Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Purdue Pharma Files New Bankruptcy Plan For $7.4 Billion Opioid Settlement

Drugmaker Purdue Pharma filed a new bankruptcy plan on Tuesday, marking a major step towards finalizing a proposed opioid settlement of $7.4 billion.

The maker of the powerful semi-synthetic opioid oxycodone—also marketed as OxyContin and by other names—filed a Chapter 11 reorganization plan and related disclosure statement with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

According to a statement announcing the proposal, a new public benefit company “100 percent devoted to improving the lives of Americans,” would be created after Purdue is dissolved, and its assets transferred to the new company.

The Sackler family, which previously owned Purdue Pharma, would “have no ownership interest or role with the new company,” according to the statement, which noted family members have had no involvement in Purdue since the end of 2018.

The new company would have a core mission to abate the opioid crisis and improve public health, including by developing and distributing lifesaving opioid use disorder and overdose rescue medicines for no profit, the statement said.

It would also be run by a board appointed by state governments, the statement added.

Assuming full creditor participation, the plan would see the Sacklers pay out approximately $6.5 billion in installments over the next 15 years—subject to certain reserves—to states, local governments, and individuals harmed by the crisis.

They would pay $1.5 billion on the day the reorganization plan becomes effective and Purdue would contribute 100 percent of its assets, “with an expected $900 million in cash available for distribution on the day of emergence,” according to the statement.

Purdue said it expects widespread creditor support for the deal.

According to the statement, the latest plan “is the only opioid settlement to date that meaningfully compensates individual victims” and, assuming full participation, “individual victims will receive more than $850 million, subject to certain reserves.”

A court hearing to approve the disclosure statement is currently expected to take place in May, according to the statement.

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Operation Midnight Climax: A CIA Sex, Drugs and Surveillance Program

Key Takeaways

  • Operation Midnight Climax was a CIA experiment in San Francisco from the 1950s to 1960s testing the effects of LSD and sex on men’s behavior.
  • The experiment was part of the larger MKULTRA program aimed at developing mind-control capabilities.
  • The CIA used prostitutes to lure men to a wired bordello for surveillance, but the unethical program was terminated in 1967.

From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, men in San Francisco who patronized prostitutes ran the risk of becoming unwitting participants in a clandestine CIA experiment. It was designed to test whether the combination of sex and the hallucinogenic drug LSD might influence the men to reveal information that the government wanted. What information, nobody is really sure.

The experiment, known as Operation Midnight Climax inside the CIA, was part of a larger research program code-named MKULTRA. The agency launched MKULTRA out of worries that the Soviet Union had developed a mind-control drug.

CIA officials had observed the vacant gaze and trance-like behavior of Hungarian cleric Cardinal József Mindszenty at a show trial in Budapest in 1949. They were convinced that his confession had been extracted with chemicals, according to a 1977 New York Times article and decided that the U.S. needed to have similar capabilities.

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Texas Senate Passes Bill To Ban Hemp-Derived THC Products As New Poll Shows Voters Support Keeping Market Legal

The Texas Senate has approved a bill that cannabis advocates and stakeholders say would effectively eradicate the state’s hemp industry, prohibiting consumable products derived from the plant that contain any amount of THC.

This comes as a new poll shows overwhelming public support for keeping consumable hemp products legal, while strictly regulated.

With the backing of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R)—who held a press conference criticizing the hemp market on Wednesday after visiting stores that sell cannabinoid products—the hemp ban legislation from Sen. Charles Perry (R) passed the full chamber in a 24-7 vote.

Under the bill, only non-intoxicating CBD and CBG items could be sold, even though hemp with up to 0.3 percent THC by dry weight was legalized at the federal level in 2018. Supporters argue that re-criminalizing cannabis with any traces of THC is necessary to close a loophole in the state’s own hemp law that’s allowed for the proliferation of businesses selling intoxicating products.

“For those that argue that this should just be more regulation and tax, there’s not enough tax that we can collect that will deal with the behavioral health issues and the addictions that we currently face,” Perry said on the Senate floor. “It would be in the billions. It’s unenforceable because every day a new product hits the shelf that was at the whim of a chemist.”

“What they have created and what they’re doing is akin to K2 and Spice and bath salts of the past that we as a legislature voted out of existence as soon as possible,” he said. “The effect of what this drug is doing to the people that are involved in it—contrary to what you hear—is devastating lives. It’s generational. It is creating psychosis. It’s creating paranoia.”

Senators approved a series of amendments from the sponsor on the floor on Monday, including one that would require all consumable hemp products to be tested and federal Drug Enforcement Administration- (DEA) certified labs based in Texas.

Another Perry amendment that was adopted mandates that consumable hemp products be registered with the state Department of State Health Services (DSHS). Each product registration would carry a $500 fee, and they could not could not contain any non-cannabinoid mood-altering ingredients or additives. It would be a Class B misdemeanor to sell an unregistered product.

The body also passed an amendment to make it a felony offense for to operate a hemp manufacturing or retail business without a license or permit.

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Majority Of Utah Voters Support Legalizing Marijuana, Poll Finds As GOP Leader Downplays Reform Prospects

A majority of Utah voters support legalizing adult-use marijuana in the state, according to a new poll.

The survey from Noble Predictive Insights, which was commissioned by the nonprofit Keep Utah Medical, found that 52 percent of registered Utah voters would support a ballot initiative to end cannabis prohibition, while 38 percent would oppose it.

Support for legalization was highest among Democrats (76 percent), followed by independents (61 percent) and Republicans (41 percent).

“YES wins the left and the middle and divides the right. In a red state like Utah, that’s enough to get to a solid—though not overwhelming—margin of victory,” the polling firm said in a memo.

“Over the last decade, major political victories came from a populist-traditionalist coalition: The GOP’s wings would coalesce, form a majority together, and govern. If legalization were to win, the coalition would be built from left to right—a progressive minority joining with the center and Republican moderates. This is possible—but it requires careful execution.”

Alex Iorg, co-founder of Keep Utah Medical, told ABC4 that while the results of the poll indicate that an adult-use measure could also narrowly pass, the organization is not currently planning to lead such a proposal.

“I believe the majority now support recreational use because they see it as an easier option [than] Utah’s current medical program,” he said.

“We need to make the medical program easier to navigate. Rural, disabled, and other patients need telemedicine just like [they] can do for other medications,” he said. “Out-of-state recreational dispensaries have more advertising rights than Utah in-state medical pharmacies. We have to level the playfield.”

Here’s the text of the survey question posed to voters: 

“Currently, medical marijuana is legal in Utah, but some Utahns still obtain marijuana illegally for medical and recreational purposes. Would you support or oppose a ballot initiative that legalized marijuana for all purposes—including recreational use?”

The survey involved interviews with 609 registered Utah voters from March 11-13, with a +/- 3.97 percentage point margin of error.

Asked about the prospect of advancing adult-use legalization in Utah, House Speaker Mike Schultz (R) said he has a “huge problem with turning Utah into a recreational state.”

“It’s not going to happen,” he said.

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Florida Lawmakers Approve Bills To Outlaw Psychedelic Mushroom Spores

Florida House and Senate panel have approved sweeping agriculture legislation that, among other changes, would explicitly outlaw the distribution of psychedelic mushroom spores and mycelium.

Members of the House Housing, Agriculture and Tourism Subcommittee voted at a hearing Tuesday to advance a bill, HB 651, from sponsor Rep. Kaylee Tuck (R). The nearly 150-page measure would make a variety of adjustments to Florida’s agricultural laws, including around agricultural lands, utilities and wildlife management.

With respect to psychedelics mushrooms, it would make it illegal “to transport, import, sell, offer for sale, furnish, or give away spores or mycelium capable of producing mushrooms or other material which will contain a controlled substance, including psilocybin or psilocyn, during its lifecycle.”

Violating the proposed law would be a first-degree misdemeanor, carrying a maximum of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

A companion bill, SB 700, which contains the same mushroom provisions, has been introduced in the Senate by Sen. Keith Truenow (R). It was amended and approved unanimously last week by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment and General Government.

Prior to reporting the bill favorably on Tuesday, the House panel adopted a striking amendment that made a number of changes to the underlying bill, though the amendment did not substantively affect the provision dealing with spores and mycelium.

Psilocybin and psilocin are the two leading psychoactive compounds in psychedelic mushrooms. Although spores typically do not contain psilocybin or psilocin themselves, they eventually produce fruiting bodies—mushrooms—that do contain the psychedelic compounds.

Because the spores don’t contain any controlled substances, the federal government deems them legal.

“If the mushroom spores (or any other material) do not contain psilocybin or psilocin (or any other controlled substance or listed chemical), the material is considered not controlled,” Terrence Boos, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Drug and Chemical Evaluation Section chief, said in a memo last year. (Using a similar rationale, Boos has said that marijuana seeds are considered federally legal hemp because they themselves don’t contain THC.)

In Florida, a legislative report for HB 651 similarly notes that “spores do not contain any psilocybin properties themselves and therefore could be considered legal under current law.”

To prevent that, the proposal would clarify as illegal any spores or mycelium that could produce psilocybin or psilocin at any time in their development.

Members of the House panel did not mention the broad agriculture legislation’s psilocybin provisions during Tuesday’s hearing.

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Drugs as Weapons of War: The US CIA and the Heroin Trade

Why examine the role of the CIA in the rise of the global Heroin trade?

Three reasons-

First, during my recent travels to Rome, I learned of “Operation Blue Moon (Operazione Blue Moon),” which is widely covered in Italian press, publications, and embedded in the Italian political belief system. An account paradoxically completely absent in both the CIA declassified document reading room and in US press coverage. In Italy, “Operation Blue Moon” is shorthand for a commonly believed narrative involving collusion between the CIA and the Italian Mafia to flood dissident Italian groups with inexpensive heroin.

Second, the Chinese CCP government appears to be intentionally targeting the USA with cheap imported Fentanyl, a drug similar to Heroin in mechanism of action but much more potent and deadly. In the US, the commonly accepted narrative is that this is a form of intentional but surreptitious politically motivated chemical warfare by the CCP against American citizens intended to corrode and compromise the cultural backbone of the USA. Assuming this to be true, this strategy and associated tactics would be eerily similar to Italian claims of CIA strategy and tactics in the case of the widely held belief in the history of “Operation Blue Moon.” Tangential but related is that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was once addicted to Heroin and was convicted of felony Heroin possession.

And third, today, with what is proposed to be the complete release of the entire unredacted dossier of US Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we may be able to finally conclude whether or not the US CIA was involved in that seminal event. Was his assassination an internal coup? HHS Secretary RFK Jr. has repeatedly asserted that he believes that the CIA was involved in the assassinations of both his uncle and father.

Is the culture of the CIA truly so evil, so Machiavellian, that the organization would promote and facilitate the global heroin trade as a political weapon? Is it so evil that it would even participate in a violent domestic coup by assassinating a sitting US President to defend and advance its organizational interests? Or assassinate a leading presidential candidate that would likely act to reduce CIA power or even dissolve the organization? Well, the willingness of the CIA (and its corrupt partner organization USAID) to assassinate or in a multitude of other ways overturn sovereign foreign governments is well documented. As is the long history of CIA/USAID foreign election interference, including interference in Italian elections.

For those who have not read “The Prince,” Machiavellianism is a psychological trait centered on manipulation, coldness, and indifference to morality. There can be no doubt that the dominant culture of the US CIA is both Machiavellian and utilitarian – a belief system in which the ends are considered to justify the means. In the field of personality psychology, Machiavellianism is the name of a personality trait construct characterized by manipulativeness, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest. Does this sound like the culture of the CIA as you know it? Speaking for myself, it is a precise description of the trained CIA agents I have known during my career. I have come to believe that dark triad personality traits are both selected for and intentionally amplified in how CIA agents are trained. Picture “The Real” Anthony Fauci, and you have a pretty good example. A US Government bureaucrat known to surreptitiously frequent CIA headquarters, according to various whistleblowers.

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Prince Harry’s U.S. Visa File to Be Made Public Amid Accusations of Lying About Drug Use

An American judge has ordered the release of Prince Harry’s immigration files amid longstanding questions over whether he lied on his visa application to the United States about past drug use.

Prince Harry’s status in the U.S. may be in jeopardy as Judge Carl Nichols ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must release at least a redacted version of the Duke of Sussex’s visa application by Tuesday, the Daily Mail reported.

The conservative Heritage Foundation think tank had sued the DHS under the Biden administration after it had rejected a Freedom of Information request to publicly reveal the prince’s immigration files.

Heritage argued that it was in the public interest to know whether Harry had lied about his past drug use in order to gain entry to the U.S. after he abandoned his Royal duties in Britain in favour of money-making ventures with his wife in Hollywood.

Although having used illicit drugs in the past does not necessarily preclude one from gaining a visa to the United States, lying on a visa application can result in its termination.

In his ruling, Judge Nichols said: “The government has provided the court with its proposed redactions to the documents…those redactions appearing appropriate, the government is ORDERED to lodge on the docket the redacted versions of those documents no later than March 18, 2025.”

It remains to be seen if the redactions will include the section in which Harry was asked if he had ever taken illegal drugs.

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Florida Senate Panel Takes Up Bill To Restrict Hemp Products

For the third year in a row, Florida lawmakers have begun debating a proposal to regulate THC-derived hemp products, which have evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry in the Sunshine State.

In addition to banning Delta-8 products and restricting the amount of Delta-9 THC levels in hemp products to 5 milligrams per serving and 50 milligrams per package, the latest proposal from Polk County Republican Sen. Colleen Burton (SB 438) includes for the first time regulations on hemp-infused drinks, which have surged in popularity over the past year.

The proposal would restrict the amount of THC per bottle or cans to no more than 5 milligrams. It would ban those drinks being sold at any locations other than ones already licensed to sell alcoholic beverages, adding additional prohibitions and requirements.

“Liquor stores and restaurants that would like to sell these products, they have come to us and asked us to provide some regulations so that they know that the products that they are selling have gone through the rigor of the testing and will all be held to the same standards,” Burton said in introducing the bill to the Senate Agriculture Committee on Monday afternoon.

But that provision received some pushback.

“Requiring us to carry a liquor license when we’re a non-alcoholic bottle shop kind of goes against what we built,” said Caitlyn Smith, co-owner of Herban Flow in St. Petersburg, which bills itself as Florida’s first non-alcoholic bottle shop.

Her husband and co-founder, Michael Smith, said that he is five years’ sober and the last thing that he wants is for his store to be regulated as a liquor store when it isn’t one.

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Texas Senator Files Bill To Support Research On Psychedelic Therapy For PTSD And Depression

A Texas senator has introduced a bill to require studies on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics in the treatment of serious mental health conditions.

Sen. César Blanco (D) filed the legislation on Friday. It aims to facilitate the studies—which would be conducted by medical schools at two Texas universities—to better understand the possible benefits of psychedelics for those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression.

Researchers at Baylor University and the University of Texas at Austin would be tasked with researching the existing scientific literature around psychedelics, actions made by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and potential strategies to provide access to the novel medicines.

The study would involve an evaluation of “patient access to current treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other co-occurring conditions and recommend legislative or other actions necessary to ensure patient access to psychedelic therapies following approval” by FDA, “including considerations of provider availability, affordability, accessibility, training and licensure, and other regulatory requirements.”

Substances within the scope of the review include psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine, according to the bill’s text.

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CBD Mouthwash Helps Reduce Oral Inflammation And Prevent Plaque Biofilms, Study Finds

Newly published research suggests that mouthwash containing cannabidiol (CBD) and another botanical extract could be a useful tool for promoting oral health, controlling bacteria and reducing inflammation.

The report, published late last month in the journal Clinical Advances in Dental Medicine and Oral Health, involved 40 patients using a mouthwash containing tea tree oil, CBD oil and spilanthol, a fatty acid extracted from the Acmella oleracea plant. Authors noted growing interest in CBD and spilanthol as natural ingredients in mouthwash products.

Compared to a mouthwash containing only tea tree oil, the CBD-infused product was significantly more effective at reducing plaque buildup and oral bleeding—chief symptoms of gingivitis.

Researchers also found that the CBD/spilanthol mouthwash maintained “homeostasis of the oral microbiome, thereby reducing the levels of bacteria that can affect periodontal health.”

The findings stand to benefit more than just oral health, authors noted, writing that inflammation in the mouth “has been demonstrated to correlate with the health status of the entire organism.”

“Prolonged, unaddressed inflammation, instigated by plaque bacteria and their interaction with the host immune system,” the paper says, “results in the deterioration of the supporting tissues of the teeth, as well as elevated levels of inflammatory mediators, which in turn, increases the risk of developing diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and complications during pregnancy.”

In the study, participants who had oral inflammation and demonstrated what’s called “bleeding while probing” (BOP) showed a “significant reduction in BOP index values,” researchers observed.

They noted that CBD and spilanthol share characteristics that appear to help address oral inflammation and bleeding.

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