Terence McKenna on drugs…
Tag: the war on (some) drugs
Prohibitionist Group Narcs On Wells Fargo And Maryland Officials Over Accounting Of Marijuana Tax Revenue
An anti-marijuana advocacy group is taking aim at a banking arrangement between Wells Fargo and the state of Maryland that allows officials to receive and process tax revenue generated by state-legal cannabis businesses, calling the scheme “an active effort to protect the banks who are breaking federal law” and making an attempt to alert federal officials about it.
The state, for its part, has said it “complies with applicable laws and regulations.”
Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), which opposes marijuana legalization, made the allegations in a press release late last month following media reports of the banking arrangement, including in Marijuana Moment.
The also group sent an open letter to Maryland officials and Wells Fargo, while CCing several federal officials, requesting that “Wells Fargo cease working with Maryland state officials to circumvent federal laws and regulations.”
“The workaround by the Maryland government reported on in the media is a clear attempt to protect banks from thoughtfully crafted federal regulations,” the prohibitionist group’s letter says.
Among those copied on the letter are Erek L. Barron, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, whose office would oversee any potential federal prosecutions in the state, as well as Attorney General Merrick Garland and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Rescheduling Marijuana Would Leave Federal Prohibition Essentially Untouched
For half a century, reformers have been urging the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reclassify marijuana, which since 1970 has been assigned to Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the law’s most restrictive category. Although the DEA has always rejected that proposal, it could change course in light of a recent recommendation from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Last week, HHS recommended that the DEA move marijuana from Schedule I, which includes illegal drugs such as heroin, LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA, to Schedule III, which includes prescription medications such as anabolic steroids and Tylenol with codeine. Although that reclassification would facilitate medical research and indirectly benefit state-licensed marijuana businesses, it would leave federal prohibition essentially untouched.
Schedule I supposedly is reserved for drugs with “a high potential for abuse” that have no recognized medical applications and are so dangerous that they cannot be used safely even under a doctor’s supervision. Marijuana’s Schedule I status never made much sense, and the justification for that designation has become steadily weaker over the years.
Back in 1985, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Marinol—a synthetic version of THC, marijuana’s main active ingredient—as a treatment for nausea and vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy. The FDA later extended that approval to AIDS wasting syndrome, and five years ago it approved Epidiolex, which contains cannabis-derived CBD, as a treatment for two forms of severe, drug-resistant epilepsy.
Research indicates that marijuana is effective at relieving various symptoms, including neuropathic pain and muscle spasms as well as nausea and epileptic seizures. Based on such findings, 38 states allow medical use of cannabis.
Prison officer Joanne Hunter who sent X-rated photos to inmate she was having affair with and smuggled cannabis and mobile phone into his cell is jailed for three years
A former prison officer has been jailed for three years for having an inappropriate relationship with an inmate.
Joanne Hunter, 28, conducted the relationship with Connor Willis while working at HMP Forest Bank in Salford.
Hunter – described as ‘naive’ and ‘vulnerable’ in court – believed Willis was ‘in love’ with her and agreed to smuggle packages, including cannabis, into the prison for him. She also sent him explicit photographs, which were later found on her phone.
Manchester Crown Court heard how Hunter, who has a master’s degree in Childhood and Youth studies, began working at the prison in December 2018.
In December 2020, prison authorities received information that she was taking items inside and when she was interviewed by security managers she admitted having a relationship with Willis.
Rachel Widdicombe, prosecuting, told the court how Hunter had agreed smuggle packages into the prison for Willis, one containing a juice carton and another coating a Red Bull can.
Hunter received the packages from an unnamed woman after meeting her at a Tesco supermarket, the court heard. She then smuggled them inside the prison before passing them on to another prisoner – whom she knew as a ‘big player’ and member of crime gang – for Willis. Willis offered to pay her £200-300 for each package, but she refused to take the money.
GOP Congressman Worries That Moving Marijuana To Schedule III Could ‘Allow Big Pharma To Control It’
A Republican congressman says he’s concerned that if the federal government doesn’t “go further” than simply moving marijuana to a lower drug schedule—as the top health agency has recommended—large pharmaceutical companies might be able to overtake the cannabis industry.
On Monday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filled in for a Newsmax host and led a segment that featured attorney John Morgan, who spent millions to put a successful medical cannabis initiative on the ballot in Florida. The two discussed recent reporting that the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) is advising the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
Morgan criticized the status quo that currently lists marijuana in the same schedule as drugs like heroin, and he accused the alcohol and pharmaceutical industries of wanting to block research into cannabis because such studies could support the idea of substituting marijuana for the more dangerous drugs that they market.
“Well, I totally concur with the assessment that marijuana reform is often blocked by Big Pharma because they want the opportunity to control it,” Gaetz, who also pressed the DEA administrator on the status of the scheduling review last month, said. “My concern is that if we don’t go any further than moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, that could potentially allow Big Pharma to control it.”
The congressman also suggested that the Biden administration may have been moved to recommend rescheduling after seeing research showing that legalization is associated with reduced opioid-related hospitalizations and lower rates of child foster case cases due to substance misuse. And he then asked Morgan if he felt the HHS Schedule III recommendation is “sufficient.”
Despite certain concerns about a potential power grab by the pharmaceutical industry if marijuana is rescheduled, Morgan said that it represents “a step in the right direction,” echoing recent remarks made my numerous congressional lawmakers who back marijuana reform. “It has to happen,” he said.
What Rescheduling Marijuana Would and Wouldn’t Do
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week recommended that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) move marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the most restrictive category, to Schedule III, where it would join medications such as Tylenol with codeine, buprenorphine, and anabolic steroids. The DEA has the final say on rescheduling decisions, and it is not clear whether it will agree with HHS, especially given its longstanding opposition to reclassifying marijuana, or how long it might take to decide. But if cannabis is eventually moved to Schedule III, that change would signal a new understanding of the drug’s risks and benefits. It also would facilitate cannabis research, and it would have important tax implications for state-licensed marijuana businesses. At the same time, it would leave federal marijuana prohibition essentially untouched.
The HHS recommendation is a product of the regulatory review that President Joe Biden ordered last October, when he also announced a mass pardon for people convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law. At the time, Biden said “it makes no sense” to “classify marijuana at the same level as heroin,” and HHS evidently agrees. That category, which also includes psychoactive substances such as LSD, psilocybin, peyote, MDMA, and methaqualone, supposedly is reserved for drugs with a “high potential for abuse” that have no recognized medical use and cannot be used safely even under a doctor’s supervision.
Abuse potential is in the eye of the beholder. As the DEA tautologically sees it, any use of a prohibited drug is “abuse” by definition. But the notion that marijuana is so dangerous that it cannot be safely used “under medical supervision” is pretty perplexing, given that its side effects compare favorably to those of many prescription drugs. The idea that marijuana has “no currently accepted medical use in the United States” likewise is hard to reconcile with reality.
USDA Releases New Hemp Handbook As Agency Works To Rebuild A Post-Prohibition Seed Bank
As the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) works to rebuild a government seed bank for hemp that was destroyed during prohibition, the agency is issuing updated guidance on how to identify, describe and evaluate different varieties of the plant.
USDA’s latest version of its Hemp Descriptor and Phenotyping Handbook, released earlier this summer, is the agency’s deepest dive yet into the different forms and qualities of hemp. Intended to help researchers better differentiate between hemp varieties, the new document includes all sorts of details on the morphology, yield, cannabinoid content, oil production, seed viability, fiber quality, pathogen resistance and various other traits.
The eventual goal is to allow users of the genetic repository, including hemp scientists and breeders, to more fully understand the range of hemp varieties and and select them for various applications.
As USDA puts it, “Robust, reliable and high-dimensional data generated from these phenotyping efforts will empower conservation of hemp genetic diversity and aid selection of materials with unique trait combinations for breeding programs.”
Rescheduling Won’t End The War On Cannabis, But Could Open A New Battlefront If We’re Not Careful
Contrary to decades of reefer madness propagated by our federal government, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now admits that marijuana does have accepted medical use. However, reports of the death of cannabis prohibition are exaggerated. No doubt, the conclusion of FDA’s scientific review of marijuana’s current Schedule I status is a welcome milestone in federal cannabis policy.
But while the Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) August 29, 2023 recommendation to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reschedule marijuana based on FDA’s review will finally bring relief from the federal gross receipts tax levied on struggling state-licensed cannabis businesses, it also underscores the urgent need to both (1) continue pressing forward on descheduling efforts before critical momentum evaporates and certain industry stakeholders effectively settle for rescheduling without full decriminalization, and (2) demand that marijuana be exempted from existing categories of FDA-regulated products to preserve state medical and adult use cannabis markets.
Before proceeding, it’s important to remember that rescheduling would not apply the federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) to marijuana for the first time—it applies right now, and like the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), would continue to apply after rescheduling. But absent any statutory authority permitting FDA to do otherwise, the FDCA would continue to apply after descheduling too, just as it does to hemp products. I previously noted this in “Cannabis Cannibalism: How Federal Rescheduling Could Consume the State-Licensed Industry Without Safe Harbors Under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act,” available here.
However, moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III will shift enforcement priorities (and the incentives to vigorously pursue these priorities) at both DEA and FDA. Indeed this has been the experience after the CSA’s prohibitions on hemp were relaxed beginning with the 2014 Farm Bill, and then scrapped under the 2018 Farm Bill which descheduled hemp by carving it out of the federal CSA’s definitions of “marijuana” and “THC.” Soon after, purveyors of hemp CBD products began receiving FDA cease-and-desist letters citing prohibited product claims and numerous grounds under the FDCA for prohibiting the interstate commerce in such cannabis products.
Marijuana Is the Sixth Biggest Cash Crop In The US
According to the Leafly Cannabis Harvest Report 2022, marijuana was the sixth most valuable wholesale crop in the United States last year at a $5 billion worth, trailing only corn, soybeans, hay, wheat and cotton.
The calculation includes only crops in states where state-sanctioned sales of legal weed are already up and running and exclude production in medical marijuana-only states.
Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports that 2022 saw a cannabis harvest of 2,834 metric tons, up 24 percent from 2021.
GOP Congressman’s Bill Would Cut Federal Funding For States And Tribes That Legalize Marijuana
Legislation introduced on Friday by a North Carolina congressman seeks to slash a portion of federal funding to individual U.S. states as well as Native tribes that legalize marijuana.
The so-called Stop Pot Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), would withhold 10 percent of federal highway funding to jurisdictions “in which the purchase or public possession of marijuana for recreational purposes is lawful.” Introduction of the bill comes less than a week before a tribe in Edwards’s home state votes on an adult-use marijuana legalization referendum.
Edwards argues that state and tribal laws allowing cannabis use by adults are an affront to U.S. law.
“The laws of any government should not infringe on the overall laws of our nation, and federal funds should not be awarded to jurisdictions that willfully ignore federal law,” he said in a press release. “During a time when our communities are seeing unprecedented crime, drug addiction, and mental illness, the Stop Pot Act will help prevent even greater access to drugs and ease the strain placed on our local law enforcement and mental health professionals who are already stretched thin.”
Hellbound and Down 
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