Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Oregon sees record overdose deaths in 2023 despite national decline: report

Despite the US seeing an overall national decline in overdose fatalities Oregon experienced the second-largest surge in drug overdose deaths of any state in 2023, setting a record in the state. The findings come as Oregon has been one of the most pro-drug states in the country over the last few years.

Federal data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that roughly 1,880 people in Oregon died from overdoses involving opioids, stimulants, and other substances last year—representing a 35 percent increase from 2022 and setting a record for overdose deaths in the state. Only Alaska, with a 45 percent year-over-year increase, saw a sharper rise in 2023.

Nationwide, overdose deaths declined by 2 percent in 2023, dropping from 109,400 in 2022 to 107,700. This marked the first national decrease since 2018. However, Oregon’s overdose death rate has grown dramatically—by 237 percent since 2018—far outpacing the 58 percent national increase during the same period. 

Jonathan Modie, a spokesperson for the Oregon Health Authority, noted that preliminary data for 2024 indicates a possible decline in overdose deaths. 

“Our very preliminary 2024 data show Oregon is seeing a similar trend in overdose decrease,” Modie said, according to  Oregon Live, “but we are not sure why at this point.”

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Portugal To Become The New ‘El Dorado’ Of Medical Cannabis in Europe

“We should be the new El Dorado of medical cannabis production,” said agronomist Jose Martins as dozens of workers harvested marijuana in bright sunshine at a farm in southeastern Portugal.

The country is fast becoming a European hub for medical cannabis, with its warm temperate subtropical climate — often compared to California’s — making it an ideal place to grow the plant.

“No other country in Europe has better environmental conditions,” Martins told AFP at the plantation, which is surrounded by razor wire and infrared cameras.

Set in hills near Serpa dotted with olive trees and cork oaks, the 5.4-hectare (13.3-acre) farm owned by the Portuguese pharmaceutical company FAI Therapeutic produces around 30 tonnes of cannabis flowers a year.

They set up two years ago after a flood of foreign cannabis producers were drawn to Portugal because of its favourable climate and legislation.

More than 60 companies are currently authorised to grow, produce or distribute medical cannabis products there, with 170 more having applied for permission.

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Hospitals Are Giving Pregnant Women Drugs, Then Reporting Them to CPS When They Test Positive

According to a new investigation from The Marshall Project, hospitals are giving women drugs during labor and then reporting them to child welfare services when they later test positive for those same drugs. These cases are one of the more maddening side effects of an out-of-control drug war combined with strict mandatory reporting laws. 

“Hospital drug testing of pregnant women, which began in the 1980s and spread rapidly during the opioid epidemic, was intended in part to help identify babies who might experience withdrawal symptoms and need extra medical care,” writes The Marshall Project reporter Shoshana Walter. “Federal law requires hospitals to alert child welfare agencies anytime such babies are born.” 

The problem is that these pee-in-a-cup tests are frequently inaccurate and vulnerable to false positives. One 2022 study cited by Walter found that 91 percent of women given fentanyl in their epidurals tested positive for it later. Making matters worse, in several cases reviewed by Walter, a simple lack of due diligence played a major role. In these cases, “doctors and social workers did not review patient medications to find the cause of a positive test. In others, providers suspected a medication they prescribed could be the culprit, but reported patients to authorities anyway,” Walter writes. 

One woman Walter spoke to was reported to child welfare services soon after she gave birth to a stillborn daughter. She had tested positive for benzodiazepine—the same drug she was given before her emergency C-section. Another woman was given morphine to ease her pain during childbirth and was reported to child welfare services after her baby’s first bowel movement tested positive for opiates—even though the morphine was noted in her medical records and a drug test she took shortly before she went into labor showed no drugs in her system. After another woman tested positive for meth, her four children—including a newborn—were taken from her and kept in first care for 11 days. They weren’t returned until another drug test showed that the positive test was triggered by a heartburn medication she had been given at the hospital. 

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Federal agents in Utah under investigation after FBI raid: Sources

Federal special agents in Utah are under investigation after the FBI reportedly raided the Utah Department of Homeland Security in recent days, according to sources.

Sources close to federal law enforcement told ABC4.com that the FBI raided the DHS office in West Valley City within the last several days, and at least one agent was under arrest as of Dec. 9.

Sources said several agents were being investigated for a drug trafficking conspiracy, and at least two agents are suspected to be involved in the incident.

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Florida Judge Sides With Paramedic Who Was Fired Over Legal Medical Marijuana Use

A Hillsborough County judge has ruled in favor of a paramedic and medical marijuana patient who was suspended by the Hillsborough County Fire and Rescue Department in 2019 after testing positive for cannabis use.

Judge Melissa Polo ruled on Tuesday that Hillsborough County is prohibited from discriminating against and must provide accommodations to employees with valid medical marijuana cards who test positive for the drug—as long as there is no evidence the employee was using illegal substances at work, on county property or in county vehicles, or reported to work under the influence.

She also ruled that the plaintiff, Angelo Giambrone, is entitled to  back pay, compensatory damages and attorney fees and costs associated with his case.

Florida’s medical marijuana statute does not require an employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any workplace or any employee while working under the influence of marijuana but is silent about whether employers must accommodate off-site or off-work use of marijuana.

Officials with Hillsborough County issued a statement on Wednesday about the decision.

“Following the recent court ruling involving a former employee of Hillsborough County Fire Rescue and the use of medical marijuana, Hillsborough County is carefully evaluating possible next steps related to the case,” it said.

Democratic lawmakers have filed bills in recent sessions to give employees who are medical marijuana patients legal protections at work, although they haven’t moved in the GOP-controlled Legislature.

“It’s finally what I think the people voted for in 2016 for medically marijuana coming to fruition,” said Tampa attorney Michael Minardi, who defended Giambrone in court. “We think this is obviously a correct verdict and hopefully allow marijuana patients to stop being discriminated against when they’re using medicine so they can be functional human beings in life again.”

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Minnesota Marijuana Regulators Abruptly Cancel Social Equity License Lottery Amid Litigation, Pivoting Toward Wider Lottery Next Year

The Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) Wednesday announced it was canceling the special license lottery for social equity applicants and will instead move toward a lottery next year for both social equity and general applicants.

While no new date is set for license lotteries, a chart released by OCM suggests it will now be in May or June, months later than previous estimates of first quarter of 2025.

The office said it was responding to a Ramsey County court order late last month that put the lottery on hold to give disappointed applicants who were denied entry into that first lottery time to make their case to the court of appeals. At least eight legal actions have been filed with the appeals court seeking review of their cases. A ninth comes from successful lottery entrants who ask the court to let the lottery proceed soon.

Among those denied who have asked for relief from the appeals court is a group that OCM asserts is violating laws against multiple applicants for licenses and so-called straw applicants, that is applicants who are fronts for others.

“I don’t want to sugarcoat this,” said OCM interim director Charlene Briner during a Wednesday press conference. “The 648 social equity applicants who qualified and were expecting to participate in the lottery are understandably disappointed.”

“To avoid further delay and risks to social equity, OCM is ending the license preapproval process and moving forward with opening a standard licensing cycle for both social equity and general applicants beginning early next year,” the agency said in a press release. “This step allows the office to prevent delays to the market launch due to ongoing litigation and retain some benefit to social equity by allowing applicants for license preapprovals to move into this new round.

“Leaving these applicants in limbo is not an acceptable outcome and would diminish their opportunity to succeed in the market,” it said.

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Trump’s Choice For Top Justice Department Role Says Marijuana Is A ‘Gateway Drug’ That Makes Consumers ‘Boring And Smelly’

President-elect Donald Trump has made his selection for another top Justice Department official: Harmeet Dhillon, who has peddled the gateway drug theory about marijuana and says cannabis makes people who consume it “silly, boring and smelly.”

Trump said on Monday that he intends to nominate Dhillon as assistant attorney general for civil rights. The lawyer has served in leadership roles with the Republican National Committee and California Republican Party, and she’s a frequent Fox News contributor.

For those following the marijuana policy positions of Trump’s cabinet picks, Dhillon’s comments on the issue reveal a staunch opposition to the use of cannabis, which she claimed is a “gateway drug and ambition-killer” following President Joe Biden’s mass marijuana pardons.

This choice for a key DOJ position also comes amid the final steps of the Biden administration’s efforts to reschedule marijuana—a task that the incoming Trump administration will inherit and which his Justice Department will play a pivotal role in facilitating.

Dhillon doesn’t seem expressly opposed to the idea of preventing people from going to jail over simple cannabis possession, however, and she’s pointed out that federal prosecutors rarely go after people over that low-level offense. At one point, she criticized Vice President Kamala Harris over her prosecutorial record on cannabis.

But she’s made her distaste for cannabis consumption clear on a number of occasions.

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Kansas Governor Frees First-Time Marijuana Offender Sentenced To More Than Seven Years In Prison

A Kansas court said Deshaun Durham was supposed to serve more than seven years in prison for a first-time marijuana offense.

Durham tried to sway the state’s Prison Review Board to recommend clemency, and the board denied his application.

But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) overruled the board’s decision November 6 and commuted Durham’s sentence. Friday, he walked out of the Hutchinson prison where he had spent the last two-and-a-half years.

Durham, of Manhattan, was arrested as a 20 year old in 2020 for possession of more than two pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute. He had no criminal history and was later sentenced to 92 months. In the roughly two years between his arrest and sentencing, Durham worked as a Chinese food delivery driver and stayed out of trouble.

Prison changed him, he said.

Durham said he saw “things I’m going to carry with me for the rest of my life.”

On the outside, he felt people saw him as just a criminal. Inside prison, he wasn’t criminal enough.

“He said, ‘I’m losing myself,’” recalled his mother, Brandi Davis.

“To me it was like, ‘Wow, this kid has shown he can make the right choices, and they still thought he needed to be imprisoned for eight years,’” Davis said.

While Durham was serving his sentence, Davis spent her days advocating for his release. She joined with the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit drug policy reform organization, to pursue clemency.

Barry Grissom, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas under the Obama administration, represented Durham through his work as legal counsel for the Last Prisoner Project. Durham’s plight isn’t new in Kansas, he said in a news release on the day of Durham’s release.

He said Kansas ought to decriminalize marijuana possession, use and production and craft public policies that regulate and tax it like alcohol.

“To fail to do otherwise means taxpayer dollars are wasted on investigation, interdiction, prosecution and incarceration of individuals, thereby depriving law enforcement from utilizing those funds for more meaningful law enforcement measures to keep us safe in our communities,” Grissom said

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Why Has Fentanyl Become Tool For US to Shift Blame?

The Global Times provided a detailed analysis of the origins and developments of the fentanyl crisis in the US in yesterday’s in-depth report, highlighting the role of the American pharmaceutical industry and the negligence of government regulatory agencies.

In today’s follow-up report, we reveal why the US government continues to shirk responsibility for the fentanyl abuse crisis, shifting the blame onto other countries, using it as a tool for extortion and attacks against China.

China was, in fact, the first country in the world to officially scheduled all fentanyl-related substances in 2019. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning recently stated that China has carried out extensive and in-depth counternarcotics cooperation with the US, which has been highly productive.

“China remains ready to continue counternarcotics cooperation with the US on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect. We hope the US will not take China’s goodwill for granted and work to ensure that the hard-won positive dynamics will stay in the counternarcotics cooperation,” Mao said.

Conflating Border Issue With Fentanyl Crisis

According to US media outlets, in this year’s US elections, both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates reached a rare consensus – the American drug problem is entirely the fault of drug dealers.

Republicans have heavily criticized Democrats for allowing fentanyl to surge into the country, while Democrats have responded by claiming that they have cracked down on fentanyl traffickers, media reported in October.

Statistics from AdImpact, an American advertising company, show that in September, Republicans spent over $11 million on TV ads accusing Democrats of contributing to fentanyl trafficking, while Democrats spent almost $18 million to defend themselves, highlighting their efforts in combating trafficking.

The New York Times reported in July that Donald Trump’s first television ad attacking Harris in the summer featured footage of her dancing at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop music and images of migrants crossing the border. The ad claimed that “on Harris’ watch,” over 250,000 people died from fentanyl overdose. The 30-second ad also displayed the slogan “Failed. Weak. Dangerously Liberal.”

Facing attacks, Harris emphasized that during her visit to the US-Mexico border in September, she would make disrupting fentanyl’s flow into the US a top priority.

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign stated that she would target the global fentanyl supply chain and fight for more support for Americans battling addiction, NBC News reported.

A report noted in October that this consensus reflected by both parties represents a shared sentiment among American voters – that most fentanyl comes from Mexico, and the country’s approach to drug addiction has become hardening.

Regarding why both parties choose to link border crossings with the fentanyl crisis, Erika Franklin Fowler, a professor at Wesley University, analyzed, “It’s an easy shortcut in a 30-second commercial to tie a broader issue to one that has an easy explanation.”

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