legislation as soon as possible to expedite regulated recreational marijuana sales and also ban purchases of intoxicating hemp products.

With the legislature coming back into session for the new year, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said “we just need to get something done” to address the adult-use sales rollout timeline under a voter-approved legalization law that took effect last month.

It’s a “strange situation” the state has found itself in, he said, with sales currently set to open up in late summer or early fall. DeWine said he supports a bill the Senate passed last month, which would provide for sales through existing medical cannabis dispensaries within 90 days of enactment. However, he acknowledged the House has a differing version and pushed for lawmakers to “work together and make sure that we can deal with with this problem.”

“Our bill that we would prefer would allow us to start selling this marijuana in a controlled basis. The people who said they were for this said, ‘Let’s do it the same way we do with liquor—control how it’s done,’” he said. “Under our bill, we would be able to sell that very quickly now, early in this year, through the facilities that now do the medical marijuana.”

Keep reading

South Dakota Bill Would Force Medical Cannabis Dispensaries To Warn Patients About Federal Gun Ban For People ‘Addicted To Marijuana’

South Dakota Republican lawmakers have filed a bill to mandate that state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries post a sign at their businesses warning patients that federal law prohibits cannabis consumers from possessing firearms.

The legislation, led by Rep. Kevin Jensen (R) and Sen. Jim Stalzer (R) and 10 other legislators, comes at a time when the constitutionality of the underlying federal gun ban for marijuana consumers is being challenged in multiple courts.

Under the bill, South Dakota medical cannabis dispensaries would need to post at each entrance to their business and at each register or point of sale a sign that reads:

“WARNING: Federal law prohibits the possession of a firearm by certain individuals who are users of or addicted to marijuana. See 18 U.S.C. § 922(g).”

The measure, HB 1036, states that the warning requirement would be suspended if the attorney general certifies that “federal law no longer prohibits the possession of a firearm by certain individuals who are users of or addicted to marijuana.”

Until then, businesses that fail to post the notice would be subject to a civil penalty of $250 per day, with those fees going to state general fund.

The GOP lawmakers also filed a separate bill, HB 1024, that would require state application forms for medical cannabis cards to contain a notice of the federal restrictions on gun possession by marijuana consumers. Patients would have to sign to specifically acknowledge the warning.

The Justice Department has insisted on the necessity of the ban in numerous federal courts, arguing at points that people who use marijuana and possess guns pose a unique danger, akin to permitting people with serious mental illness to own firearms.

Keep reading

Washington Bill Would Roll Back New Marijuana-Related Employment Protections For Drug Treatment Professionals

As a new law in Washington State took effect this week to shield most job applicants who legally use cannabis from facing employment discrimination during the hiring process, two lawmakers have filed legislation to roll back those protections for workers in the drug treatment industry.

HB 2047, sponsored by Reps. Tom Dent (R) and Lauren Davis (D), would add to the new law’s list of exemptions, which already include law enforcement, jobs requiring a federal background investigation or security clearance, fire departments, first responders, safety-sensitive positions, corrections officers and those in the airline or aerospace industries.

Specifically, the bill would allow employers to deny people who test positive for cannabis a position “as a substance use disorder professional or trainee, or any position as a health care professional licensed or certified…where the person will be providing services directly to clients or patients receiving treatment for substance use disorder.”

While the legislation would not require employers to screen job applicants for marijuana, they would no longer be subject to the newly effective provision making it “unlawful for an employer to discriminate against a person in the initial hiring for employment if the discrimination is based upon” the use of marijuana off the job and away from the workplace or a positive drug test for cannabis metabolites.

Notably, the new anti-discrimination cannabis law applies only to job applicants. Employers can still maintain drug-free workplaces or prohibit the use of cannabis by workers after they’re hired.

Davis, who’s long said she supports an end to criminal cannabis prohibition but has concerns about the dangers of legalization, filed two marijuana-related bills in 2023 during the first part of the two-year session. One, HB 1641, would place various restrictions on marijuana products with more than 35 percent total THC, including banning advertising and prohibiting sales of the products to people under 25. The other, HB 1642, would ban the production and sale of concentrates with more than 35 percent THC unless the products were intended for medical patients.

In 2020, she sponsored legislation that would have banned all concentrates with more than 10 percent THC.

Keep reading

New York Local Governments Could Shut Down Unlicensed Marijuana Businesses Under New ‘SMOKEOUT Act’ Bill

As New York works to significantly expand the state’s regulated marijuana market, a new bill would empower individual municipal governments to shut down unlicensed cannabis businesses and seize their products.

The legislation from Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar (D) aims to address the proliferation of illegal operators that have emerged throughout the state amid the protracted rollout of New York’s legalization law.

Currently, state regulators with the Cannabis Control Board (CCB) hold enforcement authority to close unlicensed businesses. The newly filed Stop Marijuana Over-proliferation and Keep Empty Operators of Unlicensed Transactions (SMOKEOUT) Act would expand that authority to local governments by giving municipal officials the power to “order the immediate closure of any business” found to be illegally marijuana and to seize its merchandise.

“The lack of authority for municipalities to interdict unlawful retailers, combined with limited resources from the Board, has resulted in the proliferation of so-called ‘smoke shops’ openly selling illegal, unregulated cannabis and other contraband with near total impunity,” a justification memo attached to the bill says.

“The vast amount of contraband and loose cash in these smoke shops have made them tantalizing targets for robberies and hotbeds of crime. This has put communities, shop employees, and their customers in extreme danger,” it says. “These shops are also unfair competition to licensed dispensaries, who cannot afford to sell their rigorously tested and regulated cannabis at the prices smoke shops offer.”

The bill’s introduction comes as New York regulators move to process hundreds of marijuana business license applications. Over a dozen new cannabis retailers opened in December alone following a settlement agreement lifting an injunction that had imposed a months-long licensing blockade.

“Our top priority is to grow and expand New York’s legal cannabis industry while cracking down on the illicit storefronts that continue to plague communities,” Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) had said at the time.

Keep reading

DEA Calls For Even More THC, Psilocybin And DMT To Be Produced For Research In 2024

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is now calling for the production of even more THC, psilocybin and DMT for research purposes than it initially proposed for 2024—raising its quotas for those drugs while maintaining already high production goals for marijuana and other psychedelics.

In a notice set to be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, DEA said it received comments from registered manufacturers requesting increases to previously proposed 2024 quotas for the Schedule I substances in order to “meet medical and scientific needs,” and it agreed to do so in the new final order.

Accordingly, the agency nearly doubled the quotas for delta-9 THC and all other tetrahydrocannabinol, increasing them to 1,523,040 grams and 1,166,130 grams, respectively.

Keep reading

Could KETAMINE be secret weapon in war on cancer? Scientists find illegal party drug can destroy tumours

Ketamine could offer hope in the fight against cancer, scientists believe.

Promising laboratory tests showed the horse tranquiliser-cum-party drug could kill tumour cells.

Experts think it might block a receptor which encourages tumours to grow. 

Although not proven to work on humans, the Imperial College London team hope similar results could be seen in further lab studies and among patients.

In-depth studies involving thousands of cancer patients would be needed before ketamine is ever rolled out as a treatment, however, meaning any development is still years away at best.

Ketamine is only licensed in the UK as an anaesthetic but can also be prescribed off-license as a pain killer.

These versions are medical-grade and proven to be safe.  

However, they can still trigger hallucinations, just like the version sold on the streets for as little as £3 a pop. 

Anyone caught in possession of the class B drug faces a five-year prison term and an unlimited fine.

As it stands, surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the most commonly used cancer treatments.

But researchers around the world are searching for other treatments in a bid to boost care and survival rates, with up to half of people expected to get the disease in their lifetime.

Keep reading

Why fears about Biden’s marijuana moves are overblown

President Joe Biden’s administration is poised to make the biggest shift in federal drug policy in decades by loosening marijuana restrictions, but the move is sparking blowback from an unlikely constituency: legalization advocates.

They argue that moving marijuana to a lower classification would do nothing to address the federal-state divide in marijuana laws, fail to address the impacts of criminalization, disrupt existing state-regulated cannabis markets, lead multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies to dominate the medical cannabis industry and spur a potential federal crackdown.

Howard Sklamberg, an attorney and former top official at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, argues those fears are alarmist and misguided. He doesn’t believe the cannabis industry needs to worry about a crackdown if the drug is moved from Schedule I to III under the Controlled Substances Act, as recommended by the Food and Drug Administration after a review of the scientific evidence.

“If you’re going to launch an enforcement initiative against cannabis, why would you start off with saying, ‘Oh, by the way, it’s less of a risk than we thought,’” Sklamberg said in an interview with POLITICO. “You would use your power under Schedule I and go after it.”

Keep reading

These are the most controversial laws that went into effect across the U.S. today

A raft of new laws that have immediate — and possibly fundamental — impact on the lives of Americans went into effect Monday.

Among them was state legislation that dealt with guns, marijuana, voting rights, minimum wage and a controversial Texas law that bans diversity programming at public colleges.

The New York Times gave a rundown of the New Year’s Day changes across the country.

Gun Ownership

In California, a law that went into effect on January 1 bars the carrying of guns in most public places. It lists more than two dozen locations where the weapons can’t be carried, including libraries and sports venues.

In Minnesota, a new law gives officials the power to take firearms away from people deemed dangerous. A similar law will take effect in Michigan next month.

Washington State will require all gun buyers to have a 10-day waiting period and to have passed a safety training program, while in Illinois high-powered semiautomatic rifles have been banned.

Keep reading