Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Nevada Commission Seeks Comment On Plan To Let People With Marijuana Convictions Become Police Officers

A Nevada commission will hear public comment this week on a proposal that would amend hiring standards for police officers to allow job candidates who were previously disqualified for certain marijuana-related offenses to be eligible for law enforcement positions.

The change being considered by the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) at Thursday meeting would amend regulations around hiring that currently prevent a person from becoming a peace officer if they have been convicted of an offense involving the unlawful use, sale or possession of a controlled substance.

The new language would state that the restriction doesn’t apply “to a person who has been convicted of an offense involving the unlawful use, sale, or possession of marijuana if the offense is not unlawful at the time the person submits an application for certification as a police officer.”

A notice of intent says the change would expand the pool of eligible candidates for law enforcement positions and “aid agencies in the ability to fill much needed positions.” There would be no adverse effects from the change, it says, nor additional costs to regulators.

Members of the public wishing to comment on the proposal can either appear in person at the October 26 meeting, held at 8 a.m. in Napa Room B of the Southpoint Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Approval of the change would not mean that officers could use cannabis once employed, but it would represent a significant policy change, especially given that the current rules are written in a way that explicitly emphasizes the no-tolerance policy for marijuana.

“As with any psychoactive drug, POST strongly believes there is no room for marijuana usage in the policing profession,” the current administration manual says. “POST strongly encourages law enforcement agencies across the state to adopted [sic] policies prohibiting the on or off duty recreational or medical use of marijuana.”

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Eureka, CA Decriminalizes Psychedelic Plant Medicines

Eureka, CA, has passed a resolution decriminalizing entheogens and psychedelic plant medicines, making it the sixth California city to do so and the second such city in Humboldt County.

The Eureka City Council unanimously approved an initiative last week to decriminalize plant medicines such as psilocybin mushrooms within city limits. The announcement came less than two weeks after CA Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed an initiative which would have decriminalized psychedelics statewide. The City of Arcata, just a few miles to the north, voted to decriminalize in 2021 thanks to efforts by a group who also provided the language used in the Eureka resolution, Decriminalize Nature Humboldt.

According to an article in the Lost Coast Outpost, the resolution was passed without much trouble from the council, though a particular phrase was removed from the language of the bill. The council voted to remove language which seemed to endorse entheogenic plants’ ability to “catalyze profound experiences of personal and spiritual growth.” Not for nothing, but one of recently deceased Johns Hopkins professor Roland Griffiths’ first studies on psilocybin in 2006 was on psilocybin’s ability to induce mystical and spiritual experiences in the user. Much of Griffiths’ later work at Johns Hopkins has been referenced in similar legislative discussions surrounding the legality of psychedelics.

Other than the removal of the aforementioned phrase, the resolution was passed without much protest from the rest of the council members.There were some concerns voiced by local law enforcement representatives, mirroring Gov. Newsom’s concerns about potentially unforeseen consequences to the resolution. City Manager Miles Slattery, however, pointed out that he had consulted with the Arcata Police Department who reported no serious issues to him after just over two years of psychedelic decriminalization. He also pointed out that the City of Eureka only saw five cases of arrests related to entheogens in the previous year and almost every case was related to something more serious such as domestic violence. 

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President Trump Freed Drug Offenders. Candidate Trump Wants To Kill Them.

Donald Trump can’t seem to decide whether he wants to execute drug dealers or free them from prison. The former president’s debate with himself reflects a broader clash between Republicans who think harsher criminal penalties are always better and Republicans who understand that justice requires proportionality.

Trump has long admired brutal drug warriors like Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines. Consistent with that affinity, he has repeatedly floated the idea of imposing the death penalty on drug traffickers.

Trump returned to that theme in November 2022, when he officially launched his 2024 presidential campaign. “We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” he said.

Trump reiterated that position during a June 2023 interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier, saying, “That’s the only way you’re going to stop it.” But as Baier pointed out, a policy of executing “everyone who sells drugs” is inconsistent with Trump’s record as president, which included sentencing reforms and acts of clemency aimed at reducing drug penalties that Trump described as “very unfair.”

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New York Officials Debunk ‘Misinformation’ About Fentanyl-Laced Marijuana

New York marijuana regulators are working to debunk what they say is the “false” narrative that cannabis is commonly contaminated with fentanyl—a “misconception” that remains “widespread” despite a lack of evidence.

The state Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) recently put out a factsheet on the issue, acknowledging that while fentanyl has been found in drugs like MDMA and heroin, anecdotal claims about marijuana laced with the potent opioid are so far unfounded.

OCM published the two-page document—titled “Cannabis and Fentanyl: Facts and Unknowns”—to “address misconceptions about cannabis being mixed with fentanyl,” it said. “The goal of this fact sheet is to provide evidence where it is available, to share information about what is currently known and unknown, and to provide safety tips to help alleviate some of these misconceptions, often spread through misinformed media coverage and anecdotal reporting.”

“Misinformation related to the danger of accidental overdose due to cannabis ‘contaminated’ with fentanyl remains widespread,” the office said. “Anecdotal reports of fentanyl ‘contaminated’ cannabis continue to be found to be false, as of the date of this publication” last week.

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Ohio Ballot Measure To Legalize Marijuana Won’t Automatically Expunge Prior Convictions

Legalizing marijuana in Ohio under Issue 2 would not lead to the automatic expungement for those charged with cannabis offenses.

But the tax revenue from legalizing cannabis could address some criminal justice reform through the social equity and jobs program fund, said Tom Haren, spokesperson for the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol.

“That fund—in addition to the direct investment to disproportionately impacted communities—is designed to fund and steady criminal justice reform efforts including sentencing reform, bail reform, parole reform, record-sealing and expungement efforts,” he said.

Issue 2 is a citizen-initiative that would legalize and regulate the cultivation, manufacturing, testing and the sale of marijuana to Ohioans 21 and up.

“Citizen initiatives are limited to a single subject which makes it difficult to address lots of different things,” Haren said. “We had to be really careful around how Issue 2 was tailored.”

Under Issue 2, Ohioans could buy and possess 2.5 ounces of cannabis flower, which is slightly more than 70 grams. Currently, possessing up to 100 grams of marijuana is a minor misdemeanor that comes with a fine up to $150.

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Here’s Where All Nine House Speaker Candidates Stand On Marijuana

As the U.S. House of Representatives enters its third week without a speaker, more GOP lawmakers with varying records on marijuana policy are making their bids for the nomination—including a member who has been arrested for cannabis and another who co-chairs a congressional psychedelics caucus.

Most of the candidates in the leadership race have voted in favor of cannabis banking reform, even if they’ve been unsupportive of broader legalization.

After Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was ousted as speaker in a historic motion to vacate earlier this month—and the former conference nominees for the position, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), bowed out after failing to win a majority of votes on the House floor—the current cast of candidates includes nine Republican members who hope to receive their party’s nod before a potential floor vote this week.

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Canada Will Legalize Medically Assisted Dying For People Addicted to Drugs

Canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people who are addicted to drugs next spring, in a move some drug users and activists are calling “eugenics.” 

The country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) law, which first came into effect in 2016, will be expanded next March to give access to people whose sole medical condition is mental illness, which can include substance use disorders. Before the changes take place, however, a special parliamentary committee on MAID will regroup to scrutinize the rollout of the new regulations, according to the Toronto Star. 

Currently, people are eligible for MAID if they have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”, such as a serious illness or disability, that has put them in an advanced state of irreversible decline and caused enduring physical or psychological suffering—excluding mental illness. Anyone who receives MAID must also go through two assessments from independent health care providers, among meeting other criteria. 

The contentious idea of including people who are addicted to drugs is being discussed this week at a conference for the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine in Victoria, British Columbia.  

“I don’t think it’s fair, and the government doesn’t think it’s fair, to exclude people from eligibility because their medical disorder or their suffering is related to a mental illness,” said Dr. David Martell, physician lead for Addictions Medicine at Nova Scotia Health, who is presenting a framework for assessing people with substance use disorders for MAID at the conference.  “As a subset of that, it’s not fair to exclude people from eligibility purely because their mental disorder might either partly or in full be a substance use disorder. It has to do with treating people equally.” 

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How Iron-Clad Is the Iron Law of Prohibition?

IN LATE MAY 2023, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Edward Sisco opened a package of swabs taken from used syringes and empty bags. Sisco, a research chemist, ran the samples through a mass spectrometer, a device about the size of a washing machine, and got back a chemical profile.

Sisco receives these swabs from needle exchanges in Maryland and four other states, to track what drugs people are using. Those drugs range from illicitly manufactured fentanyl, an opioid that has largely replaced heroin; benzodiazepines, a class of drugs used to treat anxiety; and 20 different cutting agents and adulterants, such as caffeine, quinine, and mannitol. The surveillance system, which the federal agency piloted in October 2021, also frequently turn up drugs that are contaminating the illicit drug supply in the U.S. Among these are xylazine, a veterinary sedative that goes by the street name tranq, short for tranquilizer; clickbait headlines sometimes refer to xylazine as a “zombie drug” because it causes necrotizing wounds, skin ulcers and knocks people out. Last year, Sisco found another animal tranquilizer, medetomidine, in a small percentage of samples. Xylazine has never been approved for use in humans, and neither sedative is a typical opioid, which complicates the use of antidotes, such as naloxone, to reverse overdoses.

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In Plane Sight: Drug agents searching passengers for cash at airport gates

That passenger standing next to you at the departure gate may actually be a plain-clothes drug agent.

Atlanta News First Investigates recently tailed U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) task force officers as they walked, otherwise unnoticed, from gate to gate at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. We watched them search passengers right after they scanned their boarding passes.

“He just approached me, and he asked me for my ID,” film director Tabari Sturdivant said. “He didn’t state who he was. He just asked me for ID, and I thought he was a Delta agent. He had airport credentials on, and so I gave it to him immediately.”

Sturdivant was flying to Los Angeles for a film project last year when he was approached by the DEA task force officers. They searched his bag in front of the other passengers boarding the flight, according to video recorded by an onlooker.

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Colorado Marijuana Retailers Have 99% Compliance Rate In Underage Sales Checks, State Regulators Say

Colorado marijuana regulators announced this week that out of 285 underage sales checks conducted at state-licensed cannabis stores this year, there have been only four failures—a compliance rate of about 99 percent.

“While any failure is unacceptable,” the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) said in the latest issue of its quarterly In the Weeds newsletter on Monday, “we’re pleased to report this very high compliance rate which is on par with the compliance percentage from 2022.”

Records from the state’s underage sales dashboard show an underage sales check compliance rate of 99 percent in 2022, which was a record high. Compliance rates were 95 percent in 2021, 97 percent in 2020 and 2019, 92 percent in 2018, 95 percent in 2017 and 94 percent in 2016.

“MED’s priority is protecting public health and safety, and nothing is more important than preventing youth access to regulated marijuana,” the agency said in the email. “While the data continually shows us that minors are overwhelmingly not getting marijuana from regulated stores, underage sales checks of licensed stores are a vital tool to keep it that way.”

Records of individual sales checks are listed on the MED dashboard, but none from 2023 are currently included. A Department of Revenue representative told Marijuana Moment that’s because “entries only appear in the dashboard once the administrative action has reached a final disposition,” which can take anywhere from a few months to more than a year after the initial violation.

Colorado requires that people show ID before they enter a Colorado cannabis shop and before making a purchase. MED has said retailers should also be aware of actions they must take if they suspect an employee is violating the rules or if a person presents fraudulent identification.

Colorado also has a training and certification program from dispensaries to receive a “Responsible Vendor” designation, which is meant to encourage compliance and also promote consumer transparency.

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