Tag: the war on (some) drugs

New York Legalized Marijuana, but a Legal Typo Is Hindering Implementation

The cannabis legalization bill that New York enacted in 2021 included a provision that was supposed to help people convicted of marijuana felonies by downgrading their records in line with current law. But a typographical error made that relief harder to obtain than legislators promised.

The section of the law dealing with prior marijuana convictions describes two situations. Paragraph 2(a)(i) refers to a person convicted of a marijuana offense that “would not have been a crime” had the 2021 changes been in effect. Paragraph 2(a)(ii) refers to a person who “would have been guilty of a lesser or potentially less onerous offense” under current law.

Paragraph 2(b) says a court that receives a petition from someone convicted of a marijuana offense that no longer exists “shall….grant the motion to vacate such conviction.” It adds that a court “may substitute, unless it is not in the interests of justice to do so, a conviction for an appropriate lesser offense” when “the petition meets the criteria in subparagraph (i) of paragraph (a).”

Whoops. That clearly should have been “the criteria in subparagraph (ii) of paragraph (a),” since it makes no sense to substitute “a conviction for an appropriate lesser offense” when no such offense exists. Because of that mistake, people with marijuana felony convictions cannot use the streamlined relief process the law was supposed to provide.

Under prior law, someone caught with eight ounces to a pound of marijuana was guilty of a felony. Under current law, possessing that amount in public is a violation punishable by a maximum fine of $250, while possessing five pounds or less at home is legal. Public possession of one to five pounds, which used to be a felony, is now a misdemeanor.

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Lawmakers Argue that Weed Must Be Kept Illegal to Protect the Jobs of Police Dogs—Seriously

 In a stunning display of misplaced priorities, some Minnesota politicians appear to be more concerned about the jobs of drug-sniffing dogs than the lives of humans impacted by cannabis prohibition. As the push for cannabis legalization in Minnesota gains momentum, it seems the well-being of these K-9s has somehow become a primary argument against it.

Minnesota’s House of Representatives recently passed a bill to legalize non-medical marijuana for individuals 21 and older, with a vote of 71-59. However, Republican state Rep. Brian Johnson voiced his concern over the costs associated with retiring police dogs trained to sniff out cannabis. Apparently, the default state of unemployment for dogs is a problem that should hold priority over human freedom and well-being.

“I did not see anything reading through the bill dealing with our K-9 units,” Johnson said. “Can you tell me how much money is in this bill to help defer the cost to our counties and police departments for the cost of the retirement of the dogs?”

This K-9-centric mindset isn’t new. Minnesota State Sen. John Jasinski, also a Republican, previously raised the “police dog discussion” during a committee hearing, lamenting the “thousands and thousands of dollars” spent on training these furry narcs, who will now have to retire due to cannabis legalization.

It’s worth noting that the legal cannabis industry has already created hundreds of thousands of jobs for humans. Yet, it seems the careers of drug-sniffing dogs are held in higher regard by some politicians.

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Oregon Licenses First Psilocybin Lab, But Treatment Access Remains Stalled

On April 21, Portland-based Rose City Laboratories, LLC (RCL) announced that it had been licensed by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to test psilocybin products for the state’s therapeutic centers. It’s the first lab to receive the required OHA license, but psilocybin treatment still can’t move forward.

In January, OHA opened its licensing applications for labs vying to test state-regulated psilocybin products, along with the manufacturers that will produce those products, the service centers where they’ll be consumed and the “trip facilitators” who will supervise the treatment sessions.

At publication time, OHA had not yet licensed any service centers. Meanwhile, only three manufacturers and four facilitators have so far received licenses. OHA is still expecting the first service centers to open their doors in 2023, but it’s not yet clear how widespread access will be at that time.

RCL will test psilocybin products for the two benchmarks of a regulated drug supply: potency and purity.

RCL began operating in 2012 and has been primarily known for testing cannabis. It began working toward psilocybin testing services in 2020, in anticipation of Measure 109—which legalized therapeutic psilocybin use at licensed service centers—being approved later that year. In January 2023, received Oregon’s first psilocybin lab accreditation, making it legally eligible for the OHA license it has now received.

Licensed manufacturers can formulate psilocybin as extracts, edibles or just the mushrooms themselves. Finished products are sent to RCL, which tests them for the two benchmarks of a regulated drug supply: potency and purity.

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Oregon’s Appetite for Psilocybin Is Being Fed Outside the Law in the Mushroom Underground

Three thousand five hundred dollars.

That’s how much it’s going to cost to swallow 4 grams of psilocybin mushrooms and undergo a six-hour therapy session at EPIC Healing Eugene—if and when the clinic gets its license to run a “psilocybin service center” and its owner, Cathy Jonas, gets her facilitator license after undergoing 300 hours of training and passing a state-mandated test.

Together, those two licenses will cost her $12,000 a year. On top of that, she must spend thousands on a security system, liability insurance, and a 375-pound safe. All in, Jonas estimates she’ll spend $60,000 to open her service center and, at $3,500 a session, she expects to barely break even. “They have really made this hard,” Jonas, 56, says.

Two and a half years ago, Oregon voters approved Measure 109, making Oregon the first state in the nation to legalize the supervised use of psilocybin mushrooms. But that freedom comes with fine print. The program requires users to trip only in the presence of a trained facilitator in a service center using psilocybin grown by state-approved manufacturers and tested by state-licensed labs.

All of that adds costs. The result is a price tag that’s going to astonish the fungi-curious. A single session—5 grams, six hours—will cost more than the median Oregonian’s biweekly take-home pay.

Still willing to pony up? Sorry, get in line. At press time, no service centers—the only places you’re allowed to take psilocybin legally—had been licensed by the Oregon Health Authority. Three manufacturers, one testing lab, and just four facilitators had been licensed as of April 25.

In other words, the ballot measure created an appetite that the regulated system seems unprepared to satisfy. The outcome? The legalization of psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon is spurring an expansion of the decades-old illegal market.

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Entire Warner Robins Narcotics Unit placed on leave over misconduct investigation

The Warner Robins Police Department has put its entire drug unit on administrative leave over an investigation into allegations of misconduct.

In a press release sent shortly before noon on Monday, the Houston County District Attorney said on the evening of April 11, they were notified of allegations involving members of the department’s Narcotics Investigation Unit.

The next day, the DA’s office began an investigation and notified Warner Robins Police Chief Roy Whitehead.

According to officials, Whitehead placed the department on administrative leave “out of caution” and no charges have been filed at this point in the investigation.

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Delaware Just Became the 22nd State To Legalize Recreational Marijuana

Delaware just became the 22nd state to legalize recreational marijuana. On Friday, Gov. John Carney, a Democrat, said he will allow two legalization bills to take effect without his signature, notwithstanding his continued concerns about the consequences of lifting Delaware’s ban on recreational use.

“After years of advocacy, collaboration, and grassroots organizing, we are thrilled to see cannabis legalization become a reality in our state,” Laura Sharer, executive director of the Delaware chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in a press release. “This victory is a result of the tireless work of thousands of volunteers, dozens of lawmakers, and with the support of a huge majority of our Delaware community. So many have championed this righteous cause and recognized the need for sensible cannabis policy reform.”

Delaware has allowed medical use of marijuana since 2011, and in 2015 legislators decriminalized possession of an ounce or less, making it a civil offense punishable by a $100 fine. Carney supports both of those policies but has previously resisted efforts to go further. Last year he vetoed recreational legalization. The Democrat-controlled Delaware General Assembly recently approved essentially the same legislation that Carney blocked last year, this time by larger margins, making it more likely that a veto would be overridden.

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UK university launches postgraduate course in clinical use of psychedelics

A UK university is launching one of the world’s first postgraduate qualifications on psychedelics to teach healthcare workers about using psilocybin, LSD, MDMA and other psychoactive drugs in therapeutic work.

The certificate from Exeter University cements psychedelics as an area of scientific importance in the UK. It could help pave the way for clinical therapies becoming available within the next five years, with some treatments being in the final stages of clinical trials.

This would follow Australia, which has become the first country to allow psychiatrists to prescribe psychedelics for treatment-resistant depression. In the US, MDMA may be licensed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder by the end of the year, and Oregon and Colorado are planning to legalise the regulated use of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic chemical found in magic mushrooms.

Celia Morgan, a professor of psychopharmacology at the University of Exeter and a co-lead of the programme, said: “As the world wakes up to the potential for psychedelics to be an important part of the toolkit to treat some of our most damaging mental health conditions, it’s vital that we’re training the workforce to meet the demand. The global body of high-quality evidence is now irrefutable – psychedelics can work where other treatments have failed.”

Noting that the main barriers to their use were legal and structural rather than medical, she added: “I think this shows how far we have come from the fear and stigma that dogged this field for years, a change which we also see reflected in leading universities around the world conducting gold-standard clinical trials.

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Helping veterans, battling opioid addiction driving magic mushroom legislation progress

Forty lawmakers, 36 Democrats and 4 Republicans, have co-sponsored a bill aiming to allow for the medical use of psilocybin and a psilocybin therapy grant program, which is currently sitting at the committee level of the Assembly, with its Senate version also in committee. The Assembly bill, A03581, was introduced by Democrat Pat Burke in February. There has been other legislation introduced regarding the hallucinogen as well, with Linda Rosenthal’s version legalizing the adult possession and use of hallucinogens like it.

Research has shown that psilocybin, an organic psychedelic compound, can benefit people with cluster headaches, depression, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome, ADHD and obsessive compulsive disorder, but it’s getting the most universal traction because of its impact on those suffering from PTSD.

“Psilocybin doesn’t have the huge appeal that marijuana had,” Democrat Assemblyman Phil Steck, who is the Assembly’s Chairman of the Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Committee, says. “But, there are definitely people who make a strong case for the proposition that it helps with PTSD. Certainly we want to do everything that we can to help people that are coming back from war, and if psilocybin has proven to do that, then it should be legal for that purpose.”

Johns Hopkins University has conducted several studies on psilocybin, saying it has substantial antidepressant effects, but needs to be administered under carefully controlled conditions through trained clinicians and therapists.

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Prohibition Gave Us Xylazine in Fentanyl. The Solution, Drug Warriors Say, Is More Prohibition.

The emergence of the animal tranquilizer xylazine as a fentanyl adulterant, like the emergence of fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute, has prompted law enforcement officials to agitate for new legal restrictions and criminal penalties. That response is fundamentally misguided, because the threat it aims to address is a familiar consequence of prohibition, which creates a black market in which drug composition is highly variable and unpredictable. Instead of recognizing their complicity in maintaining and magnifying that hazard, drug warriors always think the answer is more of the same.

Xylazine was first identified as a fentanyl adulterant in 2006, and today it is especially common in Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, Maryland, and Connecticut. In Philadelphia between 2010 and 2015, according to a 2021 BMJ article, xylazine was detected in less than 2 percent of drug-related deaths involving heroin and/or fentanyl. Its prevalence in such cases had risen to 31 percent by 2019. According to a 2022 Cureus report, “up to 78%” of illicit fentanyl sold in Puerto Rico and Philadelphia contains xylazine. In 2022, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports, xylazine was detected in 23 percent of fentanyl powder and 7 percent of fentanyl pills analyzed by its laboratories.

Xylazine is a sedative, analgesic, and muscle relaxant that is not approved for use in humans but is commonly used by veterinarians. It is chemically similar to phenothiazines, tricyclic antidepressants, and clonidine. But like fentanyl and other opioids, xylazine depresses respiration, so combining it with narcotics can increase the risk of a fatal reaction. Unlike a fentanyl overdose, a xylazine overdose cannot be reversed by the opioid antagonist naloxone.

Xylazine also seems to increase the risk of potentially serious skin infections and ulcers that have always been a hazard of unsanitary injection practices. According to a 2022 article in Dermatology World Insights and Inquiries, “the presumed mechanism” is “the direct vasoconstricting effect on local blood vessels and resultant decreased skin perfusion,” which impairs healing.

Why is xylazine showing up in fentanyl? For the same reasons fentanyl started showing up in heroin. As a 2014 literature review in Forensic Science International notes, “illicit drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, are often adulterated with other agents to increase bulk and enhance or mimic the illicit drug’s effects.” Because xylazine and heroin have “some similar pharmacologic effects,” the authors say, “synergistic effects may occur in humans when xylazine is use as an adulterant of heroin.”

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US could soon approve MDMA therapy — opening an era of psychedelic medicine

For Rick Doblin, 2023 could be a landmark year: the year that the US government decides whether it will allow the use of hallucinogenic drugs to treat mental illness.

Doblin, who is based in Belmont, Massachusetts, is the founder and president of the non-profit organization Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He has spent nearly 40 years researching whether the experience produced by the psychedelic drug MDMA — also called ecstasy or molly — can help people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In 2021, MAPS’s phase III clinical trial of 90 people with PTSD found that those who received MDMA coupled with psychotherapy were twice as likely to recover from the condition as were those who received psychotherapy with a placebo1 (see ‘Response to MDMA therapy’).

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