Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Missouri Officials Will Begin Unannounced Marijuana Dispensary Visits For New Product Testing Initiative Next Month

State cannabis regulators will begin their first attempt next month to double check the work of licensed testing labs tasked with ensuring the safety of Missouri marijuana products.

Starting July 1, staff with the Division of Cannabis Regulation will arrive unannounced at dispensaries and collect about 50 products a month off the shelves. They’ll take them to the Missouri State Public Health Reference Laboratory to be tested for things like mold, pesticides and a whole range of other things.

Ryan Bernard, the division’s testing and research unit manager, said the unannounced sampling has been in the works for a while as a way to add an extra level of compliance. The division, Bernard said, isn’t expecting to find problems.

“We won’t know until we see the data,” Bernard said. “I have full faith and confidence in our testing licensees that they’re testing according to rule as it’s been outlined.”

However, national testing lab experts told The Independent that Missouri’s regulators might be shocked at the results.

“Shelf testing has not gone well in any state that I know of, especially if it’s just starting,” said Josh Swider, vice chair of the cannabis working group for American Council of Independent Laboratories. “It will be very telling very fast.”

Swider pointed to a citation in Arizona in April of a cannabis lab, where the state found more than a dozen alleged “deficiencies” including problems with the lab’s potency testing and pesticide and microbial detection methods.

Swider called the levels of pesticides on the Arizona products “sickening.”

“But this is what you’re seeing around the country,” said Swider, co-founder and CEO of Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs in San Diego. “Regulators are starting to enforce. They’re realizing an issue that’s been systemic for a long time.”

Other common issue Missouri regulars might also find, he said, are inflated levels of THC on products.

Regulators previously talked about conducting a “round robin” testing, where the state’s certified testing labs would double check each other’s work under the state’s instruction. Amy Moore, director of the Division of Cannabis Regulation (DCR), told lawmakers in 2023 that this additional testing rule was “critical.”

“The challenges in regulating and relying on for-profit cannabis testing labs,” Moore told lawmakers at a 2023 committee hearing, “is one of the most discussed challenges in the national cannabis regulatory community.”

However, the state never ended up getting the process going for a variety of factors, Bernard said, so the unannounced samples will be the regulators first attempt at a testing backstop.

Lawmakers began allocating money for this kind of sampling to be tested at the state laboratory in the fiscal year that began on July 1, 2024 with $3.8 million. Most of it went unspent because the cannabis testing methods were “still in the process of being implemented,” according to state budget documents. Another $2.4 million was allocated for this fiscal year ending on June 30, and it’s unclear how much of it has been spent.

Bernard couldn’t speak on the budget for testing, he said, because the division and state lab budgets are “totally separate.”

“Our operating budget is DCR only,” he said. “State public health labs is theirs.”

The lab will receive another $2.4 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

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Rhode Island Bills To Restrict Hemp THC Drinks Ignore Science And Current Regulations

As co-founder of Rhode Island’s only U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic hemp farm, and the largest outdoor cannabis farm in the state, I’ve spent the last eight years helping build the hemp industry from the ground up.

At Lovewell Farms, we’ve operated under one of the strictest regulatory frameworks in the country, subject to licensing, batch testing, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) limits, secure packaging requirements and product traceability. Yet two recently proposed bills, H6056 and H6270, would cut licensed hemp farms like ours out of the very market we helped establish.

These bills, introduced by Democratic Reps. Jacquelyn Baginski of Cranston and Scott Slater of Providence, aim to regulate the sale of hemp-derived beverages containing delta-9 THC, the compound most commonly associated with cannabis intoxication.

Slater’s bill would specifically eliminate the sale of such beverages and drink mix powders in Rhode Island, unless these products are specifically included in the state’s cannabis laws. The bills misrepresent both the science behind these products and the legal infrastructure already in place.

During a recent House hearing, Rep. Baginski stated, “I was surprised to learn that hemp-based THC products are also available in the marketplace and largely sold unregulated…at any establishment with a retail sales permit. That could be a convenience store, a hair salon, a gas station, anywhere.”

Respectfully, this is inaccurate. In Rhode Island, consumable hemp products must be produced by licensed handlers and tested by certified labs. They are subject to strict limits on THC content, comprehensive labeling standards, and age restrictions. If some products are being sold outside these rules, that’s a failure of enforcement, not evidence of an unregulated system.

Rep. Slater’s testimony in support of his bill, which would effectively ban all hemp-derived THC beverages unless sold through a dispensary, also included misleading claims. He asserted that “the hemp-derived THC products are now being sold outside the regulated cannabis system with minimal oversight, including limited testing, weak labeling, no seed-to-sale tracking as well as avoidance of cannabis taxes.”

This characterization erases the work of licensed hemp producers who follow every requirement the state imposes, many of whom, like us, already distribute specific products through dispensaries and operate with full compliance under existing cannabis laws.

Slater went on to say that allowing hemp beverages undermines Rhode Island’s cannabis cultivators, whom he described as his constituents. “I really find it unfair that as soon as this market has started that we’re trying to undermine them…and allowing folks that found kind of a loophole with this synthetically altered hemp in drinks…without going through the same framework that everyone else has.”

But our farm has always followed the framework. There is no loophole for us, just increasing restrictions on products we’ve made legally, safely and transparently for years.

Both bills ignore a crucial scientific fact: Not all hemp products are intoxicating.

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USSS Ordered Destruction Of White House Cocaine Day After Closing Case

Two years after the U.S. Secret Service discovered a bag of cocaine in the White House in July, 2023, documents showing orders for its destruction within 24 hours after the agency closed the case are raising new questions about the scrupulousness of the investigation.

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency document titled “Destruction” states that the bag of cocaine was sent to the Metropolitan Police Department for incineration. That document, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, doesn’t display a date for the destruction. But other internal Secret Service records show that the cocaine was tested by the Secret Service, the D.C. Fire Department hazmat technicians, and the FBI before being sent back to the Secret Service for storage on July 12. Two days later, it was transferred to the D.C. police department for destruction. The Secret Service shut down the cocaine investigation 11 days after discovering it.

The destruction of narcotics evidence must comply with environmental and safety regulations, and the D.C. police department has an Environmental Protection Agency-approved incinerator that federal agencies often use to destroy narcotics that are not involved in active legal cases.

D.C. police officials referred all questions about the cocaine’s apparent destruction to the FBI. There’s no entry or date for the cocaine’s actual destruction.

Early last week, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced that he was re-opening the investigation into the cocaine found in the White House, as well as the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the discovery of a pipe bomb at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Bongino reiterated his commitment to getting to the bottom of those cases in a Wednesday night interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“Well, I get a kick out of it on social media,” Bongino said. “People say, ‘This case isn’t a big deal. I don’t care.’ Well, I care. … You don’t care that a [potentially] hazardous substance made its way into the White House? We didn’t know what it was, and we don’t seem to have answers? Well, we’re going to get them. I’ve got a great team on it.”

While the cocaine bag found in the White House appears to have been destroyed, internal Secret Service documents show that the agency retained and stored a second piece of evidence, an envelope of three tubes of DNA that the FBI attained from the plastic bag of cocaine. It’s unclear how much DNA those tubes contain, though the Secret Service has stood by its statements that the FBI found insufficient DNA to pursue any investigative leads.

When the Secret Service closed its investigation into who left the cocaine in the White House on July 13,  the agency issued a statement explaining its decision. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi asserted that camera surveillance footage didn’t provide any “investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited” the cocaine in the White House, adding that FBI laboratory results “did not develop latent fingerprints and insufficient evidence was present for investigative comparisons.”

But neither the FBI nor the Secret Service has publicly released the FBI laboratory results, and DNA experts say the only fool-proof way to demonstrate whether sufficient DNA existed on the baggie now to run against hits in national and state criminal DNA databases is to test it again.

“The only way to really tell, is to test it again and see what happens,” Gary Clayton Harmor, chief forensic DNA analyst at the Serological Research Institute in Richmond, California, told RCP. “Some labs will test anything, and others are more reluctant if they think it’s not a good enough sample to [test against national DNA databases]. The FBI, knowing them, they’re probably very conservative, and it may be that they said, ‘Nope, there’s not enough here to do anything meaningful with.’ It really depends on who’s doing the testing and how they did it.”

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Key GOP Congressmen, Including Pro-Marijuana Legalization Member, Defend Effort to Ban Consumable Hemp Products

Key GOP congressional lawmakers—including one member who supports marijuana legalization—don’t seem especially concerned about provisions in a new spending bill that would put much of the hemp industry in jeopardy by banning most consumable products derived from the plant.

In interviews with Marijuana Moment, Congressional Cannabis Caucus co-chair Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH) and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glen Thompson (R-PA), as well as Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA), weighed in on the hemp language in the large-scale bill that cleared the the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies on Thursday.

Under the measure, hemp would be redefined under federal statute in a way that would prohibit cannabis products containing any “quantifiable” amount of THC or “any other cannabinoids that have similar effects (or are marketed to have similar effects) on humans or animals” as THC.

While Joyce backs legalizing and regulating cannabis for adult use, he said the language from the 2018 Farm Bill that federally legalized hemp and its derivatives “has been the stepping stone for the gas station delivery of intoxicants, whether that’s hemp or chemically manufactured [products] or whatever other shit it is that they sell at gas stations.”

“And there’s no age limit on it. So you’re handcuffing the regular cannabis industry that has strict standards that they have to meet everywhere, and yet this industry has flourished,” he said, adding that problems with the current law have been “exacerbated by people because there are some allegations that [intoxicating hemp products are] cannabis. It’s not hemp anymore.”

The congressman also seemed to endorse a push in Ohio to make it so intoxicating hemp products could only be sold to adults at licensed marijuana dispensaries. He said he told Gov. Mike DeWine (R) that, regardless of his views on the issue, the problem is the “gas station stuff that the kids are getting that all these people are up in arms about.”

That said, Joyce said while he does feel the 2018 Farm Bill’s hemp provisions included a “loophole” that’s been exploited, he hasn’t read the text of the latest legislation yet.

“I’m all for regulating the industry… It has to be regulated so that only adults are getting it,” he said.

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Chicago Police Recruit Allegedly Found with Cocaine in Pocket

A Chicago Police Department recruit found himself in hot water during a training exercise after allegedly possessing crack cocaine. This incident unfolded during a narcotics arrest training scenario, as reported by CWB Chicago. The recruit’s surprising explanation for the discovery of the illicit substance has raised eyebrows among officials.

The scenario was intended to be a routine exercise, with recruits practicing search techniques. According to the report, a recruit discovered real crack cocaine while searching a fellow recruit’s pocket. The suspect offered a curious defense, claiming the pants were not his own but borrowed from his brother, who is also in law enforcement.

The training exercise involved a trainer providing recruits with a baggie marked with blue stars, simulating heroin. However, the recruit found a different baggie, clear and knotted, containing four smaller bags adorned with green dollar signs. Each of these smaller bags reportedly contained suspected crack cocaine.

In response to the discovery, the trainer questioned the recruit about the contents of the knotted baggie. The recruit initially dismissed it as “trash” before offering his explanation about the ownership of the pants. This bizarre claim has left officials perplexed as they continue their investigation.

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Nevada Lawmakers Pass Resolution Urging Congress To Reschedule Psychedelics And Expedite Research On Their Medical Benefits

The Nevada legislature has approved a joint resolution calling on Congress to reschedule certain psychedelics, streamline research and provide protections for people using the substances in compliance with state law.

After initially moving through the Senate and then the House with amendments, the Senate concurred to the other body’s changes and gave final approval to the proposal last Thursday.

SJR 10, from Sen. Rochelle Nguyen (D), has now been formally enacted and will be transmitted to President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) and all of the members of Nevada’s congressional delegation, as well as the heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration and National Institutes of Health.

The resolution cites research demonstrating the therapeutic potential of psychedelics in the treatment of serious mental health conditions and calls on the federal government to “reschedule psilocybin, psilocin, DMT, ibogaine, mescaline and MDMA to a schedule that better reflects the therapeutic value, low potential for abuse and safety for use under medical supervision of those compounds.”

It also points out that there have been federal developments on the issue, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designation of certain psychedelics as “breakthrough therapies” and research that’s being funded to explore the substances at the Department of Defense (DOD) and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

The measure urges Congress to increase funding for further research, establish a “streamlined process for approving and conducting research with psychedelic compounds,” and reschedule psilocybin, psilocin, DMT, ibogaine, mescaline and MDMA under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

Further, it calls for the establishment of “legal protection against federal prosecution for individuals and entities complying with state law concerning the supervised adult use of psychedelic compounds and require states to enter research partnerships with the Attorney General under the Controlled Substances Act to study the public health outcomes of such state programs.”

The amendment adopted by the Assembly and now signed off on by the Senate “specifies that legal protections against federal prosecution shall be for individuals and entities who are compliant with state and local laws concerning the supervised adult use of psychedelic compounds,” Sen. James Ohrenschall (D) said on the floor.

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Hotels See Significant Boost In Revenue Following Marijuana Legalization, New Study Shows

A new study exploring the impacts of adult-use marijuana legalization on the hospitality industry finds that “hotel revenue increases by 25.2% (or $63,671 monthly) due to dispensary legalization, with the effect continuing to grow even six years after legalization.”

The research article, published in the journal Production Operations and Management (POMS), draws its inferences from a review of data from Colorado, which authors say saw “a 7.9% increase in room night bookings and a 16.0% rise in daily room rates,” though impacts varied based on a number of factors.

“These findings are relevant for professionals in marketing, operations management, hospitality, tourism, and public policy,” the study says, noting that the “rapid expansion of the marijuana business presents both opportunities and challenges for the hotel industry.”

“On the one hand, recreational marijuana dispensaries could become attractions that entice travelers to visit places they might not otherwise explore. For instance, around 12% of US tourists have reported positive experiences with marijuana-related travel… On the other hand, the lingering social stigma surrounding marijuana could negatively affect businesses, including hotels, located near these dispensaries. This concern is underscored by a Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT 2019) report, which found that about 10% of US leisure travelers view Colorado as a less desirable destination because of recreational marijuana.”

Despite the apparently polarized feelings around traveling to jurisdictions where marijuana is legal, the study found that hotels seemed to perform better following the policy change.

Comparing hotels in Colorado to hotels in New Mexico, where cannabis was illegal during the study period, the team’s analysis found that “on average, monthly hotel revenue increases by 25.2% upon the legalization of recreational marijuana dispensaries, which is equivalent to a substantial increase of $63,671 per hotel.”

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Federal Judge Allows Lawsuit Seeking Home Psilocybin Care To Proceed, Rejecting Oregon Officials’ Motion To Dismiss

More people in Oregon could eventually access legal psilocybin following a new federal court ruling in favor of plaintiffs who argued that the state’s first-in-the nation psilocybin law wrongfully prevents homebound patients from seeking care.

Four care providers—three licensed psilocybin facilitators and a physician specializing in advanced and terminal illnesses—sued the state about year ago, alleging that the state Psilocybin Services Act (PSA) discriminates against disabled individuals who can’t travel to designated service centers where the substance is administered.

The providers said they were told by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) that there was no way to accommodate homebound patients under the state’s psilocybin law.

In an 12-page ruling issued late last month, District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai denied the state’s motion to dismiss the suit, opining that the plaintiffs have standing to bring the challenge and that a modification of the state’s psilocybin law to provide a reasonable accommodation to homebound patients under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) would not violate principles of federalism.

“The Court agrees with Plaintiffs and finds that their requested remedy rests on physical access rather than use or distribution of a controlled substance in violation of state and federal laws,” the ruling says. “Plaintiffs do not ask the Court to order the provision of a controlled substance, as Defendants contend. Instead…Plaintiffs seek compliance with the ADA so that their disabled clients will have the same physical access to a service that is available to nondisabled individuals.”

Reached by email on Tuesday, plaintiffs’ attorney Kathryn Tucker, said she was pleased the court ruled in favor of the providers seeking to offer home psilocybin services.

“We are eager to ensure that homebound disabled and dying Oregonians can access psilocybin services, as they are among those most likely to benefit,” she wrote. “Opening access for these Oregonians will increase demand for psilocybin produced pursuant to the PSA as well as demand for services of facilitators, particularly those with expertise in providing care to disabled persons and those with advanced illness.”

“We hope to move this forward quickly now that the court has rejected the State’s effort to dismiss, recognizing that the ADA does apply to Oregon’s psilocybin program,” she added. “Because people with advancing illness may have little time left, delay in enabling access can mean that patients who might have obtained relief from debilitating anxiety and depression will die in unrelieved suffering.”

Notably, the new opinion, noted earlier by Psychedelic Week, does not order a specific remedy. It simply allows the underlying suit, Cusker v. Oregon Health Authority, to proceed toward a final decision.

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GOP Congressional Committee Proposes Ban On Hemp Products With THC That Advocates Say Would Have ‘Devastating’ Impact On Industry

A GOP-led House committee has unveiled a spending bill that contains provisions that hemp stakeholders say would devastate the industry, prohibiting most consumable cannabinoid products that were federally legalized during the first Trump administration.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies published the text of the legislation covering fiscal year 2026 just one day ahead of a scheduled Thursday markup.

The 138-page bill covers a wide range of issues, but for the hemp industry, there’s a section of particular concern that would redefine hemp under federal statute in a way that would prohibit cannabis products containing any “quantifiable” amount of THC or “any other cannabinoids that have similar effects (or are marketed to have similar effects) on humans or animals” as THC.

That would effectively eliminate the most commonly marketed hemp products within the industry, as even non-intoxicating CBD items that are sold across the country typically contain trace amounts of THC. Under current law, those products are allowed if they contain no more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.

But the proposed policy being taken up by the subcommittee helmed by anti-marijuana Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) would drastically change that. It would instead maintain the legal status of “industrial hemp” under a revised definition that allows for the cultivation and sale of hemp grown for fiber, whole grain, oil, cake, nut, hull, microgreens or “other edible hemp leaf products intended for human consumption.”

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Texas Hemp Advocates Deliver 100,000+ Petitions To Governor’s Office, Urging Him To Veto THC Ban Bill

Texas hemp advocates and stakeholders are rallying in opposition to a bill the legislature passed to outlaw all consumable hemp-derived cannabinoid products containing any detectable THC—delivering more than 100,000 petition signatures asking Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to veto the measure.

“Senate Bill 3 was designed to destroy a vibrant and legitimate industry,” Cynthia Cabrera, president of Texas Hemp Business Council, which represents the state’s roughly $8 billion hemp industry, said in a press release. “The bill now awaits review by Governor Abbott. We respectfully urge him to consider the facts, listen to our appeal and make the logical decision to veto SB 3.”

At a press conference on Monday, Cabrera said she wanted to “address the misinformation, misdirection and maligning of this industry” by the bill sponsor, Sen. Charles Perry (D), and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), who serves as presiding officer of the Senate and strongly advocated for the legislation.

“SB 3 violates the very principles Texas prides itself on: small government, individual freedom and free enterprise,” she said. “Governor Abbott, we ask that you keep your promise to small businesses, to women entrepreneurs and to every Texan who values freedom.”

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