Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Pennsylvania Senator Announces New Marijuana Legalization Bill After Committee Defeats House-Passed Reform Proposal

A Pennsylvania Democratic senator has announced his intent to file a new bill to legalize marijuana in the state, calling on colleagues to join him on the measure days after a Senate committee killed a separate House-passed proposal to enact cannabis legalization with state-run stores.

In a cosponsorship memo circulated last week, Sen. Marty Flynn (D) said his bill would establish a “responsible framework for cultivation, distribution, and retail sales to adults aged 21 and over,” indicating that the legislation will follow a more conventional regulatory model for cannabis.

“This legislation represents a commonsense opportunity to modernize our cannabis laws by delivering lasting economic benefits to communities across the Commonwealth while balancing individual liberty with public safety,” he said of the bill, which will be called the Keystone Cannabis Act.

Notably, Flynn put out an earlier cosponsorship memo in 2022 that detailed a bill he said he’d be introducing that would have sought to legalize marijuana through a state-run model, similar to the legislation that narrowly advanced through the House only to be rejected in a Senate committee last week.

The new memo signals his forthcoming legislation will steer clear of the controversial proposal, placing regulatory responsibility in the hands of the state Departments of Health, Agriculture and Community and Economic Development, as well as the attorney general and state police.

It would also create a Commonwealth Community Reinvestment and Infrastructure Fund, using marijuana tax revenue—which Flynn estimates will be upwards of $500 million annually—to support the revitalization of rural areas, infrastructure initiatives and local grants for “law enforcement, public health, and educational programs focused on substance use prevention and mental health.”

There would also be equity components embedded in the measure, including provisions that would prioritize cannabis business licensing for those from communities disproportionately impacted by prohibition and creating a pathway for expunging past marijuana records.

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Minnesota Tribe Opens State’s First Recreational Marijuana Store Off Reservation Lands, As Cities Plan Government-Run Dispensaries

A Native American tribe over the weekend opened Minnesota’s first-ever legal recreational marijuana store outside of a reservation. The new shop, in Moorhead, will be followed next month by another location in St. Cloud that will also be operated by the White Earth Nation.

Meanwhile, as Minnesota’s adult-use cannabis market gets up and running, more than a dozen cities and counties are seeking to open their own, government-run stores.

“This has never been done before, being the first to be able to open an off-reservation dispensary, let alone just the first dispensary in the state,” Zach Wilson, CEO of White Earth Nation’s cannabis business, Waabigwan Mashkiki, told Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) about the Moorhead store.

The launch of the new shop comes after Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) signed of a landmark agreement earlier this month to allow the tribe to operate up to eight retail marijuana stores across the state.

Everything the store sells “is all completely vertical, seed to sale,” with products grown, processed and packaged by Waabigwan Mashkiki—which means flower medicine in Ojibway—Wilson said. “The only thing we don’t manufacture is our beverages, but everything else absolutely, completely in house.”

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FBI Reopens Investigation Into Cocaine Found at Biden White House

The FBI on Monday announced it reopened the investigation into cocaine found at the White House.

“Shortly after swearing in, the Director and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest. We made the decision to either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention, to these cases. These cases are the DC pipe bombing investigation, the cocaine discovery at the prior administration’s White House, and the leak of the Supreme Court Dobbs case. I receive requested briefings on these cases weekly and we are making progress. If you have any investigative tips on these matters that may assist us then please contact the FBI,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said.

A baggy of cocaine was discovered in the West Wing after Hunter Biden visited the White House in early July 2023.

The Secret Service closed its investigation into the Biden White House cocaine scandal without conducting any interviews.

No suspect was identified.

According to CNN, the baggy of cocaine was “found in a blind spot for surveillance cameras.”

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$67 In France And $798 In US – Why Prescription Drug Prices Are So High In America

Prescription drugs cost more in the United States than anywhere else in the world. President Donald Trump and some bipartisan senators want to change that.

Trump has so far issued several actions related to prescription drug prices. The latest, announced May 12, is a Most Favored Nation Prescription Drug policy, requiring pharmaceutical companies to offer their lowest price to U.S. customers.

An earlier order aimed to ensure that the middlemen in the drug supply chain can’t hold on to rebates provided by pharmaceutical companies and instead must pass savings on to Medicare beneficiaries.

In all, the president has taken at least a dozen actions to reduce prescription drug costs, while no less than nine Senate bills aim for the same results.

Some of these ideas have been introduced before.

Trump’s Most Favored Nation pricing plan was introduced near the end of his first term.

The plan was stalled by court challenges, and President Joe Biden dropped it shortly after taking office.

A plan to make vendors pass manufacturer discounts on to Medicare beneficiaries was proposed in 2020. Biden rescinded it before it took effect.

There have been modest successes, including a pilot program begun by Trump in 2020 to cap insulin costs for Medicare Part B beneficiaries at $35 per month. At the time, a single vial of insulin cost about $100 in the United States.

That program was a success, and the idea was later broadened to include all Medicare beneficiaries through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. By 2024, most major drug companies had voluntarily limited out-of-pocket expenses for insulin for all U.S. customers to $35.

Yet Americans still pay nearly three times as much for prescription medication as any peer nation, often even more.

Trulicity, a medication for Type 2 diabetics, was listed for $67 in France, according to a 2021 Government Accountability Report. In the United States, it cost $798.

Meanwhile, Remlivid, an oral cancer medication, was listed for $4,723 in Australia. In the United States, it was listed at almost five times that price: $22,048.

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Nebraska Lawmakers Reject Amendment To Protect Doctors Who Recommend Medical Marijuana

A late legislative attempt Wednesday to give additional protections to health care practitioners who recommend medical cannabis to Nebraska patients fell well short of moving forward a day after a broader medical cannabis regulatory bill stalled.

State Sen. John Cavanaugh (D) of Omaha sought to add those physician liability protections Wednesday to a broader Health and Human Services Committee bill: Legislative Bill 376. The measure seeks to slash various reporting requirements and make other changes primarily in the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

Cavanaugh said his effort was a “solution” that would be a “small but meaningful step” for some of the families who showed up Tuesday for LB 677, the medical cannabis regulatory bill from State Sen. Ben Hansen (R) of Blair. LB 677 failed 23–22, falling 10 votes short of overcoming an all-day filibuster.

“Give these families some hope, some opportunity to get access to what the voters approved at over 70 percent,” Cavanaugh told his colleagues. “Vote to give doctors some small protection if they follow their conscience and their training.”

Under the ballot measures approved in November, a patient can possess up to 5 ounces of medical cannabis for any condition with a health care practitioner’s recommendation.

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GOP Senator Who Opposes Marijuana Legalization Complains About Federal Alcohol Guidelines Recommending Americans Drink Less

A GOP senator is complaining about pending revisions to federal guidelines that could recommend Americans drink less alcohol, even as he maintains his strong opposition to legalizing marijuana.

As the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) works to finalize updated dietary guidance for Americans, which will be partly informed by a study that some expect will recommend further reducing alcohol intake, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is standing strong in defense of alcohol’s legal status.

“Wasting taxpayer dollars on studies to ban alcohol is exactly why [former President Joe Biden] and his cronies were voted out of the White House,” he told The Washington Reporter.

To be clear, the study that’s being carried out by SAMHSA’s Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD) isn’t intended to impose a “ban” on alcohol. Rather, it’s meant to provide updated data on the potential risks of alcohol use, with findings that could be incorporated into the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which is not legally binding for consumers.

But Cotton’s comment reflects a policy disconnect that has long frustrated cannabis reform advocates who’ve long argued that, if alcohol is legal and regulated, it’s nonsensical to continue prohibiting marijuana, which many studies show is comparably safer and therapeutically beneficial for many patients.

If pursuing a ban on alcohol is a waste of taxpayer dollar, as the senator suggested, it’s notable he doesn’t feel similarly about the millions of dollars that continue to be spent arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating people over cannabis. But instead, Cotton has long maintained opposition to legalizing marijuana, including through an initiative to end cannabis prohibition that appeared on Arkansas’s 2022 ballot.

While he said in 2018 that he respected the will of voters in his state to legalize medical cannabis, he didn’t think the federal government should as much as decriminalize it. And in 2023, he sharply criticized then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for proposing criminal justice provisions he wanted to add to a bipartisan marijuana banking bill, claiming Schumer was supporting “letting drug traffickers out of prison.”

In any case, Cotton isn’t the first senator to take a conflicting position on alcohol and marijuana as it concerns the SAMHSA study. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), another staunch cannabis prohibition, made headlines in 2023 said that federal officials “can kiss my ass” if they decide to reduce the recommended maximum consumption of alcohol to two drinks per week.

“What is it with liberals and wanting to control every damn aspect of your life?” he said during an interview with Newsmax.

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USDA Trade Committee That Promotes Hemp Internationally To Be Closed Under Trump Executive Order

The Trump administration is moving to terminate trade advisory committees under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), including one that had been expanded to include hemp industry representatives to promote the crop internationally.

In a notice published in the Federal Register on Monday, USDA advised that it will be going forward with the termination of the committees in compliance with an executive order President Donald Trump signed in February that’s meant to reduce the size of the federal government across multiple agencies. The plan has been paused, however, as USDA is now asking the White House to advise on how to most efficiently facilitate the terminations.

This means the Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee (ATAC) for Trade in Tobacco, Cotton, Peanuts, and Hemp—among six other committees focused on different crops—will be shuttered. 

“It’s certainly a concern,” Jonathan Miller, general counsel at the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, told Marijuana Moment on Wednesday. “You know, the irony has been, for the past decade, we’ve wanted to be treated like every other commodity—and we got that when it comes to this commission. Now, with this broad focus we’re potentially being penalized.”

However, he said that in light of certain policy reversal amid the Trump administration’s efforts to cut spending, he remains “hopeful” that after a review, there will be “a real focus going forward on what’s meaningful and what’s not. And we think this is a meaningful program.”

The ATAC didn’t always have hemp in its title, nor representatives of the industry. But following the federal legalization of low-THC forms of the cannabis crop under the 2018 Farm Bill that Trump signed into law during his first term, USDA got to work incorporating hemp into its various policies and programs, which included its elevation within the ATAC in order to encourage international trade deals.

USDA and the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) have been gradually building up hemp industry representation within the ATAC. The first members were appointed in 2020, and the most recent joined this January, shortly before Trump took office for the second time. The name of the ATAC was changed to explicitly include hemp in 2023.

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The New Hampshire Senate Has Rejected Every Marijuana Bill Passed By The House This Session

The New Hampshire Senate on Thursday moved to scuttle two marijuana measures already passed by the House, including a proposal to allow medical cannabis businesses to cultivate in greenhouses and a separate bill to expand the state’s annulment process for past arrest and conviction records.

Senators also voted to delay consideration until next month of a separate bill that would decriminalize small amounts of psilocybin.

The actions reflect the chamber’s broad hostility toward drug reform measures this session. While a number of bills cleared the House of Representatives—including to legalize adult-use marijuana and allow medical marijuana patients to grow cannabis at home—nearly all have gone on to die in the Senate.

“These outcomes are disappointing, but unfortunately, they aren’t surprising,” Matt Simon, director of public and government relations at the medical marijuana provider GraniteLeaf Cannabis, told Marijuana Moment.

Earlier this year, Simon said it appeared “that a few senators just want to kill every bill that deals with cannabis policy, no matter how modest and non-controversial.”

All told, senators have now moved to table or kill eight House-passed measures related to marijuana this session.

One of the bills taken up at Thursday’s Senate floor session—HB 301, from Rep. Suzanne Vail (D)—would have allowed medical marijuana operators (known in the state as alternative treatment centers, or ATCs) to each establish a single additional cultivation location, including in a greenhouse.

Under current law, all growing by ATCs must happen indoors, with greenhouse cultivation prohibited.

Though House lawmakers passed the bill in February, a Senate committee earlier this month marked the proposal “inexpedient to legislate,” effectively recommending it be abandoned. On Thursday, senators voted to table it.

Simon noted that in New Hampshire, there’s strong support for broader legalization of marijuana, “so it’s hard to understand why letting ATCs grow in secure greenhouses is even remotely controversial.”

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FBI Says Global Operation Led to 270 Arrests Targeting Dark-Web Drug Trafficking

The FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday announced that 270 people were arrested and that hundreds of pounds of fentanyl were seized as part of an operation targeting drug traffickers on darknet websites.

The arrests were made in Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States under “Operation RapTor,” according to the FBI. The name of the operation refers to the Tor software and browser that allows for anonymous web browsing and to access darkweb, or darknet, websites that are normally not accessible through standard browsers or search engines.

In a statement, the DOJ said that “more than $200 million in currency and digital assets, over two metric tons of drugs, 144 kilograms [317 lbs] of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced narcotics, and over 180 firearms” were also seized in the operation.

FBI officials noted that one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of fentanyl has the potential to kill up to 500,000 people. That drug has led to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in the United States over the past decade or so, and it’s currently the leading cause of overdose deaths in the country, federal health officials say.

“By cowardly hiding online, these traffickers have wreaked havoc across our country and directly fueled the fentanyl crisis and gun violence impacting our American communities and neighborhoods,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement on Thursday. “But the ease and accessibility of their crimes ends today.”

An operation targeting an apartment in Los Angeles that was being used as a hub to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine on the dark web also led to the seizure of “large amounts of cash and suspected drugs,” the FBI said.

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French justice minister calls for abolishing cash

France’s Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin has proposed abolishing cash transactions, arguing that digital payments – including cryptocurrencies – are much easier to trace than physical money and would help authorities combat drug trafficking and other criminal activity.

Restrictions on cash transactions in France and across the EU have already tightened in recent years.

Speaking before a Senate commission on Thursday, Darmanin said that “a large part of daily delinquency and even criminal networks rely on cash,” and declared that “the end of cash would prevent the establishment of drug dealing points.”

Darmanin, who previously oversaw public finances as Minister of Public Action and Accounts, acknowledged that banning physical money wouldn’t eliminate the drug trade, but insisted that “once the money is traceable,” it becomes “more complicated” for both consumers and dealers to escape financial oversight.

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