Tag: the war on (some) drugs

DEA Promotes ‘Anti-420 Day’ Contest For Young People To ‘Flood’ Instagram With Marijuana Warnings

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is promoting an “Anti-420 Day” campaign that’s recruiting students to send short videos warning their peers about marijuana use.

In a bulletin that was distributed on Tuesday, DEA’s JustThinkTwice.com site shared details about the campaign, which is being run by the anti-cannabis nonprofit organization Johnny’s Ambassadors.

“Be an Instagram Influencer for Anti-420 Day,” the message says. “Johnny’s Ambassadors is hiring teens and young adults (high school and college students) to create original videos about the harms of youth THC use for Anti-420 Day.”

The plan is to “flood” Instagram with the short-form videos that would feature students talking about “why young people should not use THC.”

Students would be eligible for a $25 Amazon gift card for a personal video, $35 for a group video and $50 for a “professionally produced educational video or skit with adult sponsor supervision.”

“Your video should either be an educational Youth THC Prevention video on why young people shouldn’t use THC products (vapes, dabs, weed, edibles, gummies) OR a personal story of how you have been impacted by THC use (yourself, a friend, a family member, or a loved one),” the organization said.

It also provided examples of potential prompts, including explainers on “why THC impacts athletic performance on a team” and busting “commonly-held but incorrect myth about THC.”

“Tell a personal story about how you’ve been negatively impacted by THC use” or perform a “skit or drama to educate other teens why using products with THC is bad for you,” the description from Johnny’s Ambassadors—which was founded the parents of a child who died by suicide after consuming high potency marijuana concentrates—says.

There are some restrictions on the content, including a ban on “swearing” in the videos. And no content is allowed that “depicts, imitates, or promotes the possession or consumption of any THC product.”

“DO NOT IMITATE THE USE OF THC/MARIJUANA OR PARAPHERNALIA OF ANY KIND, EVEN AS A JOKE,” it emphasizes.

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Tulsi Gabbard is sure to anger Trump with major admission about Canada’s fentanyl trafficking

Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday struggled to explain why Canada was left off a list of countries that pose a major drug threat to the United States.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted Canada as a national security threat for the amount of fentanyl that comes over its border, which he used as one of reasons he sparked a tariff war with Ottawa.  

Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, was testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) when she was asked about the omission of Canada from that portion of the threat list. 

‘The focus in my opening and the ATA was really to focus on the most extreme threats in that area. And our assessment is that the most extreme threat related to fentanyl continues to come from and through Mexico,’ she said.

Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said he was surprised by the omission of Canada ‘given some of the rhetoric’ from officials in the Trump administration.

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Marijuana Industry PAC Attacks Biden And Canada In New Ads Designed To Appeal To Trump

A marijuana industry-funded political action committee (PAC) is attacking former President Joe Biden’s cannabis policy record as well as the nation of Canada, with new ads promoting sometimes misleading claims about the last administration while making the case that President Donald Trump can deliver on reform.

The American Rights and Reform PAC–which launched in 2023 under a different name, Legalize America, and lists an executive at the major marijuana company Curaleaf as its treasurer—has two ads on its site that appear designed to appeal directly to Trump.

The ads aim to accomplish that by sharply criticizing the president’s predecessor and also emphasizing that American cannabis businesses are losing out to Canada, a more recent target of Trump’s ire, because of prohibitionist U.S. laws.

But with respect to the Biden-centered ad, the PAC’s attempt to draw a sharp contrast between the two administrations included inaccurate characterizations of Biden’s record—at one point stating that Biden was personally involved in criminalizing marijuana while completely ignoring his direct role in initiating a federal marijuana rescheduling review.

“Millions of American patients depend on medical cannabis, but Joe Biden and Democrats classified their medication as a dangerous narcotic like heroin, eliminating their access to relief,” the ad says.

“President Trump is fighting to make America healthy again,” it continues. “He did it before by giving patients life saving treatments with the Right to Try, and he can do it again by rescheduling cannabis. Ask President Trump to end Biden’s war on medical cannabis and put patients first.”

To be sure, advocates have widely criticized Biden for championing punitive anti-drug laws during his time in the Senate and not doing more to release people still incarcerated over federal cannabis-related convictions while in the White House.

But it was under the administration of Republican President Richard Nixon that marijuana was placed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1970, before Biden joined the Senate. That was also before any states had legalized medical cannabis, despite the ad suggesting that patients were criminalized while legal programs existed.

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Bungling police raid ‘terrified’ elderly couple’s home in search for cannabis farm after thermal camera mistook the heating in terraced home for drugs den

An elderly couple who like to keep the heating on at home were left ‘shaking in fear’ when police burst into their home searching for a cannabis farm – after a thermal camera on a helicopter wrongly identified it as a drugs den.

Pensioners Barry and Mavis Lovelock were finishing their breakfast when the ‘terrifying’ raid took place.

Nine officers stormed in because a helicopter camera had mistakenly identified their toasty terrace home as a potential cannabis grow.

But after charging upstairs looking for cannabis plants and the strong lamps used to grow them, the sheepish officers came back down empty-handed after quickly concluding their tip-off had been ‘not fully accurate’. 

The heat signature on the couple’s roof had instead been caused by their two gas fires, which they keep on around-the-clock in the colder months.

Leicestershire Police has now apologised. They said another raid on a separate property in the street in Newfoundpool, Leicester, had found a large cannabis farm, with 79 plants being seized.

Mrs Lovelock said the ‘awful’ incident, which took place on March 15 at the property the couple had lived in since 1978, had left her in tears.

She said: ‘They told us the camera on the helicopter had noticed our roof glowing white but that was just because we have the heating on all of the time.

‘People of our age feel the cold so we need the heating on. 

‘We have two new gas fires downstairs and the gas engineer told us they will warm the whole house and they do. We keep the doors open and the heat circulates. We have electric wall heaters too, but we only need to put the electric heater on in the back bedroom.’

She said the couple had just finished their breakfast when she noticed a group of police officers outside as her husband, a retired water board worker, went to make another cup of tea.

Mrs Lovelock said that police then ‘hit the door’, prompting Mr Lovelock to shout: ‘Hang on mate’, before somebody shouted ‘Stand clear’ from the street outside.

She added: ‘They just rammed the door in. It was awful. They knocked the gate at the back in as well.

‘It was terrifying and I said to them, ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing? There’s two pensioners here.’

The couple, who celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary last year, were shown a warrant with their house number on it.

Mrs Lovelock, a former hospital worker, added: ‘They got in and two of them ran upstairs, but they only went to the top of the stairs and ran back down.

‘I think there were about nine of them altogether, maybe more.

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Feds Say Marijuana Can Be ‘Summarily’ Seized From State-Legal Businesses—But Not If It’s Rescheduled

Federal agencies tasked with border security are contesting a lawsuit from New Mexico marijuana businesses that have had their state-legal products and other assets seized—arguing that, because cannabis is a Schedule I drug under federal law, it can be “summarily” taken.

But that might not be the case if marijuana was moved to Schedule III, the the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) suggested in a new federal court filing.

As a proposal to federally reschedule cannabis sits in limbo—with administrative hearings on the Biden administration-initiated reform effort delayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)—the agencies indicated that the potential policy change could impact their own forfeiture authorities.

In a memorandum submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico on Friday, DHS and CBP expanded on several previously voiced arguments on why the judge should support their motion to have the underlying lawsuit dismissed, challenging the idea that the marijuana-related seizures from state-licensed cannabis businesses is unconstitutional.

As they previously emphasized, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), and so seizing the property at border checkpoints within New Mexico is consistent with federal law, regardless of the state’s decision to legalize cannabis.

“It is beyond dispute that the Controlled Substances Act is a valid exercise of Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause” of the U.S. Constitution, it says.

It acknowledged that DEA is currently considering rescheduling. However, since “no reclassification has occurred to date, marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance.”

Notably, the memorandum suggested that the forfeiture process would be different if cannabis was classified as a Schedule III drug or lower.

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Montana Senate Approves Bill To Shift Marijuana Revenue From Conservation Programs To Police And Addiction Treatment

The Montana Senate on Thursday advanced a measure to change what programs receive more than $60 million in funding from recreational marijuana tax revenue.

Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, is carrying Senate Bill 307 to shift marijuana tax revenue away from Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks programs, and bolster marijuana prevention and enforcement operations.

McGillvray framed the bill as a “simple” policy choice, and asked legislators whether they care more about children and those impacted by marijuana, or wildlife habitat.

“I would submit to you that the deer, the elk, the ducks, the geese are all doing pretty good in Montana,” McGillvray said, adding that FWP has “buckets” of money they could spend.

“I’m asking [us] to prioritize the babies, the moms, the teenagers, the children, the adults that are addicted to this and need a way out,” he said.

But opponents said that the funding was allocated for FWP programs for a reason, and that if the Legislature wants to address prevention efforts, they should tackle that separately.

Sen. Sara Novak, D-Anaconda, served on the Business and Labor Committee during the 2021 session, when recreational marijuana was legalized with support from conservation groups counting on some of the revenue.

“We worked very hard on a big piece of legislation that put all the guiderails around the legalization of marijuana, and it included the allocation of revenue sources,” Novak said. “I do wholeheartedly think we need to take a hard look at prevention, education, treatment, the crime that goes along with all of that and the whole trickle effect, I just don’t think that this bill is the way to go about doing that.”

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Using Psychedelics Is Tied To 25% Lower Likelihood Of ‘Frequent Bad Headaches,’ Study Shows

People who have used so-called “classic psychedelics” such as psilocybin or LSD are less likely to report having frequent bad headaches, a new study concludes.

The results, authors wrote this month in the Journal of Pharmacology, “add to the literature suggesting classic psychedelics as a possible future prophylactic treatment option for primary headache disorders.”

Researchers gathered data from 11,419 records collected from 1999 to 2000 as part of the British Child Development Study 1958, which follows a cohort of people born over the course of a single week in March 1958.

Specifically, they looked at responses to three questions: “Do you often have bad headaches?” “Have you ever tried LSD, also known as acid or trips?” and “Have you ever tried magic mushrooms?”

The team’s analysis showed that “lifetime use of classic psychedelics was associated with 25% lower odds of having frequent bad headaches.”

There are, of course, limitations as to what conclusions can be drawn from the observational nature of the study.

“Although we have proposed a direction of association, we cannot draw any causal inferences about the association between lifetime use of classic psychedelics and frequent bad headaches,” they wrote. “It is possible that the negative association found is a result of people suffering from frequent bad headaches abstaining from the use of classic psychedelics.”

Data from the same survey, for example, showed that low alcohol use was associated with higher likelihood of frequent bad headaches. In that case, authors interpreted the finding by saying it “may be explained by individuals experiencing frequent bad headaches choosing to abstain from alcohol,” noting that alcohol is understood to be a trigger for headaches.

Overall, 16 percent of people in the survey reported frequent bad headaches. Of those, 71 percent were female and 29 percent were male. Lifetime use of classic psychedelics, meanwhile, was reported by 6.5 percent of people with frequent bad headaches and 8.6 percent of those without.

Notably, when the research team divided reports by sex, they noticed a stronger association between psychedelics use and headaches among female respondents.

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Nebraska AG Warns Of Coming Crackdown On Hemp-Derived Products, Including Delta-8 THC

Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers (R) said Thursday that he is done negotiating with smoke and vape shop retailers he says are breaking state law by selling candy and other products with delta-8 THC, a synthetic version of THC.

Hilgers has spent the past year and a half trying to persuade and sue retailers into pulling off the shelves what he calls a dangerous, unregulated drug before more people than the half-dozen or so complaints his office has received get hurt.

In some of those cases, he has worked with retailers selling the gummies, pouches and other ways to consume delta-8 products to avoid using the full extent of potential state civil penalties and fines. He’s also avoided referring them for prosecution.

No longer, he said Thursday.

He said his civil attorneys in the AG’s Office are sending letters to 35 to 37 owners of 104 stores in the Omaha area demanding the products be pulled from store shelves or the state will sue for maximum pain.

In cases where delta-8 THC sales continue or where harder drugs were offered or sold, he said his office would refer any relevant investigative reports to local county attorneys for the filing of possible criminal charges.

“We gave them plenty of warning,” Hilgers said. “We thought criminal prosecution was not the right tool. They have decided not to change. Now criminal prosecutions are on the table as well… What they should do is take it off the shelf.”

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Federal Judge In Indiana Dismisses Hemp Industry Lawsuit Over Legality Of Delta-8 THC

A nearly two-year-old legal battle is over—for now—after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit over the legality of delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) goods and other low-THC hemp products.

Judge James R. Sweeney II, of the U.S. District Court for Indiana’s Southern District, wrote the suit is “fundamentally” a “question for consideration by Indiana’s courts.”

Delta-8 is an isomer of delta-9 THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

Plaintiffs 3Chi, Midwest Hemp Council and Wall’s Organics filed suit in 2023, several months after an opinion from Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) found the products are illegal.

The opinion was a direct response to a request by now-former Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter and the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council. Local law enforcement agencies took note, with some notifying retailers they could get in trouble or even raiding retailers, according to the complaint.

The plaintiffs argued that Rokita’s opinion violates the 2018 federal Farm Bill—which removed hemp from the definition of marijuana—and similar provisions in Indiana law by “unilaterally” reclassifying their products as Schedule I controlled drugs. They also sought an injunction.

The judge determined the plaintiffs had standing to sue. But in an order filed Tuesday, Sweeney found they “have not met their burden of demonstrating that their alleged injury is redressable by the Court.”

The “problem,” Sweeney wrote, is that Rokita’s opinion isn’t binding and isn’t law.

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California Supreme Court Rules Federal Prohibition Doesn’t Block Marijuana Businesses From Transporting Products

California’s Supreme Court delivered a victory for the state’s marijuana program, rescinding a lower court ruling in a case that suggested federal prohibition could be used locally to undermine the cannabis market.

The case in question concerns a lawsuit filed by a company in Santa Barbara County that objected to the use of an easement, which is a right to use another person’s property, for the transportation of state-legal cannabis products. A state appellate court sided with the company, ruling in January that federal law preempted the state’s and that the easement could not be utilized for marijuana transport.

But the highest court in the state has now reversed that decision, rescinding the ruling.

“We are pleased the Court agreed to address that Court of Appeal decision at the Department of Cannabis Control’s (DCC) request, supporting California law and its legal cannabis industry,” DCC Director Nicole Elliott said in a press release on Thursday.

While the case—JCCrandall v. County of Santa Barbara—was specific to the company and county, DCC said that the appeals court’s original decision “suggested more broadly that California’s cannabis regulations were unlawful because cannabis is federally illegal.”

Without an intervening decision from the state Supreme Court to rescind the opinion, that could have opened the state up to litigation challenging other parts of its marijuana laws.

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