What you need to know about the impending federal hemp ban. Hemp access isn’t done yet & here’s what you can do!

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Here’s what you can do to effect real change.

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We looked into our crystal bong and this is what we saw.

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As per a new law, the Department of Defense will begin tracking overdoses within the United States military in 2024 and begin to provide naloxone to service members beginning in 2025. 

Military overdose deaths have historically not been systematically tracked until the release of a report by Rolling Stone in 2022 detailing the steep rise in overdose deaths at Fort Bragg, which has since been renamed to Fort Liberty. The report detailed the shocking increase in deaths from fentanyl, counterfeit prescription pills laced with fentanyl and deaths in otherwise healthy young men from causes typically sustained from long-term drug use that were not labeled as overdoses.

In general, Rolling Stone described shoddy record-keeping and experienced a general lack of transparency from the brass at Fort Liberty regarding drug use, drug-related crimes or overdose by military members. Of the 109 deaths that occurred at Fort Liberty between 2020 and 2021, at least 14 soldiers died directly from overdose, though that number is likely higher if you count deaths from drug-related causes, 21 by Rolling Stone’s count, making accidental overdose the leading cause of death at Fort Liberty behind suicide which claimed the lives of 41 soldiers in the same time period. 

After the Rolling Stone report, pressure built on Congress to do something about the issue and Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) along with other congressmen began to push the Pentagon for increased transparency. This request led to an admission by the Pentagon that fentanyl-related deaths roughly doubled among military members between 2017 and 2021, much like the rest of the country experienced. According to a Military.com report, 330 service members died from drug overdose between 2017 and 2022, and 15,000 soldiers experienced non-fatal overdoses in the same time frame. 

“Real security means guaranteeing that members of the military and their families can get resources and life-saving treatment necessary to stop the overdose crisis in its tracks,” Senator Markey said in a statement to Military.com.

The law requiring overdose tracking and NARCAN distribution was signed by President Biden in December of 2022 and goes into effect in 2024. According to Military.com, the Department of Defense will be required to submit an annual report on overdose deaths, overdose locations, demographics, whether the service member had previously sought mental health treatment, or if they’d previously been prescribed opioids, benzodiazepines or stimulants.

“It’s really just smart public health,” said Professor Alex Bennett to Military.com. Bennett serves as the director of New York University’s Opioid Overdose Prevention Program. “There’s really a lot of drug naivete amongst military personnel,” Bennett said.

Part of the issue, as is the same with the civilian population, is that fentanyl is often used to make “pressed pills” or fake prescription pills designed to look like pharmaceutical painkillers or benzodiazepines which are often poorly dosed, causing people to unwittingly ingest a lethal dose of fentanyl. The Drug Enforcement Administration has estimated that about 70% of fake prescription pills contain a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl. 

“We’ve been working with a lot of veterans who use substances while they’re in the military. Transparency with data tracking like the kind the military is set to begin doing is a step in the right direction,” Bennett said. “Closing your eyes to drug problems doesn’t solve anything,” Bennett said. “It just makes things worse.”

Carole De Nola, whose 23-year-old child died of an overdose while stationed at Fort Liberty, told Military.com that drug education is especially needed among military members as the new law does not require the military to educate service members on the dangers of fentanyl.

“We should be dealing with this before a service member’s about to overdose,” De Nola said. 

It was not immediately clear how the military would be distributing naloxone, commonly known as NARCAN, which is a life-saving medication that can halt an opioid overdose in its tracks. Many NARCAN distribution programs have been established at the level of local cities and townships but nothing has been established federally, or by military leadership until the new law was passed. The new law requires that naloxone be made available to all troops by the year 2025. The law also requires all the naloxone distributed by tracked, which could discourage some military members from seeking it out. 

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2024 in weed strains, politics and more.

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As states throughout the country continue to legalize medical and adult-use cannabis, the federal de-scheduling and later legalization of cannabis is likely to come sometime in the near future. But what exactly comes with such a widespread shift in policy?

As we look ahead at the potential for federal legalization, a new report warns lawmakers about taking a thoughtful approach, namely accounting for the potential unintended effects that interstate commerce on the current intrastate cannabis markets could have on social equity and small cannabis businesses.

Report Highlights Unintended Consequences of Federal Reform

While the shift would better align federal policy with state-level reforms and public opinion, “it will also disrupt and force the transformation of existing intrastate cannabis markets,” the report by Parabola Center for Law and Policy opens. “How the nation will shift from dozens of individual state cannabis markets to one national market, and the implications of that shift, is unknown but likely to be dramatic.”

The report continues, “It is also safe to assume that many advocates for federal de-scheduling are not aware of the consequences such a policy change portends for existing and entrenched state cannabis policies.”

The report, titled “How to Federally Legalize Cannabis Without Violating the Constitution or Undermining Equity and Justice,” offers a blueprint for Congress to protect cannabis professionals in the industry, promoting justice with care to avoid undoing the progress states with legal cannabis laws have worked toward through the past decade. 

The American cannabis market is worth $33.8 billion, composed primarily of small business owners making up more than 10,000 businesses providing an estimated 400,000 jobs across the U.S.

The report was authored by Tamar Todd, an attorney whose primary experience is drug policy alongside her role as a U.C. Berkeley School of Law lecturer teaching cannabis law and policy.

Protective Recommendations for Federal Cannabis Legalization

The report makes three key constitutional policy recommendations to mitigate the risks of corporate consolidation and monopolization that may come with federal reform. Parabola also includes draft text addressing the potential solutions. 

The first recommendation explicitly preserves states’ rights to set their own cannabis laws “as designed and without disruption” in the face of federal reform. The report states that Congress should “specifically state that it does not intend to preempt, prohibit, or otherwise limit any state law, regulation, or requirement regardless of whether the state law affects interstate commerce or favors in state interests.”

The second recommendation deems that small, social equity and worker-owned cannabis businesses should gain priority in interstate cannabis commerce. These guidelines, per the recommendation, would be regulated through a registration system with the federal government, with registrations reserved for state-licensed entities that are involved in promoting industry diversity, that offer support and services to “disadvantaged individuals, veterans, or individuals and communities most affected by cannabis prohibition and enforcement” or protect the rights of workers to organize and co-own businesses.

Parabola also recommended a focus on avoiding U.S. Constitution’s Dormant Commerce clause violations. This clause prohibits states from preventing or restricting interstate commerce, additionally granting Congress the authority to regulate this type of commerce. Should cannabis see federal legalization, the report explains that state regulatory structures could open themselves up to liability under federal legalization should they keep their industries within their respective states. 

Still Time to Mitigate Risk

The report warns that, should the government legalize cannabis on a federal level without “explicit federal protections for state-based intrastate markets, everything will change once cannabis is de-scheduled. The world of legal cannabis will look nothing like it does now.” 

Without these protections, the report predicts that the end of federal legalization and demise of interstate barriers “will likely lead to consolidation of the cannabis industry and a monopolization of the market by large cannabis companies. Additionally, large corporations currently operating in other areas will enter the cannabis market once the risks and constraints of federal prohibition are removed.”

While there are surely benefits to federal cannabis legalization, the report argues that that market is “unlikely to prioritize the social equity goals that have driven many states’ existing policies.”

Parabola ultimately calls on Congress to protect state-level cannabis equity programs and limit market consolidation and monopolization, otherwise warning that “state efforts to create an equitable and inclusive industry will be wiped out.”

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A journalist and UFO researcher recently testified to Mexico’s national congress that he had discovered what he believed to be two small alien corpses dating back over 1,000 years during an archaeological excavation in Cusco, Peru.

According to the Independent, the alleged corpses were presented by Jaime Maussan, a self-proclaimed ufologist who was responsible for reporting the Nazca mummies to Gaia back in 2017. Those particular mummies were unearthed near the Nazca Lines which are a group of geoglyphs in the desert sands of Peru, some of which take the shape of a humanoid being with three-fingered hands. Those mummies turned out to be the bodies of human children which only appeared to be three-fingered. I gotta say though, the mummified beings unveiled in Mexico Wednesday look far more convincing than the Nazca mummy for whatever that’s worth. 

“These specimen are not part of our terrestrial evolution… These aren’t beings that were found after a UFO wreckage,” Maussan said. “They were found in diatom (algae) mines, and were later fossilized.”

The two mummies unveiled by Maussan in glass cases were very small, with what appeared to be three-fingered hands and elongated faces. X-Ray images were also displayed of what appeared to be eggs inside the mummies. Maussan stated that researchers at the Autonomous National University of Mexico utilized radiocarbon dating to analyze the samples and found over 30% of the DNA analyzed to be of unknown origin. The bodies were shown alongside a presentation about UFO sightings, which there seem to be exponentially more of lately, not to mention congressional hearings regarding the same.

Speaking of congressional hearings, Ryan Graves, a former Navy fighter pilot who testified before the U.S. House of Representatives in July about UFOs was in attendance when Maussan showed the world the suspected aliens. 

“Unidentified objects in our airspace present an urgent and critical safety and national security issue, but pilots are not getting the support they need and the respect they deserve,” Graves said to NBC in June ahead of his testimony in the congressional hearings. “When I served, my squadron was encountering UAP nearly every day, and nothing was being done.” 

Graves, however, was not convinced of the legitimacy of Maussan’s claims to say the least. In fact, he went out of his way to call them the equivalent of utter nonsense.

“After the U.S. Congressional UFO hearing, I accepted an invitation to testify before the Mexican Congress hoping to keep up the momentum of government interest in pilot experiences with UAP.  Unfortunately, yesterday’s demonstration was a huge step backwards for this issue,” Graves said on X (formerly known as Twitter). “My testimony centered on sharing my experience and  the UAP reports I hear from commercial and military aircrew through ASA’s witness program. I will continue to raise awareness of UAP as an urgent matter of aerospace safety, national security, and science, but I am deeply disappointed by this unsubstantiated stunt.”

Doubt was raised almost immediately about Maussan’s findings, as several researchers pointed out back in 2018 that the Nazca mummies appeared to be the combination of looted body parts taken from different skeletons which were then pieced together to resemble something that looked non-human. This was never proven, but a dozen Peruvian researchers signed a sworn statement saying, in much fancier language, that it was not cool to do that to ancient skeletal remains.

“I particularly find repulsive that anyone would [dare] to dehumanize deceased human bodies. You can’t take away the condition of human to a human being!” said Guido Lombardi, a professor of forensic sciences at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia to Live Science in 2018.

Mexico’s Congress accepting testimony on these samples of potential non-human remains is the latest in a long line of government inquiries regarding UFO sightings. The United States Pentagon reported in January that since opening up the “All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office” in 2022 they received 171 reports of aerial phenomenon which “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis.” In case all those book-learning military words confused you, that means last year Americans spotted 171 random objects hurling around our airways in a manner and speed that should not be possible according to modern science. 

Whether we’re being infiltrated by alien invaders or catching glimpses of mad human scientists with access to technology beyond our wildest dreams remains to be seen, as does the legitimacy of Maussan’s alleged extraterrestrial corpses. But we are seeing something up there in the skies. I’ve personally seen a UFO and so has an alarming percentage of the United States military. Don’t change that channel, folks! Shit’s gonna get weird!

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Leafly interviews a legal expert on the biggest news of the year.

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The decision comes on the heels of other court cases that have upheld Americans’ access to firearms.

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As many advocates are pushing for decriminalization and completely descheduling cannabis at the federal level, one Republican congressman is pushing to simply downgrade cannabis from schedule I to schedule III, which would allow for research to move forward at a faster pace and provide several other perks.

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Florida) reintroduced a bill as H.R. 610 or the Marijuana 1-to-3 Act on Jan. 27, about four years after filing a similar bill previously, along with seven other bills, according to a press release. 

The bill would direct the Attorney General of the United States to amend the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to move cannabis from schedule I to schedule III of the Act—within 60 days of the bill’s enactment.

The bill doesn’t go as far as others that would end the federal prohibition of cannabis via decriminalization or other routes. However, the bill would protect federal employees who consume cannabis, as only Schedule I or II substances are prohibited. It would also free cannabis businesses affected by Tax Code 280E, and make research a lot more feasible.

Rep. Steube filed a similar bill on Sept. 12, 2019, the Marijuana 1-to-3 Act of 2019, which would also downgrade cannabis from schedule 1 to allow for more possibilities in research.

“As marijuana is legalized for medical and recreational use across the United States, it is important that we study the effects of the substance and the potential impacts it can have on various populations,” Congressman Steube said in 2019. “By rescheduling marijuana from a schedule I controlled substance to a schedule III controlled substance, the opportunities for research and study are drastically expanded. With this rescheduling, researchers can now access federal funds to research this substance and determine its medical value.”

The congressman acknowledged that research on cannabis is currently hampered under current conditions.

“We hear every day about the positive health benefits of marijuana. Whether it’s young children with seizure disorders, or veterans suffering from chronic pain, it is clear that there are medical benefits to marijuana and I think it’s time we remove the bureaucratic red tape that prevents us from thoroughly studying this substance,” continued Steube.

The discordant nature of state cannabis laws versus federal law makes such a bill a step, albeit rather small, in the right direction.

President Joe Biden directed an administrative review into the possibilities of rescheduling cannabis under the CSA. 

Rep. Steube’s other bills which were announced at the same time as the Marijuana 1-to-3 Act include one that would strip Disney of copyright protections and specifically target what he calls “big tech” and “woke” organizations, per the announcement. 

“The Republican majority in the 118th Congress is working to make our government accountable to the people,” said Rep. Steube. “I am reintroducing eight bills that will remove special privileges for Big Tech and woke organizations, cut taxes for Americans and prevent their money from being spent on cruel dog testing, and hold our government accountable while improving efficiency!” 

Rep. Streube also takes a controversial stance on other matters such as transgender rights, and pushed to allow guns in airports and add mandatory-minimum sentences for drug trafficking. His 2017 bill would have pushed for stricter sentences for the sale, manufacture, and delivery of cannabis and other drugs. 

On Jan. 27 the bill was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, as well as the Committee on the Judiciary, for a period to be determined by the Speaker.

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