Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Major Association Of Corporations Including Coca-Cola, Nestlé And General Mills Urge Congress To Ban Intoxicating Hemp Products

A major trade association that counts among its members corporations such as Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kraft Heinz and Nestlé is putting pressure on Congress to ban intoxicating hemp products.

In a letter sent to House and Senate leadership, the Consumer Brands Association (CBA) said it wants to see the so-called “hemp loophole” of the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized the crop closed. And to that end, the organization backed appropriations language led by Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) to prohibit hemp products containing any quantifiable amount of THC.

The proliferation of intoxicating cannabinoid products—including those that contain synthesized delta-8 and delta-10 THC, for example—have “caused significant investigative and testing challenges, as well as unseen health and safety impacts,” CBA said in the September letter, as first reported by Cannabis Wire.

“This definition did not take into account the possibility for addition of various isomers (chemical variants with similar effects) of THC, and the possibility of intoxicating hemp-derived beverages, which can include more THC than ever intended,” it said. “Additionally, many products are deliberately marketed in ways that confuse consumers, featuring brightly colored packaging, cartoon imagery, and names that mimic candy or popular treats.”

Relatedly, CBA also advised Congress in 2022 to prevent the proliferation of marijuana-infused copycat products that mimic their well-known brands.

“Congress did not intend to create an unregulated market for intoxicating products that are not subject to Food and Drug Administration oversight. Two of the most prevalent isomers of THC, Delta-8 and Delta-10, have not had any FDA review,” the new letter says. “These products create risks for consumers who may falsely believe that they are reviewed and regulated for safety and purity.”

“As you consider finalizing FY 2026 appropriations, we encourage you to close this loophole and protect consumers,” CBA said.

Notably, the retail giant Target—which recently launch a pilot program selling hemp THC beverages at select locations in Minnesota—is also a member of CBA. Target’s decision came just weeks after the association sent out the letter to Congress on restricting such products from the marketplace.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan coalition of 39 state and territory attorneys general recently called on Congress to clarify the federal definition of hemp and impose regulations preventing the sale of intoxicating cannabinoid products.

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Nebraska Tribe Punches Back After State Officials Hint At Prosecuting People For Buying Marijuana On Its Reservation

A Native American tribe in Nebraska, as well as cannabis reform activists, are punching back against the governor and state attorney general over recent comments suggesting that people would be prosecuted if they buy marijuana from businesses on its reservation.

Gov. Jim Pillen (R) and Attorney General Mike Hilgers (R) both made controversial remarks about the tribe’s cannabis program this week amid negotiations over a compact on tax revenue from tobacco sales.

Hilgers said that people who buy marijuana under the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska’s planned legal market on its reservation within the state do so “at their own peril,” implying enforcement action against citizens for purchasing what he described as a “poison” if they take it beyond the territory’s borders.

In response, the tribe’s attorney general, John Cartier, put out a statement condemning the top state officials, emphasizing that the state “cannot dictate our internal licensing” and that “retaliation and misinformation do not serve patients or taxpayers.”

“We continue to act in good faith and are ready to work with the Governor to find agreement that benefits both parties, but we caution him: if he is relying solely on the Attorney General’s flawed interpretation of the law, personal crusades are clouding his legal judgment as they have before,” he said. “If the State continues to retaliate or attempts to block our lawful enterprise, we will defend our sovereignty through all available means.”

Cartier said the notion that the tribe can’t sell marijuana under its regulatory model to non-tribal members is “wrong.”

“Nebraskans overwhelmingly approved medical cannabis last November, yet the administration has pursued litigation and commission actions that frustrate voter intent and depart from Nebraska law and the sponsors’ stated purpose,” the statement says. “None of this alters the jurisdictional line that preserves the Tribe’s authority on tribal lands. The Tribe has moved forward, as is our right, with regulations that align with statute. The State’s reaction misstates the law and distracts from patient-focused solutions.”

The tribe’s attorney general said its members are willing to compromise on the tobacco tax issue and accept a compact deal previously offered by the administration. But if that compromise plan is also being withdrawn, he said that would “demonstrate direct retaliation against the Tribe, and we will respond accordingly.”

“We prefer to work directly with the Governor on a tobacco tax compact that benefits both parties and respects sovereignty. Any attempt to leverage an unrelated, lawful medical cannabis program against compact discussions is improper. We look forward to the administration’s written position and we will respond through the proper channels.”

The tribe’s attorney general previously claimed that the state is using its efforts to legalize marijuana as an excuse to suspend negotiations on the tobacco tax deal.

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Nebraska Attorney General Calls Marijuana A ‘Poison’ And Says People Who Buy It From A Tribe Within The State Do So ‘At Their Own Peril’

The attorney general of Nebraska says people who buy marijuana under a Native American tribe’s planned legal market on its reservation within the state do so “at their own peril,” implying enforcement action against citizens for purchasing what he described as a “poison” if they take it beyond the territory’s borders.

During a press conference focused on an unrelated executive order, Gov. Jim Pillen (R) and Attorney General Mike Hilgers (R) were asked about ongoing negotiations with the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska over a tobacco tax compact and the tribe’s move to legalize cannabis within the prohibitionist state.

“I think that my position is crystal clear. I’m totally opposed in recreational marijuana,” the governor said. “If the Omaha tribe progresses to that extent, my view is really simple: There’s not going to be Nebraskans going into the Omaha buying recreational marijuana. We’ll take whatever steps it is to keep our state values and keep that from happening.”

Hilgers, the state attorney general, also spoke about the tribe’s cannabis program alongside the governor, as well as during a separate press briefing on Wednesday.

While compacts between the state and tribal governments can be “good” for both parties, he said what the Omaha tribe has proposed is both a usurpation of tax revenue from tobacco sales and a willful defiance of state laws around marijuana.

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Hegseth Says US Strikes Another Drug-Smuggling Boat, Killing 3 Onboard

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military carried out another lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in the Caribbean that was transporting illegal drugs to the United States on Nov. 6.

Hegseth stated on social media that the strike targeted a vessel run by a “designated terrorist organization,” killing three people on board whom he described as “narco-terrorists.”

“The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean and was struck in international waters,” he stated on X, noting that the strike was conducted under President Donald Trump’s direction.

No U.S. armed forces were harmed in the operation, according to the Pentagon chief.

This was the 17th reported U.S. military strike on drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific since September, as the Trump administration intensifies efforts to combat drug trafficking. More than 60 suspected drug traffickers have been killed in these strikes.

Hegseth warned that U.S. military operations against drug smuggling vessels will not stop until the illegal drug flow into the United States ends.

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Marijuana Arrests Comprised Nearly Half of All Drug-Related Arrests in Over a Dozen States in 2024

Marijuana-related arrests far outpace arrests for other drug-related violations in jurisdictions where its possession and use remain criminally prohibited under state law.

In five states (Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Wisconsin), more than half of all drug-related arrests reported by state and local law enforcement agencies in 2024 were cannabis-related, according to data provided by the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer.

In nine other states (Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming), 40 percent or more of all drug-related arrests were for marijuana-related violations. In the District of Columbia, where adult-use is legal but public use remains a criminal — not a civil — violation, 42 percent of all drug-related arrests were marijuana-related.

In these states, marijuana-related arrests are almost exclusively for low-level possession. In Alabama, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming more than 97 percent of all marijuana-related arrests in 2024 were for minor possession, not trafficking or sales.

By comparison, marijuana-related arrests typically comprise only a small percentage of arrests in states where personal possession has been legalized. For instance, in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washington, marijuana-related arrests comprised fewer than five percent of all drug-related arrests in 2024. By contrast, marijuana-related arrests comprised over one-third of all drug-related arrests in Illinois, despite lawmakers legalizing the adult-use market in 2019.

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Venezuela’s Oil, US-Led Regime Change, and America’s Gangster Politics

The United States is dusting off its old regime-change playbook in Venezuela. Although the slogan has shifted from “restoring democracy” to “fighting narco-terrorists,” the objective remains the same, which is control of Venezuela’s oil. The methods followed by the US are familiar: sanctions that strangle the economy, threats of force, and a $50 million bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as if this were the Wild West.

The US is addicted to war. With the renaming of the Department of War, a proposed Pentagon budget of $1.01 trillion, and more than 750 military bases across some 80 countries, this is not a nation pursuing peace. For the past two decades, Venezuela has been a persistent target of US regime change. The motive, which is clearly laid out by President Donald Trump, is the roughly 300 billion barrels of oil reserves beneath the Orinoco belt, the largest petroleum reserves on the planet.

In 2023, Trump openly stated: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil… but now we’re buying oil from Venezuela, so we’re making a dictator very rich.” His words reveal the underlying logic of US foreign policy that has an utter disregard for sovereignty and instead favors the grabbing of other country’s resources. .

What’s underway today is a typical US-led regime-change operation dressed up in the language of anti-drug interdiction. The US has amassed thousands of troops, warships, and aircraft in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The president has boastfully authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.

On October 26, 2025, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went on national television to defend recent US military strikes on Venezuelan vessels and to say land strikes inside Venezuela and Colombia are a “real possibility.” Florida Sen. Rick Scott, in the same news cycle, mused that if he were Nicolás Maduro he’d “head to Russia or China right now.” These senators aim to normalize the idea that Washington decides who governs Venezuela and what happens to its oil. Remember that Graham similarly champions the US fighting Russia in Ukraine to secure the $10 trillion of mineral wealth that Graham fatuously claims are available for the US to grab.

Nor are Trump’s moves a new story vis-à-vis Venezuela. For more than 20 years, successive US administrations have tried to submit Venezuela’s internal politics to Washington’s will. In April 2002, a short-lived military coup briefly ousted then-President Hugo Chávez. The CIA knew the details of the coup in advance, and the US immediately recognized the new government. In the end, Chávez retook power. Yet the US did not end its support for regime change.

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VIPS MEMO: What Wider War in Venezuela Would Bring

ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY (VIPS)

SUBJECT: What Wider War in Venezuela Would Bring

Dear President Trump:

We are deeply concerned about where the United States seems to be headed in its Venezuela policy and urge you to demand that the Intelligence Community give you clear, unfiltered, “truth-to-power” analysis, as well as covert action options in Venezuela.

Flying blind into an unprovoked war against a Latin American government, even one weakened by years of U.S. “maximum-pressure” sanctions, risks a conflagration that could draw Russia into the conflict and offers zero probability of establishing a legitimate, pro-U.S. successor government.

We see a classic storm of politicization brewing in the Intelligence Community, to which we devoted our careers, as a result of blatant pressures that it give you the “right” answer – fabricating or exaggerating a pretext for direct military intervention in Venezuela.

The State Department’s cancelation of views that don’t coincide with its own, and the intelligence community leadership’s firing of senior analysts whose classified, honest analysis contradicted unfounded Administration allegations that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro controls the Tren de Aragua gang and is using it to attack the United States have chilled collectors’ and analysts’ willingness to provide you unbiased, neutral, accurate intelligence.

We have seen this before – during numerous intelligence and foreign policy debacles, including the fake allegations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And we remember the disastrous consequences for the country and its leaders.

There is room for some debate on the rationale for some sanctions on Venezuela. Maduro’s management of elections has been correctly questioned, for example. But U.S. opposition to the changes ushered in by the late President Chávez’s election in 1999 has been, for most of these 26 years, implacable.

The U.S. government, under Presidents from both parties, has imposed sanctions to paralyze the country’s economy; identified, trained, and funded opponents, including some who have resorted to violence similar to that we accuse the government of; and – even more important – has supported several failed attempts to overthrow the Chávez and Maduro Governments (with varying levels of involvement), including a blatant attempt to assassinate Maduro in plain daylight.

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With Venezuela, Trump poised to make mistake of epic proportions

After another week of extra-judicial strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, the U.S. is now reportedly preparing to hit military targets in Venezuela.

International condemnation of the strikes has been widespread. For example, Jean-Noël Barrot, French Minister of Foreign Affairs and Europe, accused the U.S. of ignoring international and maritime law in an interview on Thursday.

But the neoconservative lobby inside the Trump administration is unmoved.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the lead proponent of regime change in Venezuela, has pushed for these actions — allegedly as part of an effort to get tough on drug cartels, framing the Latin American nation through a “narco-terrorism” lens.

Washington’s “narco-terrorism” frame has pedigree; the DOJ indicted Maduro on narco-terrorism charges in 2020, but today’s drug threat picture looks different from that narrative.

Strategically, the label misaligns ends and means: it invites military solutions to problems that the DEA and Coast Guard still characterize primarily as law-enforcement interdiction.

It also simplifies a complex geopolitical picture, all the while increasing the risk of entangling the U.S. in an open-ended conflict in the Western Hemisphere.

The DEA’s 2024–2025 threat assessments identify fentanyl as the top U.S. drug danger, synthesized mainly in Mexico with precursors from China. Meanwhile, UNODC data show record coca cultivation and cocaine output centered in Colombia, with Venezuela functioning primarily as a transit route.

Yet, Washington’s “counternarcotics” rhetoric has already translated into military escalation, and with it come significant diplomatic, economic, and political risks.

Escalation might threaten U.S. energy interests, particularly Chevron’s limited license to import Venezuelan crude, a lifeline for U.S. Gulf Coast refineries that remain reliant on the country’s uniquely heavy oil.

Escalation could also bolster Maduro rather than undermine him. For a leader whose “anti-imperialist rhetoric” enhances domestic legitimacy, U.S. aggression is politically beneficial.

Caracas has already surged troops and naval deployments along key coastal routes and encouraged auxiliary mobilization, explicitly linking the moves to U.S. buildups in the Caribbean.

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Report: Trump Weighs Options for Launching a War With Venezuela

The Trump administration has developed a series of options for launching attacks on Venezuela, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, as the US continues its military buildup in the region.

The report said that one option would involve bombing Venezuelan military facilities with the goal of collapsing military support for Maduro in hopes that it would get the Venezuelan leader to flee. But critics of the approach argue that it would likely have the opposite effect, rallying the military around its embattled leader.

The second option would be to send special operations forces, such as Navy SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force, into Venezuela to kill or capture Maduro. Such an operation would put the US troops involved in the attack at serious risk since Maduro has the support of his military and a civilian militia that the Venezuelan government says has millions of members.

The third option would involve sending a much larger force into Venezuela to capture airfields and some of Venezuela’s infrastructure and oil fields. The Washington Examiner has reported that US military planners believe the forces in the region are now sufficient to seize and hold key strategic facilities such as ports and airfields on Venezuelan territory.

The Times report said that President Trump is reluctant to back an operation that would put US troops at risk or come with the chance of failure, and for that reason, other plans are being developed that would involve naval drones and long-range weapons. A decision isn’t expected until the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, which just left the Mediterranean, arrives near Venezuela.

If Trump orders an attack on Venezuela, it would almost certainly lead to a full-blown war or a quick decapitation of the government, which would likely plunge the country into chaos. The Times report cited Trump aides who said far more planning has gone into striking at the Maduro government than on what it would take to govern Venezuela should the operation succeed.

Trump aides said that the president has expressed reservations about attacking Venezuela and that he’s asking what the US could get out of it, with a focus on Venezuela’s vast oil resources. The push to launch a war in Venezuela is being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security advisor, and Stephen Miller, the president’s chief domestic policy advisor.

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Alcohol Industry Groups Push Congress To Ban Intoxicating Hemp Products—At Least Until Federal Regulations Are Enacted

A coalition of major alcohol industry associations is throwing its weight behind a push to get Congress to ban intoxicating hemp products—at least on a temporary basis before the federal government creates a “robust regulatory framework” for the marketplace.

As lawmakers work to finalize appropriations legislation, they’ve felt pressure on both sides of the hemp debate, with some interests endorsing controversial proposals to outright prohibit intoxicating cannabinoids and others that have called for a comprehensive regulatory approach that could prevent significant economic fallout for the hemp industry.

A new letter from the American Distilled Spirits Alliance (ADSA), Beer Institute (BI), Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. (DISCUS), Wine America and Wine Institute seems to promote a middle-ground solution—but one the begins with a ban on hemp THC products as championed by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD).

The letter, sent to congressional leaders on Tuesday, states that the alcohol associations are aligned with a group of 39 state and territory attorneys general who recently urged federal legislators to enact a ban on the hemp items.

“Our respective organizations produce virtually all the beer, distilled spirits, and wine available in every state and congressional district across the country, representing some of the world’s most valuable consumer brands,” the letter says.

“Unfortunately, the ambiguous language contained in the 2018 Farm Bill has been manipulated and exploited by certain actors, fueling the rapid growth of a largely unregulated market that is knowingly and willfully ignoring the [Food and Drug Administration, or FDA] position that the addition of intoxicating cannabinoids (like delta-8 THC and delta-9 THC) to food is illegal,” it says.

“The rhetoric surrounding this issue is unfortunate,” the coalition said, adding that “certain entities, including some within the beverage alcohol space, claim that any effort to rein in the sale of highly intoxicating hemp THC products is tantamount to ‘prohibition’ or a ‘ban’ that will adversely impact industrial hemp farmers or even products that contain non-intoxicating cannabidiol (CBD).”

Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA), a key player in the space, is among those alcohol interests that have pushed back against the proposed prohibition. WSWA also added a company that makes THC-infused drinks to its membership roster for the first time in September.

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