Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Carnival Cruise Lines Denies That Anti-Marijuana Enforcement Measures Are Meant To Boost Alcohol Sales On Ships

Passenger cruise lines like Carnival and Royal Caribbean have policies against marijuana, noting that the substance is illegal in many ports it sails to and that they’re following federal law. But as more people return to the ships, and as more of them come from states where the drug is legal, operators are reportedly taking more extreme measures to detect cannabis and cracking down on people who attempt to use it—including those who simply pack CBD products, which are legal across the U.S.

As the Wall Street Journal reported in a story on the trend this week, Carnival Cruise Lines not only sends pre-cruise messages reminding passengers not to bring marijuana, but also now employs drug-sniffing dogs.

Companies say they’re focused on legal compliance and providing a comfortable experience for non-users, but the article notes that cruise operators may have an ulterior motive to discourage marijuana use.

“Besides limiting potential legal liability, cruise lines could benefit financially by prohibiting cannabis on board,” the paper reported. “Alcohol is a major revenue-generator for ships, and cruises also limit how much booze passengers bring on board.”

It talked to a Florida-based personal-injury attorney who said he’s “convinced that the decision to take such a hard line on marijuana or CBD is because they’re trying to drive alcohol sales.”

Keep reading

DEA Renews Push To Ban Two Psychedelics After Abandoning Effort Last Year, Prompting Researchers To Fight Back Again

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is taking another shot at banning two psychedelics after abandoning its original scheduling proposal last year, teeing up another fight with researchers and advocates who say the compounds hold therapeutic potential.

In a notice published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, DEA again proposed placing 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI) and 2,5-dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine (DOC) in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

The agency said that its scientific and medical basis for proposing the ban “remains the same” as it was last year, so it’s making an identical argument that the phenethylamine hallucinogens hold high abuse potential with no known medical value. What’s changed in the new notice appears to be related to the administrative process of requesting a hearing challenging the facts or laws governing the scheduling action.

When it withdrew its earlier notice, DEA mentioned that it would be “publishing a new proposed rule using an amended procedure.”

DEA doesn’t explain why the amended procedure was necessary, but it is the case that scientists rallied last year to request a hearing on its DOI and DOC scheduling proposal. The psychedelic research company Panacea Plant Sciences had also filed a motion contesting the policy change, which could’ve resulted in an administrative judge scheduling a hearing.

Unlike the previous notice, this latest filing says that the “decision whether a hearing will be needed to address such matters of fact and law in the rulemaking will be made by the Administrator.” There are suspicions that DEA is effectively complicating the process for outside parties to challenge the proposal.

In any case, Panacea Plant Sciences is again sounding the alarm. Founder and CEO David Heldreth told Marijuana Moment on Friday that the “response to our rallying cry to fight the DEA’s illogical rule making has been amazing.”

“The psychedelic community from lawyers and researchers to community activists and even individual people have really come together in opposition to the DEA prohibition mindset,” he said. “Panacea have had contact with at least 10 groups that want to be involved or support the legal fight against the DEA attempt to criminalize DOI and DOC. These compounds are intrinsically important to researchers and the scientific study of the mind and body.”

Keep reading

29 Former Federal Prosecutors Urge Biden Administration To Leave Marijuana In Schedule I

In a letter sent to the heads of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) this week, 29 former U.S. attorneys are urging the Biden administration to leave cannabis in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), arguing that “marijuana has only become more dangerous, potent, and addictive” since the government last reviewed its scheduling in 2016.

The correspondence comes as DEA continues its review of marijuana’s scheduling after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended in August that the substance be moved, reportedly to Schedule III.

“Almost no one has benefitted from legal weed,” the former federal prosecutors claim in the new letter, “but there is one group coming out on top: drug cartels. Many states have enacted home-grow marijuana laws, which led to cartels growing marijuana in the United States to cut trafficking costs.”

The letter, to Attorney General Merrick Garland and DEA Administrator Anne Milgram, does not cite a source for that claim. Most states limit legal home cultivation for cannabis to less than a dozen plants and outlaw unlicensed commercial sales.

One of the main reasons for marijuana’s current Schedule I status is the government’s assertion that the plant has no recognized medical use—an issue reform advocates have challenged as more than three-quarters of all U.S. states have adopted medical cannabis laws.

Keep reading

New York Bill Would Create Psilocybin Therapy Pilot Program For 10,000 Military Veterans And First Responders

A New York lawmaker has introduced a bill that would create a pilot program to provide psilocybin therapy to 10,000 people, focusing on military veterans and first responders, while the legislature also considers broader psychedelics reform.

Assemblymember Pat Burke (D), who has championed various psychedelics measures over recent sessions, filed the therapeutic psilocybin pilot program legislation on Wednesday.

It would create the program under the state Department of Health, which would be required to provide funding to cover the therapy and develop training guidelines for professional facilitators. It would need to issue a report on findings and policy recommendations to the governor and legislature every two years after enactment.

A total of 10,000 patients could participate, including veterans and their families, first responders and people who suffer from cluster headaches. They would need to reside in the western region of New York.

The pilot program would end if psilocybin is approved for medical use by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“Psilocybin therapy offers serious potential benefits to assist with mental health, but it suffers from a lack of substantial medical testing,” a memo attached to the measure says. “This bill would alleviate that problem by establishing a pilot program to test psilocybin therapy’s effectiveness on mental health.”

“This pilot program would help record the effects of this treatment on their conditions in order to better understand the effects of this new therapy which promises substantial benefits,” it says.

Under the legislation, the health department would be able to enter into agreements with experts, non-profit organizations, universities or other institutions “for the performance of an evaluation of the implementation and effectiveness” of the program.

Keep reading

Nineteen Years Ago, Journalist Gary Webb Was Murdered After Exposing CIA Drug Trafficking

On December 10, 2004, the body of journalist Gary Webb, 49, was discovered in his home near Sacramento after a moving company worker found a note posted to his front door that read: “Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance.”

Webb’s death was listed as a suicide, but Webb was found with two bullet holes in the head, indicating that he was executed.[1]

In the days leading up to his death, Webb had told friends that he was receiving death threats, being regularly followed by what he thought were government agents, and that he was concerned about strange individuals who were seen breaking into and leaving his house.

In the late 1990s, Webb had written a series of stories for the San José Mercury News, which provided the basis for his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).

In it, Webb detailed how the explosion of crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles during the 1980s was sparked by two Nicaraguan émigrés, Danilo Blandón and Norwin Meneses, who sold huge amounts of cocaine to raise funds for a CIA-backed rebel army—the Contras.

Webb was a Pulitzer Prize winner whose “Dark Alliance” series went viral in the early days of the internet. It caused a firestorm that led to the resignation of CIA Director John Deutch after he was grilled by angry Black activists at a meeting in L.A.[2]

Keep reading

GOP Kansas Senate President Is ‘Open’ To Limited Medical Marijuana For Seriously Ill While Dismissing Public Support For Legalization

The GOP Kansas Senate leader says he’s “open” to medical marijuana—but only in restricted form for seriously ill or terminal patients. And he might want to do a pilot program first before potentially expanding the limited reform.

During an interview with KCUR that aired on Thursday, Senate President Ty Masterson (R) was asked about his willingness to enact cannabis legalization given how recent polling shows overwhelming public support for the policy change.

He first suggested that most Kansans only support medical cannabis for “palliative care,” and claimed that “recreational was not addressed as a majority” in the recent survey. The host pressed him, pointing out that the recent Kansas Speaks fall poll found 67 percent support for taxing and regulating adult-use marijuana.

“If you look at that question, I think most people would answer yes, but they don’t know what they’re actually saying yes to,” Masterson, whose chamber declined to act on a House-passed medical marijuana legalization bill in 2021, argued. He cited concerns with the implementation of adult-use legalization in neighboring Oklahoma.

Keep reading

Arizona Officials Will Stop Investigating Reports Of Newborn Marijuana Exposure If Parent Is Medical Cannabis Patient

Arizona officials say they will stop investigating reports of marijuana exposure in newborns so long as the parents are registered medical cannabis patients.

The Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) said a state appeals court ruling that upheld parental rights to use medical cannabis means that its own policy must be revised.

That case concerned a mother who petitioned to have her name removed from a registry for people who are deemed to be potential threats to at-risk populations such as children. She was placed on that list after her newborn tested positive for THC metabolites at a hospital, and the appeals court unanimously ruled last year that the mother’s status as a medical cannabis patient meant she needed to be removed from the registry.

After the state Supreme Court declined to take up the case on appeal, DCS said it is implementing a reform to broadly enact parental medical cannabis protections, AZ Central reported. Specifically, the administration of Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) will work with DCS to update its hotline and other policy resources for child welfare reporting to reflect the court precedent.

The new policy change only affects cases involving parents who are registered medical cannabis patients and does not impact rules surrounding recreational marijuana use.

“Under current law, the Department is required to take a report and investigate prenatal substance exposure that is reported to the Department for recreational, but not medical marijuana use, if the parent has a valid medical marijuana card,” a DCS spokesperson told Marijuana Moment on Tuesday. “A change to state law would be required for the Department to no longer take reports on recreational prenatal use.”

That said, the use of marijuana or other drugs after pregnancy is not on its own considered evidence of child neglect, the spokesperson added. Drug use must be shown to be “causing a substantial risk to the child” in order to warrant investigation. And even then, “the Department does not remove children for substance use” alone.

“The Department removes a child when a parent or guardian’s substance use makes the child unsafe, and the safety concern cannot be remedied in a less intrusive way,” they said.

Keep reading

State Marijuana Legalization Has ‘Not Really Impacted’ Teen Use, Federal Official Says As New Youth Survey Shows Stable Trends

Teen marijuana use has not increased “even as state legalization has proliferated across the country,” a federal health official said on Wednesday in announcing the latest data from an annual survey that again showed prohibitionist concerns about youth cannabis access have “not played out.”

The 2022 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey—which is conducted by the University of Michigan with funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)—found that rates of past-year cannabis use “remained stable for all three grades surveyed,” remaining below pre-pandemic usage levels even as more state marijuana markets opened and expanded for adults.

“There have been no substantial increases at all,” Marsha Lopez, chief of NIDA’s epidemiological research branch, said in response to a question from Marijuana Moment during a webinar on Wednesday. “In fact, they have not reported an increase in perceived availability either, which is kind of interesting.”

“So whatever is happening with adult-use [legalization] across the country has not really impacted the younger people according to the data here,” she said.

Keep reading

Ohio House Lawmakers Take Up GOP Bill To Amend Voter-Approved Marijuana Law As Alternative To Senate Overhaul

Ohio House lawmakers held another committee hearing on a bill to revise the state’s newly enacted marijuana legalization law, hearing additional testimony ahead of an expected vote on Wednesday.

After taking public input on the legislation from Rep. Jamie Callender (R) last week, the House Finance Committee met again on Tuesday to hear from additional advocates and stakeholders as Senate Republicans work to advance a separate revision package that’s sparked significant pushback.

The House bill is considered more palatable to reform supporters, as it’d make less sweeping changes to what voters approved on the November ballot—especially compared to the Senate legislation that initially called for the elimination of home cultivation and an indefinite delay on basic legalization provisions. That latter measure was significantly altered amid criticism last week, but it’s still facing sizable opposition.

Senate President Matt Huffman (R) originally aimed to pass the bill under an emergency prior to legalization taking effect last week, but that didn’t happen according to his timeline. House Speaker Jason Stephens (R), meanwhile, has said he doesn’t see the need to rush amending the initiated statute given that sales won’t begin until later in 2024.

The GOP House and Senate leaders have disagreed on certain procedural issues related to amending the marijuana law such as the timeline for enactment, but they’ve both generally expressed support for the idea of making changes such as revising the tax structure, preventing public consumption and deterring impaired driving.

In the House Finance Committee, members took additional public testimony on Tuesday, hearing from interested parties who expressed concern about issues such as the bill’s continued criminalization of sharing marijuana between adults and the redirection of tax revenue away from equity and toward law enforcement.

“My concern is that, through some of the reforms that I’m seeing being introduced in this legislature, we would be moving from puff-puff-pass to puff-puff-police and that is in total contradiction to what Ohio voters voted in support of,” Cat Packer, vice chair of Cannabis Regulators of Color Coalition (CRCC) and director of drug markets and legal regulation at the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), said in testimony to the committee.

Keep reading

CONGRESS IS PUSHING REVOLUTIONARY RESEARCH ON PSYCHEDELIC TREATMENTS FOR THE MILITARY

CONGRESS IS ON track to approve legislation that would mark a significant advance in U.S. policy toward psychedelics. 

Tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 is a provision to fund clinical trials using psychedelic substances to treat active duty members of the military.

Section 723 of the NDAA directs the secretary of defense to partner with a federal or state government agency, or an academic institution, to carry out the research. The bill would fund the treatment of members of the military with post-traumatic stress or a traumatic brain injury with a number of psychedelic substances, including MDMA, psilocybin, ibogaine, DMT, and other plant-based alternative therapies (such as ayahuasca).

Research surrounding psychedelics as a possible treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder have slowly grown, and recent studies have shown promising results, with patients benefiting from even just a few treatments including MDMA and psilocybin. Already, the Food and Drug Administration has designated both treatments as “breakthrough therapies”: a special designation given to expedite the research and development into drugs with the potential to treat serious conditions. On Tuesday, MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, which focuses on psychedelic treatments for mental health issues, submitted a new drug application to the FDA for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. The company says it’s the first such submission for any psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Keep reading