Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Hemp Farmers Say Texas Bill To Rein In Intoxicating Cannabinoid Products Could Destroy State Industry

Andrew Hill, who studied and farmed hemp in California before it was legal in Texas, was a keynote speaker at the state’s first-ever agricultural hemp expo in Dallas in 2019. Amid considerable hype and excitement that followed the recent federal legalization of hemp, Hill tried to warn farmers that the industry wasn’t as profitable as state officials and seed vendors were pitching.

“There were guys running around telling farmers they could make $2,500 to $3,000 an acre on hemp. Being an actual farmer, not trying to sell seeds or clones, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing,” Hill said. “Everyone looked at me and asked what was so funny, and they gave me the mic and I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll tell you right now—I haven’t seen over $1,000 an acre since 2015.’”

Still, Texas lawmakers embraced the opportunity hemp presented in 2019, legalizing hemp products of the cannabis plant with less than 0.3 percent THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana. Hill’s Texas Star Hemp Farms was among those to make the investment necessary to profit from hemp, including owning almost all the means of production and sales and spending millions on seeds, licenses and facilities.

Six years after that initial rush, industrial hemp farming in Texas stands on the brink. Senate Bill 3, which would ban any consumable hemp products that contain even trace amounts of THC, could destroy what farmers like Hill have built.

“Now, considering things like hemp hearts, hemp seed oils, salad dressings and those health products that don’t have any cannabinoids in them to get you high, [they] will still be illegal under this law,” Hill said.

Hill is one of about 450 licensed hemp producers in the Texas Industrial Hemp Program at risk of losing a chunk of their livelihoods as Texas lawmakers have prioritized banning tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, products. Farmers say there is no way they can produce hemp without traces of THC, even for non-consumable products like clothing and paper, meaning SB 3 could deliver a death blow to the industry.

The GOP-controlled Legislature authorized the sale of consumable hemp a year after it was legalized nationwide to boost Texas agriculture by allowing the commercialization of hemp containing trace amounts of delta-9 THC.

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GOP Congressman And House Democratic Leader Team Up To Prepare For Federal Marijuana Legalization With Alcohol-Like Regulations

A GOP congressman and the top House Democrat are teaming up on a new bill to lay the groundwork for federal marijuana legalization.

On the same day he announced the refiling of a separate bipartisan measure to end federal prohibition in states that have legalized cannabis, Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH) has again introduced the Preparing Regulators Effectively for a Post-Prohibition Adult-Use Regulated Environment Act (PREPARE) Act.

The legislation is also being sponsored by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who has worked with Joyce on earlier versions of the bill in past sessions.

The incremental reform would direct the attorney general to create a commission charged with making recommendations on a regulatory system for cannabis that models what’s currently in place for alcohol.

“Currently, nearly all 50 states have legalized or enacted cannabis to some degree, bringing us closer to the inevitable end to federal cannabis prohibition,” Joyce said in a press release on Thursday. “Recognizing this reality, the PREPARE Act delivers a bipartisan plan.”

“With this legislation, Congress would be equipped to develop a much-needed federal regulatory framework that not only respects the unique needs, rights, and laws of each state, but also ensures a responsible end to prohibition and a safer future for our communities,” he said.

The legislation largely resembles an earlier version introduced last session, with several largely technical changes.

One substantive from the last version is that the proposed cannabis commission would now include representatives of the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Labor and Treasury, as well as the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and Office of Minority Health and Indian Health Service.

Language was also added to clarify that two commission members who’ve overseen the development of “two successful, separate, and unique State-level regulatory systems” must have served on state cannabis control commissions. Such commissions are newly defined as “any State commission, bureau, board, department, office, agency, division, or authority responsible for the regulation of the State’s legal medical and recreational cannabis program.”

The prospects of marijuana legislation advancing in the Republican-controlled Congress this session remain unclear, but certain members have expressed confidence that modest reform could be achievable on a bipartisan basis. The PREPARE Act could represent an area of agreement to that end.

“Since the failed war on drugs began more than 50 years ago, the prohibition of marijuana has ruined lives, families and communities, particularly communities of color,” Jeffries said. “The PREPARE Act is one of the bipartisan solutions that will lay the groundwork to finally right these wrongs in a way that advances public safety and boosts our economy.”

“I am grateful to Congressman Joyce for reintroducing this important bill and his leadership to help the United States be ready for the inevitable end to cannabis prohibition,” he said.

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Lawmakers In Slovenia Unveil Proposal To Legalize Marijuana For Medical And Scientific Use

Less than a year after voters in Slovenia approved a pair of marijuana ballot measures, lawmakers in the country have introduced a bill that would regulate cannabis specifically for medical and scientific use.

The measure, from the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda) and The Left (Levica) parties, would legalize cannabis extracts, plants and resin by removing the substances from Slovenia’s list of illegal drugs, according to local reports. THC, however, would remain prohibited unless used for medical or scientific reasons.

“Our goal is to protect patients and cannabis users from unverified products on the black market, enable uninterrupted medical cannabis supply to patients and address current legal shortcomings in the field of cannabis use for medical and scientific purposes,” the Freedom Movement said in a statement about the proposal, according to a report in N1.

Members of parliament “want to establish an efficient system that will take into account the existing competencies of the competent authorities, enable economic opportunities and clearly establish criteria for obtaining permits for growers, as well as researchers,” the party added.

Under the proposal, the Public Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices would be responsible for licensing and regulating the production and trade of medical marijuana. The Ministry of Health, meanwhile, would issue permits around marijuana used specifically for scientific purposes.

While the new proposal focuses only on medical marijuana, the Freedom Movement said it expects to take up regulation of cannabis for “limited personal use” by adults later this legislative session.

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Medical cannabis shows potential to fight cancer, largest-ever study finds

The largest ever study investigating medical cannabis as a treatment for cancer, published this week in Frontiers in Oncology, found overwhelming scientific support for cannabis’s potential to treat cancer symptoms and potentially fight the course of the disease itself.

The intention of the analysis was to solidify agreement on cannabis’s potential as a cancer treatment, said Ryan Castle, research director at the Whole Health Oncology Institute and lead author of the study. Castle noted that it has been historically difficult to do so because marijuana is still federally considered an illegal Schedule I narcotic.

“Our goal was to determine the scientific consensus on the topic of medical cannabis, a field that has long been dominated by a war between cherrypicked studies,” Castle said.

The study was funded by Cancer Playbook, which works with the Whole House Oncology Institute to collect, analyze and share data on patient-reported outcomes.

While research restrictions on Schedule I substances severely hamper clinical research on cannabis in humans, there is a large body of observational studies on medical cannabis and cancer – as well as lab research – that looks at cannabis’s effect on tumors in test tubes and in animals. The analysis included as many of those studies as possible.

“In order to move beyond bias – conscious or not – it was essential to use a large-scale, radically inclusive methodology based on mathematical reasoning,” Castle said, adding: “We wanted to analyze not just a handful, but nearly every major medical cannabis study to find the actual points of scientific agreement.”

Castle’s study looked at more than 10,000 studies on cannabis and cancer, which he said is “10 times the sample size of the next largest study, which we believe helps make it a more conclusive review of the scientific consensus”.

To analyze the massive quantity of studies, Castle and his team used AI – specifically, the natural language processing technique known as “sentiment analysis”. This technique allowed the researchers to see how many studies had positive, neutral or negative views on cannabis’s ability to treat cancer and its symptoms by, for example, increasing appetite, decreasing inflammation or accelerating “apoptosis”, or the death of cancer cells.

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Drug Enforcement Leads To Increases In Violence, Report Published By UK Government Concludes

Drug-related law enforcement is more likely to increase violence than reduce it, indicates a report commissioned by the government of the United Kingdom. Whether the government will revise its drug policies accordingly remains to be seen.

“The available evidence suggests that drug-related law enforcement activities are of limited effectiveness in reducing violence,” states the report, which was prepared by the research organization RAND Europe and published by the UK Home Office on March 27. “Indeed, more studies demonstrated an association between drug-related law enforcement activities and increased violence than decreased violence.”

The findings, which echo earlier evidence on the subject, are less startling than the fact that the UK government published them. The report references a prior review on the impact of drug-related law enforcement activity on serious violence and homicide, which, it notes, “found that increasing drug law enforcement was unlikely to reduce drug market violence alone and risked exacerbating it.”

The report urges British police forces planning drug-related law enforcement actions to “consider the risk of increased violence,” particularly related to the removal of leaders of trafficking groups and drug seizures.

“The counterproductive nature of drug law enforcement has been very obvious for a long time,” Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told Filter. “The war on drugs has fueled an arms race between law enforcement agencies and organized crime groups—ensuring only the most cunning and  violent crime groups prosper.”

Nonetheless, he continued, “It is welcome to see the systemic failure of the enforcement model confirmed by academic work commissioned and published by the Home Office itself. It certainly makes it a lot harder for them to ignore.”

The Home Office, which is responsible for areas including public safety, policing and border security in the UK, did not respond to Filter’s request for comment on whether it would act on the report’s recommendations.

Former police officers are among those who have long warned that the disruption of drug markets increases violence, as trafficking groups fight over resultant power vacuums when established hierarchies are disturbed by seizures and arrests.

“For years I’ve been arguing that no police activity in drug markets reduces the size of the market,” Neil Woods told Filter. A former undercover police officer, he changed his mind about the drug enforcement actions he once participated in. He now chairs the Law Enforcement Action Partnership UK, which campaigns to end the drug war.

“This kind of study should not just be of niche interest, it should inform policy,” he said. “We are talking about the very fabric of security and safety in our society.”

Police disruption of drug markets also increases the risk of overdose among people who use drugs, Woods added, citing a 2023 study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, which illustrated this. In what has been described as “the drug bust paradox,” the arrest of a person’s source of drugs can lead them to experience withdrawal and hastily seek a new source—who might provide drugs that are adulterated or of higher potency.

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A trip too far: The LSD experience that blew up the Huxley family

In November 1956, three people gathered in a converted Connecticut barn to take LSD, a powerful psychedelic drug that was legal at the time. 

The children had just been put to bed upstairs. In the converted barn’s main room, Elizabethan ballads drifted through smoke-thick air as someone scattered chrysanthemum petals across a sheepskin rug. The flowers seemed to reanimate in the candlelight, blooming and dying with each flicker. Two of the participants lay hand-in-hand in ecstatic communion, while a third sat rigid and apart, his detachment crumbling into barely contained fury. 

By midnight, everything would shatter. 

One participant spiraled into visions of nuclear war. Another transformed into a 10-foot colossus of feminine power. And in the space between these extremes, a marriage began its quiet collapse. 

The aftershocks would reverberate through three generations of Britain’s most celebrated intellectual family, the Huxleys, leaving wounds that simmered in private letters for more than sixty years. 

It’s fitting that this story should be told on Bicycle Day, the annual commemoration of April 19, 1943, when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first rode his bike home under the effects of LSD — and ushered in the modern psychedelic era. Nearly 14 years after that inaugural ride, the drug had drifted from the lab into the lives of artists, seekers and intellectual elites like the Huxleys. 

The trip’s architect was Dr. Humphry Osmond, the psychiatrist who had first guided Aldous Huxley — the author of “Brave New World” and “The Doors of Perception” — in experiments with mescaline. and coined the term “psychedelic.” His subjects that evening were Aldous’ only son, Matthew Huxley; Matthew’s wife, Ellen; and Francis Huxley, Matthew’s cousin and the son of biologist Julian Huxley. 

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Former Marijuana Prisoners Who Got Clemency From Trump Hold Event Outside White House To Request Relief For Those Still Behind Bars

Former marijuana prisoners who received clemency from President Donald Trump during his first term staged an event outside the White House on Thursday, expressing gratitude for the relief they were given and calling on the new administration to grant the same kind of help to others who are still behind bars for cannabis.

Flanked by cardboard cutouts of individuals pardoned or granted commutations by Trump, activists impacted by criminalization stood outside the White House with a message to “free all cannabis prisoners.”

The grassroots “Cannabis Prisoners Unity Day” called attention to the opportunity to build upon the executive-level relief. In addition to Trump’s clemency actions in his first term, former President Joe Biden also pardoned and commuted sentences for hundreds of people while he was in office. But numerous people remain behind bars over non-violent federal cannabis convictions.

“President Trump, we are your example of a victory,” Craig Cesal—who received a commutation for a life sentence he was handed down in 2002 for a marijuana distribution conviction—said during a panel discussion ahead of the White House meetup.

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For 4/20, Ben & Jerry’s Teams Up With Marijuana Justice Group To Push Governors To Free Cannabis Prisoners

As consumers and businesses across the U.S. gear up for the 4/20 holiday on Sunday, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is drawing attention to the “tens of thousands of people who will spend their 4/20 in prison for the same cannabis-related activity.”

This year the company—which has regularly used 4/20 to highlight justice-related cannabis matters—has partnered with the advocacy group Last Prisoner Project (LPP) to urge state governors to grant relief to those behind bars for marijuana.

“This 4/20, the need for cannabis justice is at an all-time HIGH,” Ben & Jerry’s said about the new effort.

The groups are also encouraging supporters to take action, recommending they reach out to their state governors to call for clemency, sign petitions to free people incarcerated for cannabis crimes, spread the word using the #420ForFreedom on social media and attend a Washington, D.C. event—the Cannabis Unity Week of Action, held April 29 through May 1—aimed at promoting broader marijuana legalization.

The company says that as “cannabis businesses will rack up sales, public figures will use their platforms to highlight cannabis culture, and millions of Americans will take advantage of their freedom and consume with friends and family” on 4/20, it’s crucial that advocates continue pushing to right the wrongs of prohibition.

“When we say legalization without justice is half baked, we mean that legalization while people, disproportionately Black and Brown, are still sitting in prison for cannabis or reeling from the detrimental impacts of having a cannabis conviction on their records is simply not justice fully realized,” Palika Makam, Ben & Jerry’s U.S. activism manager, said in a statement.

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