Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Trump’s Pardon of Convicted Drug Trafficker and Former President of Honduras Undermines His Own Reasoning for War on Venezuela

Trump’s recent pardon of convicted drug trafficker and former President of Honduras undermines his own reasoning for the escalation with Venezuela.

President Trump has stated previously that the justification for the escalation in tensions with President Maduro and Venezuela is a hard stance against drug trafficking into the U.S. from Latin American countries. If this was the case, then the recent pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández – a man convicted of working with drug traffickers to smuggle drugs into the U.S. – directly undercuts his own reasoning.

Convicted in February of 2024, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in a United States federal prison. During the 57-year-old’s two terms in office, he allowed over 400 tons of cocaine to flow through Honduras and into the United States in exchange for millions of dollars from cartel drug lords like Joaquín Guzmán, AKA “El Chapo.”

According to the Associated Press, Hernández was even caught on video boasting to drug traffickers during his trial that “together they were going to shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” Trump’s justification for pardoning Hernández is that people he respects told him Hernández was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

The problem is that pardoning a man who helped turn his country into a narco-state – while taking bribes from convicted cartel bosses – undermines the exact reasoning Trump and the United States have used to escalate pressure on Venezuela. Tensions first began in 2017 when the U.S. sanctioned Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami for drug-trafficking activity. Fast forward to 2019, and the Trump administration formally indicted President Nicolás Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials on narco-terrorism charges, arguing that they were responsible for trafficking cocaine into the United States.

These actions were presented as necessary steps to confront foreign leaders who enable cartels, threaten regional stability, and push drugs into American communities. The message from the Trump administration was simple: the U.S. will not tolerate narco-traffickers.

This is exactly why the pardon of Hernández undercuts Trump’s own argument. You cannot escalate against Venezuela because of its alleged operation of a criminal enterprise, then turn around and pardon a man who was proven – through evidence, witnesses, and beyond a reasonable doubt in a U.S. court of law – to have done the very same thing. In Hernández’s case, he did it while presenting himself as a U.S. ally to the public, all while taking cartel money behind the scenes.

Keep reading

Chicago Council Committee to Consider Ordinance Restricting Hemp THC Sales to Licensed Dispensaries

On Wednesday, a Chicago council committee will discuss and potentially vote on an ordinance that would prohibit all non-dispensary businesses from selling hemp-derived cannabinoid products, limiting sales exclusively to state-licensed cannabis stores.

The measure, sponsored by Alderman Marty Quinn, would repeal the city’s existing cannabinoid ordinance and replace it with a stricter framework. The proposal creates a broad definition of “hemp-derived cannabinoid product,” covering any intermediate or final product made from hemp that contains cannabinoids of any kind, whether natural, synthetic, or manufactured. It includes items intended for inhalation, ingestion, or topical use. It also defines “concealment” as knowingly hiding or preventing the discovery of these products.

Under the proposed language, no licensed business—except for state-licensed cannabis establishments—would be allowed to possess, sell, give away, barter, exchange, or furnish any hemp-derived cannabinoid product on their premises. The ordinance also bans any act of concealment involving these products. Violations would carry fines between $2,000 and $5,000 per offense, with each day the violation continues counted as a separate offense. Repeated violations could trigger license suspension or revocation.

The Illinois Healthy Alternatives Association announced its opposition ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, arguing that the measure goes too far and would disrupt businesses offering non-intoxicating hemp products.

“We all recognize the importance of implementing responsible regulations to prevent these products from reaching minors,” said Craig Katz, President of the Board for the Illinois Healthy Alternatives Association. “Our members are actively collaborating at both the state and federal levels to create a regulatory framework that safeguards minors and ensures product safety. We can achieve these objectives while still enabling our members to offer their customers the healthy alternatives they require. We are eager to partner with the City Council to find effective solutions.”

Keep reading

Psychedelics produce enduring behavioral effects and functional plasticity through mechanisms independent of structural plasticity

Activation of serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) receptors is thought to underly the long-lasting antidepressant effects of psychedelics such as psilocybin, but beyond that, the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved are not well understood. Recent preclinical studies using mice have primarily examined relatively short time points after psychedelic administration, which does not address the long-lasting effects of psilocybin in humans (i.e., several months or more). We utilized a rat experimental system to demonstrate that both psilocybin and the selective 5-HT2A receptor agonist 25CN-NBOH reduce immobility in the forced swim test without a decrease in effect size for at least three months after a single administration of the psychedelic. There were no overt behavioral differences between psilocybin and 25CN-NBOH treated animals, suggesting 5-HT2A receptor activation is sufficient to produce long-lasting behavioral changes. Functional cellular plasticity in neurons from the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of these animals was assessed using brain slice electrophysiology. Functional plasticity was evident for both psychedelics several months after treatment, and Layer 5 excitatory pyramidal neurons demonstrated significant changes in resting membrane potential, firing rates, and synaptic excitation. Recorded neurons were examined by microscopy for synaptic density and spine classification, which found no differences between control and psychedelic-treated. Gene expression studies for several presynaptic and postsynaptic markers in the mPFC indicated no differences in expression between groups. Together, our results indicate a single treatment with a psychedelic is sufficient to elicit very long-lasting behavioral and cellular changes through enduring function plasticity rather than structural plasticity.

Keep reading

Feds Launch New Marijuana-Focused Ad Campaign To ‘Challenge The Dangerous Belief’ That People Drive Better While High

The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Ad Council are rolling out a new campaign to “challenge the dangerous belief that it’s safe to drive after consuming marijuana,” with a disturbing ad that they say depicts a real-life story of a child killed by a driver who was under the influence of cannabis.

In an announcement on Tuesday, the Ad Council promoted the “Tell That to Them” initiative, which includes a 60-second ad showing a person claiming they “focus” better when driving while high and then causing a fatal car accident.

“I actually drive better when I’m high,” the man says. “If anything, I’m more careful, more chill, more relaxed.”

He is then shown driving head-on into an incoming car.

DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) partnered with the Ad Council for the campaign.

“Too many young men think marijuana doesn’t affect their driving ability or even makes them safer drivers,” NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said in a press release. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Marijuana slows down a driver’s reaction time and impairs their coordination and judgement,” he said. “This new PSA reminds motorists that driving high puts us all at risk and can have deadly consequences.”

Keep reading

The Same Democrats Who Said NOTHING When Obama Drone-Bombed 16-yr-Old US Citizen Al-Awlaki Are Furious About Trump Bombing Dangerous Venezuelan Cartel Members in a Boat

Al-Qaeda leader and US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen in September 2011 in a targeted strike.
Al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico and attended college in Colorado.

Obama dropped a bomb on his head.

In May 2012 The New York Times revealed that Barack Obama was the official who actually made the final call on US drone strikes.

Seven months before the New York Times report, Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen from Denver, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in October 2011.

Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi was the son of terrorist Anwar al-Aulaqi. He did not have a trial.  He was sixteen.

Barack Obama dropped a bomb on his head.

In January 2020, the United States killed General Qassim Soleimani, a top commander of Iran’s al-Quds Force, in an airstrike at Baghdad’s International Airport. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Seven people were reportedly killed in the airstrike.

Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of dozens of US military men and women in Iraq.

Speaker Pelosi, Democrats and the fake news media were outraged over the death of the world’s number one terrorist.

The media and Democrats hammered President Trump all day.

Keep reading

Supreme Court Fails to Keep a Tight Leash on Police K-9 Drug-Sniff Searches That Intrude Into Vehicles, Raising Fourth Amendment Concerns

In yet another ruling that contributes to the steady normalization of police overreach, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to rein in police K-9 drug-sniff searches during traffic stops.

By declining to hear an appeal in Mumford v. Iowa, the Court let stand an Iowa Supreme Court ruling that allows police to rely on a drug dog’s intrusion into a car’s interior during a traffic stop—even when officers lack probable cause to believe the car contains contraband. In a 5-2 decision in Mumford v. Iowa, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld as constitutional a search in which a police K-9 placed its paws on a car door and inserted its snout through an open window before alerting to drugs.

The Rutherford Institute, joined by Restore the Fourth, had urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling, arguing that warrantless, nonconsensual intrusions into protected spaces violate the Fourth Amendment, which extends its protection to a person’s vehicle. The amicus brief further warned that allowing a police dog to breach the interior of a car provides no limiting principle: if a dog’s snout may trespass inside a vehicle without probable cause, then so might thermal-imaging devices, x-ray scanners, fiberscopes, or other police technologies.

“What this ruling makes clear is that no American is safe from government intrusion, not even during a routine traffic stop. This is how constitutional rights are lost—not in dramatic sweeps, but in small, incremental intrusions that courts refuse to check,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “If a police dog’s snout can be used to justify a warrantless search of a car, then there is nothing to stop the government from using ever more intrusive technologies, surveillance tools, and police instrumentalities to invade our privacy with little to no judicial oversight.”

The case arose after an Iowa police officer initiated a traffic stop of Ashlee Mumford’s vehicle, claiming the last two numbers on her license plate were obscured by dirt and grime. The officer summoned a K-9 unit, and Mumford and her passenger were ordered out of the vehicle “for their own safety” while the handler walked the dog around the car to conduct a “free air sniff.” Because Mumford’s passenger had left his window open, the dog pushed its snout through the open window into the cabin before alerting to drugs. A subsequent search of the vehicle uncovered drugs in the glove compartment which apparently belonged to the passenger. Officers then searched Mumford’s purse—which she had taken with her upon exiting the vehicle—and found marijuana and a pipe.

Keep reading

They Built a Hemp Business in Good Faith but Washington Is About To Crush It

As the Senate prepared to vote on the funding bill to reopen the federal government earlier this month, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) warned that passing the legislation would “regulate the hemp industry to death.” Buried deep inside the continuing resolution was a provision that would completely reverse nearly seven years of industry progress—and potentially wipe out small hemp-based businesses.

In 2019, after the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, cousins Jim Higdon and Eric Zipperle founded Cornbread Hemp. The Kentucky-based company manufactures and sells hemp-related products directly to consumers nationwide, and it stands out in a highly competitive market thanks to the quality of its organic hemp.

Cornbread pioneered a flower-only production model that uses only cannabis flowers in extraction, yielding higher-quality products. It also enforces a strict set of growing standards.

“We’re farming land that has not had pesticides on it for three years—verified. We’re using non-GMO seeds, no pesticides, and no synthetic fertilizers,” said Higdon. “The only fertilizer input we use is chicken litter…from a certified organic chicken farm.”

That quality has earned Cornbread a loyal and growing customer base, 60 percent of whom are over 66 years old and rely on these products to relieve chronic pain.

It is estimated that the number of licensed growers rose from about 3,500 in 2018 to over 21,000 in 2020. The rush subsided, and by 2021, the market steadied and licenses fell to about 9,700. Even with that correction, the economic impact of industrial hemp is undeniable. Industry estimates suggest the hemp market supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, with one model putting the number at roughly 325,000 workers in farming, biomass processing, product manufacturing, distribution, and retail nationwide. According to Department of Agriculture data, the value of U.S. industrial hemp production was about $824 million in 2021 and approximately $445 million in 2024.

And yet, even before the most recent move by Congress, many small companies, including Cornbread, have been hit by a wave of new state regulations threatening their survival. In 2025, Tennessee passed a law placing the hemp industry under the jurisdiction of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Commission. The state’s longstanding three-tier system for policing liquor sales now extends to hemp products as well.

Beginning in January 2026, out-of-state hemp companies, such as Cornbread, wanting to do business in Tennessee must first sell their product to a Tennessee-licensed wholesaler, which must then sell it to a Tennessee retail shop. Only then can customers visit the physical store and purchase the product.

While Cornbread can set up its own wholesaler and retail facilities in Tennessee, doing so would be impractical and prohibitively expensive.

Beyond its practical business burdens, Tennessee’s law infringes on Cornbread and other companies’ fundamental right to earn a living. The law also violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause by discriminating against out-of-state businesses and shielding in-state interests from legitimate competition. 

Keep reading

Weight-loss jab users are being left with debilitating new side-effect, one of the UK’s leading orthopaedic surgeons warns

Weight-loss jab users are being left with a devastating new side-effect, a top surgeon has warned.

The alarming trend spotted amongst GLP-1 users means some patients cannot lift their limbs due to nerve dysfunction.

One of the UK’s leading orthopaedic surgeons, Tim Sinnett, has said he ‘expects to see more patients presenting these symptoms over time’.

The Foot and Ankle Surgeon, who is part of the prestigious Grosvenor Orthopaedic Partners group, added: ‘In the past six months, I have seen a handful of patients with foot drop related to weight-loss jabs – a phenomenon which has only presented itself this year.

‘The sudden loss of weight, associated with this medication, is what is causing the problem.

‘All nerves have a natural rim of fat around them. Suddenly losing weight, and the fat surrounding nerves, can cause this nerve dysfunction in the foot and ankle.

‘Patients with foot drop can have difficulty lifting the front part of the foot, causing it to drag on the floor.

‘Although losing weight is generally beneficial for the feet and ankles, in terms of reducing the force on the joints, the speed of the weight loss appears to be causing the nerves to malfunction.

Keep reading

“We Have Only Just Begun to Kill Narco-Terrorists” – War Sec. Pete Hegseth Responds to Reports of “Illegal” Orders to “Kill Everybody” on Narcotrafficking Boats as Democrats Call for Prosecution of “a War Crime or Outright Murder”

War Secretary Pete Hegseth has responded to a recent report, claiming that the Department of War, under dubious legal authority, ordered secondary strikes to kill drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea after they survived an initial strike, and that US forces are killing narcoterrorists without justification. 

“As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors,” the Washington Post report claims. According to an anonymous source, Hegseth gave a verbal order “to kill everybody” in the September 2 strike against narcoterrorists trafficking narcotics into the United States, which killed 11 designated terrorists.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, President Trump posted footage from the strike on September 2, stating, “Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!”

Keep reading

There may not be a safe off-ramp for some taking GLP-1 drugs, study suggests

The popularity of GLP-1 weight-loss medications continues to soar—and their uptake is helping to push down obesity rates on a national scale—but a safe, evidence-based way off the drugs isn’t yet in clear view.

An analysis published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine found that most participants in a clinical trial who were assigned to stop taking tirzepatide (Zepbound from Eli Lilly) not only regained significant amounts of the weight they had lost on the drug, but they also saw their cardiovascular and metabolic improvements slip away. Their blood pressure went back up, as did their cholesterol, hemoglobin A1c (used to assess glucose control levels), and fasting insulin.

In an accompanying editorial, two medical experts at the University of Pittsburgh, Elizabeth Oczypok and Timothy Anderson, suggest that this new class of drugs should be rebranded from “weight loss” drugs to “weight management” drugs, which people may need to take indefinitely.

Some studies have found that about half of people who start taking a GLP-1 drug for weight loss stop taking it within a year—for various reasons—and many people think they can stop taking anti-obesity drugs once they’ve reached a desired weight, Oczypok and Anderson write. But that’s not in line with the data.

“It may be helpful to compare them to other chronic disease medications; patients do not stop their anti-hypertensive medications when their blood pressure is at goal,” they write.

In the trial, researchers—led by Eli Lilly scientists—followed 670 participants with obesity or overweight (but without diabetes) who were treated with tirzepatide for 36 weeks. Then the participants were split into either continuing with the drug for another 52 weeks (88 weeks total) or getting a placebo for that period of time. Both groups were told to continue a reduced-calorie diet and an exercise plan.

In all, 335 participants were randomized to switch to a placebo, and the researchers monitored changes in their weight and cardiovascular health metrics after the switch. Not everyone in the first phase of the trial lost significant amounts of weight on the drug. So, the researchers only closely tracked the 308 of the 335 who lost at least 10 percent of their body weight on the drug.

Of the 308 who benefited from tirzepatide, 254 (82 percent) regained at least 25 percent of the weight they had lost on the drug by week 88. Further, 177 (57 percent) regained at least 50 percent, and 74 (24 percent) regained at least 75 percent. Generally, the more weight people regained, the more their cardiovascular and metabolic health improvements reversed.

Keep reading