Tag: the war on (some) drugs

MDMA: Australia begins world-first psychedelic therapy

Earlier this year, researchers raised eyebrows when Australia’s traditionally conservative medicines regulator approved the use of psychedelics to assist therapy sessions.

The decision will see psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, used for treatment-resistant depression. It will also allow MDMA, known as ecstasy in tablet form, for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The changes come into effect on Saturday, making Australia the first country to classify psychedelics as medicines at a national level.

While initial access to the drugs will be limited and costly, many experts and patients are hailing it as a landmark moment.

But major health organisations have also urged caution.

Marjane Beaugeois was diagnosed with severe depression in 2017. “Within two months, I lost my mother, grandmother, beloved pet dog and my romantic relationship,” she recalls.

She couldn’t eat, shower, or leave her house in Melbourne – but says prescription antidepressants left her “zombie-like, unable to cry, self-soothe or feel better”.

“I’d still go to bed praying not to wake up,” the 49-year-old says.

When her research for alternative therapies led her to a psilocybin clinic in Amsterdam, she was hesitant.

“I have no history of drug or alcohol use. As an addiction counsellor, I was always very against it,” she says.

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Pilgrims Are Flocking to This Psychedelic Temple

UPSTATE NEW YORK has been the birthplace of many Great Awakenings. In the 1820s, religious fervor so swept the region it became known as “the burned-over district.” In the 1960s, Timothy Leary’s commune in Millbrook became ground control for the East Coast psychedelic movement. “By the time we got to Woodstock,” sang Joni Mitchell, “we were half a million strong.”

More than five decades after Woodstock, in Wappinger Falls, Alex Grey and his wife, Allyson Grey, are trying to use art to get back to the garden. Under the full June moon earlier this month, the Greys opened the bronze, 700-pound doors of Entheon, a temple-museum hybrid dedicated to advancing visionary art, and a message of ecological unity. 

“Humanity’s materialistic worldview must transition to a sacred view of oneness with the environment and cosmos,” Alex tells me after the celebration where soap heir David Bronner, who funded part of the museum, billowed about in his purple robes like a psychedelic Medici. It is a message Americans heard before — in the indigenous language of animacy, and in the prose of Alan Watts, who wrote that the individual is not, contrary to our common perception, a separate “ego inside a bag of skin,” but more like a wave coming out of the ocean. 

As psychedelics return from the outlaw regions of the culture, arriving alongside the climate crisis, the gospel of interconnectedness is spreading again, this time through the mycelial tendrils of the internet. Alex Grey, demure and snowy-haired at age 69, is not entirely sure why he has become such a popular progenitor, but he nevertheless has: On Instagram, he is one of the most famous living visual artists in the country, with 1.4 million followers — more than Jeff Koons and Yayoi Kusama combined. 

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A Neurosurgeon Compares His Near-Death Experience With Smoking Psychedelic Toad Slime

Few neuroscientists can claim to have probed the outer limits of human consciousness to the same extent as Dr Eben Alexander. After contracting bacterial meningoencephalitis in 2008, the brain surgeon wrote a book describing his remarkable near-death experience (NDE) while in a coma. A decade later, he smoked the psychedelic venom of the Sonoran Desert toad, and has now provided a detailed comparison of the two life-changing events.

Introducing their interviewee, the authors of the new report explain that NDEs and psychedelic experiences often have “shared characteristics such as entering other worlds, meeting menacing or benevolent entities, experiencing synesthesia, perinatal regression, and lucid dreamlike properties.” However, they go on to say that no studies have ever compared the experience of dying with the effects of 5-MeO-DMT, the main psychoactive component in the secretions of certain hallucinogenic toads.

Finding a subject familiar with both experiences is no easy feat, and it’s unlikely there are many out there other than Alexander. Recording the neurosurgeon’s testimony, therefore, provided the researchers with a rare opportunity to analyze the “high level of comparability” between NDEs and smoking 5-MeO-DMT.

In particular, the authors say that both experiences are characterized by a sense of “ego dissolution” as well as “transcendence of time and space.” Regarding the former, Alexander explains that during his NDE, he found himself “in a position similar to that of someone with partial but beneficial amnesia. That is, a person who has forgotten some key aspect about him or herself, but who benefits from having forgotten it.”

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Bombing Mexican Cartels Won’t Stop Fentanyl

Americans continue to overdose on illicit fentanyl despite increased seizures of the drug coming north from Mexico. Several prominent Republicans are suggesting that the U.S. respond with wartime tools such as airstrikes and troop deployments. But combining the war on drugs with the war on terror is a surefire recipe for costly engagement abroad and little progress in reducing fentanyl-related harm at home.

During his presidency, The New York Times reported last year, Donald Trump expressed interest in using missiles to attack Mexican drug cartels and destroy their labs. Reps. Mike Waltz (R–Fla.) and Dan Crenshaw (R–Texas) helped revive that idea in January, when they introduced a joint resolution that would authorize the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against “foreign nations, foreign organizations, or foreign persons” involved in fentanyl production or trafficking.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) argues that the military should “go after these organizations wherever they exist.” Several GOP presidential hopefuls, including former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, have echoed that sentiment.

There is little reason to believe these strikes would be as precise or effective as proponents claim. “Even a campaign of air strikes against cartels could easily escalate,” says Benjamin H. Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities. “Cartels could retaliate,” he notes, and “strikes are bound to fail to affect fentanyl shipments, let alone meaningfully damage cartels.”

Mexico hawks like Waltz say the U.S. has “done this before,” citing Plan Colombia, a Clinton-era counternarcotics and counterterrorism initiative. But “claiming that Plan Colombia was a success is just plain false,” says Javier Osorio, a professor of political science at the University of Arizona whose research focuses on criminal violence in Latin America.

When the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) “demobilized after the peace agreement in 2016,” Osorio says, coca cultivation “skyrocketed.” He notes that “it’s even higher than before the U.S. started conducting aerial eradications” of coca fields. A similar counternarcotics program in Mexico, the Mérida Initiative, has been “a total disaster,” Osorio says: It has not stopped drug trafficking, and years after the initiative began, Mexico’s top law enforcement official was still “in bed” with the Sinaloa cartel.

The war on drugs has helped turn Latin America into the most violent region in the world, leading to increased black market activity and corruption. “If airstrikes miraculously kill off a cartel, another will fill the gap,” Friedman says, “likely with considerable violence between criminals as the market shifts.” According to Osorio, “There’s always going to be someone willing to kill and die for supplying drugs when there’s such a huge market.”

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FDA creates path for psychedelic drug trials

Federal regulators are laying out guidance for psychedelic drug trials for the first time, in a move that could encourage the mainstreaming of substances like magic mushrooms and LSD as behavioral health treatments.

Why it matters: Psychedelics are turning into a multi-billion industry and gaining widespread acceptance after decades of concerns about recreational use of the products — and the high risk for misuse. But research to date has largely been backed by private sponsors.

Driving the news: The Food and Drug Administration on Friday released first-ever draft guidance outlining considerations — including trial conduct, data collection and subject safety — for researchers looking into psychedelic treatments for a variety of conditions, including PTSD, depression and anxiety.

  • The agency filed the 14-page document two days after a bipartisan coalition in Congress led by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) introduced legislation directing the issuance of clinical trial guidelines.
  • It also came as 10,000 attendees and hundreds of exhibitors converged on Denver for what was billed as the “largest psychedelic conference in history,” with guests ranging from New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers to National Institute of Mental Health director Joshua Gordon.

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Immigrants Can’t Naturalize if They Own a Marijuana Dispensary, Court Says

Running a state-legal marijuana dispensary is grounds to deny a legal resident’s application for U.S. citizenship, a federal appellate court ruled earlier this month.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Maria Elena Reimers’ application for naturalization could be denied because she operates a licensed marijuana business in Washington state. While her business is legal under Washington law, marijuana remains illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

The court affirmed that violating the CSA “categorically precludes her from qualifying for naturalization” since it demonstrates a lack of “good moral character.” The ruling rejected Reimers’ claim that she is treated differently than marijuana business owners who are U.S. citizens. Washington has licensed almost 500 marijuana dispensaries since legalizing recreational sales in 2012.

Reimers has no criminal record, yet in a letter announcing the denial of her naturalization application, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) described her as an “illicit trafficker of a controlled substance.”

“We have a legal business and pay taxes, tons of taxes to the government. And yet they say I’m not morally fit to be a citizen,” Reimers tells Reason.

Reimers immigrated legally to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2004 with her now-husband Rick, who was born in the United States. Rick started Cannarail Station, a recreational dispensary in Ephrata, Washington, in 2014. Reimers submitted her naturalization application in May 2017, fully disclosing her involvement with the business.

After her initial interview in August 2017, Reimers says she passed the naturalization test and was scheduled for an oath ceremony. Then USCIS changed her application to pending. In June 2018, she appeared for a second interview, where immigration officers extensively questioned her about the business. Reimers testified honestly that she was a co-owner and employee of Cannarail Station.

In July 2018, Reimers received a denial letter from USCIS. In May 2019 she had an appeal hearing with USCIS, but a year later they reaffirmed the decision. Reimers filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington in December 2020, which granted summary judgment to USCIS in February 2022 solely on the basis of her marijuana business. She appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit, which heard the case in April 2023.

Her attorney, Alycia Moss, tells Reason, “She’s qualified in every other way. The only denial reason was based on lack of ‘good moral character.'”

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Ron DeSantis Says He Would Not Decriminalize Marijuana If Elected President

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, said he would not federally decriminalize marijuana if elected to the White House—arguing that cannabis use hurts the workforce, inhibits productivity and could even lead to death if contaminated.

At a campaign event in South Carolina on Thursday, a person who said they were representing wounded veterans asked DeSantis if he would “please” decriminalize cannabis as president.

The governor responded directly: “I don’t think we would do that.”

He then talked about Florida’s medical marijuana program that was enacted by voters, saying veterans are “actually allowed access” to cannabis under that model. But he said the issue is “controversial because obviously there’s some people that abuse it and are using it recreationally.”

DeSantis rattled off a number of concerns he has about cannabis use, starting with the potency of marijuana that “they’re putting on the street” and his understanding that illicit products are being laced with other drugs such as fentanyl.

“If you do something with that, it could be goodnight right then and there,” he said. “You could die just by ingesting that, so I think that that’s problematic.”

Experts and advocates have questioned law enforcement claims about the prevalence of fentanyl-tainted cannabis in the illicit market. In any case, DeSantis also didn’t acknowledge that creating a regulatory regime where marijuana is subject to testing before consumers can buy it could mitigate instances of contamination.

“I think that we have we have too many people using using drugs in this country right now. I think it hurts our workforce readiness. I think it hurts people’s ability to prosper in life,” he said, adding that people he knew in high school who used marijuana “suffered.”

“All their activities, all their grades and everything like that—so particularly for the youth, I just think we have to be united,” the candidate said. He also plugged a Florida program overseen by his wife that involves sending athletes to schools to warn students about “the stakes of using some of these drugs nowadays, and this is not something you want to mess around with.”

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Philadelphia Considers Zoning Restrictions on Still-Illegal Recreational Pot Shops

Recreational marijuana isn’t legal yet in Pennsylvania. That hasn’t stopped Philadelphia politicians from trying to future-proof their zoning ordinances to block recreational sales.

Philadelphia Councilmembers Brian O’Neill and Curtis Jones have proposed amendments to the city’s zoning code that would preemptively prohibit existing medical marijuana businesses in two overlay districts they represent from participating in recreational sales.

The prohibition would affect five existing medical marijuana stores, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported on the zoning amendments earlier today.

The immediate practical impacts of the amendments are minimal, given that recreational marijuana is still illegal in Pennsylvania. State lawmakers are nevertheless working on various proposals for legalizing recreational sales. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has endorsed legalizing (and heavily taxing) recreational sales.

Industry advocates say this will unfairly penalize existing medical marijuana businesses when recreational sales are eventually legalized, all because they opened up in the wrong part of town.

“If you set up a system where four or five stores can’t sell adult use and then 16 can, people are going to go to the ones” that can sell to recreational customers, says Jamie Ware, president of the Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition (a trade association).

Ware is also a senior vice president with Holistic Industries which operates one of the Philadelphia dispensaries that would be affected by O’Neill and Jones’ zoning amendment.

Existing businesses, she notes, are locked into longer-term commercial leases, so they can’t easily move to avoid the restrictions. If the current medical system is any guide to how future recreational businesses will be regulated, transferring a license to a new location would require state approval and could take years.

O’Neill did not immediately respond to Reason‘s request for comment. Jones told the Inquirer that while medical sales haven’t created problems, recreational sales will bring a less desirable crowd, necessitating the restrictions.

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SFO United Staff Accused of Stealing Marijuana From Checked Bags

A group of United Airlines employees stole marijuana from checked luggage at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) for years, according to federal prosecutors. The Justice Department charged two baggage handlers on June 9 with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance for their role in the alleged scheme.

The employees, Joel Lamont Dunn and Adrian Webb, allegedly enlisted at least three other airport workers to help them snatch the cannabis, load it into 15-20 gallon trash bags and then put it in their personal vehicles, according to court filings.

The attorneys for Dunn and Webb did not reply to requests for comment by publication time.

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Perceived Stigma of Cannabis Patients

A June 2022 study entitled “Perceived Stigma of Patients Undergoing Treatment with Cannabis-Based Medicinal Products” that was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health explored the potential impact of stigma on medical cannabis patients.

The study’s authors noted that “it is well documented that stigma can reduce utilization of healthcare services and can negatively impact treatment.” They reported that stigma can also lead to chronic stress and anxiety, “in addition to subsequent mental and physical problems that can cause individuals to feel isolated and withdrawn.”

Perceived Stigma of Cannabis Patients. “While there is a growing body of evidence on the associated effects of cannabis-based medicinal products on health-related quality of life in several health conditions, there is a paucity of knowledge on the prevalence and subsequent effects of stigma on current and prospective patients” in the United Kingdom, reported the study.

The study observed that “evidence from countries which have greater experience with medical cannabis therapies shows stigma to be a factor in both prescribing practice and patient perception.”

The study observed that “evidence from countries which have greater experience with medical cannabis therapies shows stigma to be a factor in both prescribing practice and patient perception.” Interviews of Canadian patients revealed that the most common sources of stigma were “health care providers, law enforcement, and close relatives.”

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