A blanket pardon of cannabis-related conviction will help to clean up some of the mess impacting the state of Maryland due to cannabis laws that disproportionately affect communities of color. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced Monday that he will be issuing pardons for over 175,000 cannabis convictions, in an executive order.

“I’m ecstatic that we have a real opportunity with what I’m signing to right a lot of historical wrongs,” Moored told the Washington Post. “If you want to be able to create inclusive economic growth, it means you have to start removing these barriers that continue to disproportionately sit on communities of color.”

Moore is the only Black governor of any U.S. state, and the mass pardon falls on the same week as Juneteenth—a national holiday that symbolizes the end of slavery. The symbolic move to pardon cannabis convictions that impact communities of color greater sends a message.

Over 150,000 of the convictions eligible for pardon are misdemeanors for simple possession of cannabis, and another 18,000 misdemeanors are for use or possession with intent to use drug paraphernalia. The city of Baltimore alone makes up about a quarter of the entire list of convictions being pardoned, the governor’s office said. Gov. Moore released a video of the executive order announcement Monday. 

A pardon is defined as an act of complete forgiveness that absolves a person from the guilt of a criminal offense, and only a governor has the constitutional power to grant pardons.  And while a pardon restores the civil liberties that are lost as a result of a conviction, it doesn’t expunge a person’s criminal record. The record remains.

Cannabis-related criminal records end up preventing people from getting employment, housing, and education. And as states legalize adult-use of cannabis, others remain behind bars or haunted by cannabis convictions from the past.

Only the judicial branch has the power to expunge a record, however expungement laws were amended in 2022 to start wiping out cannabis-related convictions if this was the only crime charged on a person’s record, CBS News reports.

It’s one of the country’s biggest acts of clemency to date. Leaders in nine other states and numerous cities have pardoned hundreds of thousands of cannabis convictions in recent years. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, for instance, issued a blanket pardon last March that is also expected to impact hundreds of thousands of people in the state, The Hill reports.

But in this case, as Maryland is home to one of the country’s worst examples of disproportionately targeting Black people, representing a move that is greatly needed.

“White Maryland residents use cannabis at higher rates than Black residents, but Black people were more than twice as likely to be charged with possession,” the Washington Post reported. It’s one of the key reasons the governor decided to act.

State leaders also spoke out about why the pardons are needed, especially now. “While the pardons will extend to anyone and everyone with a misdemeanor conviction for the possession of marijuana or paraphernalia, this unequivocally, without any doubt or reservation, disproportionately impacts—in a good way—Black and Brown Marylanders,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown told the Washington Post. “We are arrested and convicted at higher rates for possession and use of marijuana when the rate at which we used it was no different than any other category of people.” 

Last Prisoner Project Gets Involved with Maryland’s Mass Pardons

Last Prisoner Project (LPP) issued an announcement detailing the organization’s involvement in the mass pardon.

In a symbolic gesture, Gov. Moore granted these historic cannabis pardons using LPP’s “Pen to Right History”—”a pen that loved ones of people impacted by cannabis incarceration around the country have used to write letters to elected officials asking for justice.” The LPP challenges other governors and leaders across the country to use “Pen to Right History” in their own states.

LPP launched the Pardons to Progress campaign that has sent tens of thousands of letters to governors across the United States, urging them to act. Gov. Moore’s recent move was included in the LPP’s State of Cannabis Justice Report. 

“It has been nearly a year since Maryland passed full cannabis legalization, and at the same time that some are poised to profit off of this burgeoning industry, millions more remain burdened by the collateral consequences of a cannabis conviction,” said LPP Executive Director Sarah Gersten. “LPP is proud to be part of today’s historic announcement which is a crucial step in beginning to right the wrongs of our failed approach to cannabis policy.”

To verify if a Maryland resident is part of the mass pardon, they can check online or at a public courthouse kiosk. 

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According to Arizona social equity applicants and community members, the state’s cannabis program isn’t operating as intended.

The passage of Proposition 207 in 2020 legalized adult-use cannabis, and part of the law required that social equity applicants meet specific criteria. This included having annual income 400% less than federal poverty level, having a cannabis-related conviction on their record (or knowing someone close who did), and living in a zip code that has been disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs. The program stated that its goal is to “promote the ownership and operation of marijuana establishments and marijuana testing facilities by individuals from communities disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of previous marijuana laws.”

Alicia Deals and 1,301 other applicants applied for the license in 2021, and at the time only 26 licenses were available. A lottery was held in 2022 to determine the winners, one of which was Deals. “We went for it. And we won, and we won in the most grandest fashion,” Deals told the Arizona Mirror.

While Deals’ business continues to thrive, other social equity applicants decided to sell their licenses to corporate companies or other private organizations. According to a report from the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, 11 of the 26 social equity licenses were owned by corporate dispensaries, while seven were purchased by private investors and half of the licenses were associated with shell LLCs. Deals partnered with Cookies to open a dispensary in Tempe, Arizona in August 2023.

Marijuana Industry Trade Association founder and president, Demitri Downing, said in a statement that the program’s reality isn’t what the voters approved. “I would argue that the social equity licensing programs that exist in cannabis have done the exact opposite of what needed to be done,” Downing said. Others who criticize the current program also added that 26 licenses, in comparison to the state’s 170 dispensaries, isn’t enough to allow social equity applicants to take part in the industry.

The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) claims that it conducted the lottery with “integrity and in full accordance with the law,” but that it doesn’t have the “legal standing to intervene in the sale of a dispensary.”

When the lottery was held, numerous advocates and lawyers called for amendments to improve the program. Arizona Cannabis Bar Association president Gary Smith claims that the ADHS wasn’t thorough enough. “They really could’ve done a myriad of different things,” said Smith. “But they’re a health agency, they’re not a social do-good agency. They were not well suited for it.”

One problem Smith identified, according to the Arizona Mirror, was that social equity license holders weren’t forced to keep their licenses, and because they were economically disadvantaged, success was far from guaranteed. “You basically said the only people qualified for the social equity licenses are people who are almost guaranteed to fail,” said Smith. “So resultantly, small surprise—not really—most of these license winners made a good decision for themselves and sold those licenses to people or companies that were more capable and able to actually operate.”

This is why social equity licenses were sold off to more successful companies such as Copperstate Farms, Mohave Cannabis Co., and Mint Cannabis—all of which own numerous dispensaries across the state in partnership with social equity applicants. “No one else made it, to say it plainly,” Deals explained. “And a lot of people, even from the beginning, didn’t really have a chance.” Although Deals has experienced great success working with Cookies, other social equity applicants were taken advantage of by those larger companies.

Deals’ father was sentenced to 18 years in prison for a cannabis-related conviction, which inspired her to apply for a license. “But I told my dad, ‘You know, it’s a gamble for them, it’s a guarantee for us.’ That we deserve it,” said Deals. “You know, and if not us, then who? And if not now, then when?” Deals has also partnered with Nirvana Center Dispensaries, which allows her to maintain 100% equity ownership.

Another part of Prop 207 was dedicated to expunging cannabis-related convictions from residents’ records using $4 million in funds for nonprofit organizations to spearhead expungement services. Data from 2018 showed that 58% of the Hispanic population and 16% of Black people were still in prison for cannabis offenses, while most recent data shows that the numbers have decreased to 32% Hispanic people and 5% Black people.

Arizona cannabis lawyer Jimmy Cool commented on the communities that were largely affected by the War on Drugs. “We went out, we arrested disproportionately 80% Black men to white men for using marijuana, but we know Black men use marijuana at the same rate as white men,” said Cool. “Well then, that means that in Black communities we took fathers, we took brothers out of those communities. We took away their revenue and their income. We drove down the property values because of the crime rates.”

He continued by saying that the social equity cannabis licenses didn’t guarantee that it would benefit the existing communities, and that the ADHS missed an opportunity to prevent applicants from selling off their licenses to the highest bidder. “I guess what’s frustrating about this program is that I don’t think you were ever going to create a perfect social equity program,” Cool admitted. “No matter what you create, there would be some constituency that wasn’t adequately served, some unforeseen externality or consequence.”

While it’s not possible or likely that the law will change soon, Deals said that her priority is to continue to support her community, and especially people imprisoned for cannabis crimes. “Show love to the incarcerated,” said Deals. “We all know someone and just even the smallest things helps and matters for them.”

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Harrison Narcotics Act 

The Harrison Narcotics Act was signed by then-President Woodrow Wilson on Dec. 17, 1914 and took effect on March 1, 1915, establishing a federal drug tax designed to generate revenue and curb the free trade of drugs. It was approved via three bills, H.R. 1966, H.R. 1967, and H.R. 6282. The bills focused on strictly regulating the trade of cocaine, morphine, heroin, and opium, imposing taxes and restrictions on distribution of drugs without fully banning them. Before The Harrison Narcotics Act, you could buy heroin and cocaine at Sears (then Sears, Roebuck and Co.), or a bottle of Coca-Cola with a pinch of cocaine in it at a gas station with nearly zero oversight. It was mostly enforced on businesses run by Chinese immigrants and Black Americans.

Uniform State Narcotic Act of 1932

The Uniform State Narcotic Law aligned state drug laws with federal law, first drafted in 1925 but adopted in 1932. Then-President Herbert Hoover signed it, fixing the loopholes in The Harrison Narcotics Act, and forcing state drug laws to adhere. Before then, state-level drug laws were often in conflict with one another. It was passed mostly due to the relentless lobbying of Harry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics. In lobbying for the bill, Anslinger released announcements declaring that cannabis causes insanity and sexual assault. It was a major step in outlawing cannabis as a drug class at the federal level, but it was hard to enforce.

Marihuana Tax Act of 1937

H.R. 6385 was approved and became The Marihuana Tax Act on Aug. 2, 1937. The act was designed to blot out cannabis trade by establishing an impossible “tax” on the sale of cannabis. Cannabis users were taxed $100 per ounce—adjusted to $2,191.04 in 2024—unless they met a strict licensing criteria, with stamps to prove it, and that only reduced the taxes. Harry J. Anslinger’s early drug force, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics which predated the Drug Enforcement Administration, was in charge of enforcing the law. Samuel R. Caldwell and Moses Baca were the first two people who were arrested under the act just days after it took effect.

The Boggs Act of 1951

The Boggs Act of 1951 installed mandatory drug sentences—notably for cannabis convictions. For a first offense conviction for cannabis possession, it established a minimum sentence of two to five years in prison and a fine of up to $2,000. $2,000 in 1951, adjusted for inflation, would be $24,539.68 in 2024, and obviously no one could pay it. It was signed into law on Nov. 2, 1951, by then-President Harry S. Truman. On Jan. 4, 1952, law enforcement agents arrested about 500 people in one day in a series of federal raids based on the new law.

Reorganization Plan No. 2

On June 8, 1973, the U.S. House approved Reorganization Plan No. 2 after a push from then-President Richard Nixon. The bill created the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on July 1, 1973, merging three agencies—The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement, and the Office of National Narcotics Intelligence—into one mega-agency designed to stop the trade of drugs. They have failed so far, after more than 50 years of tactics.

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The Drug Abuse Resistance Education, aka D.A.R.E., has been teaching kids about substance abuse since 1983 with a mission of delivering science and evidence-based curricula. Recently, a D.A.R.E. documentary published by Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan on April 12 spoke with numerous individuals regarding the D.A.R.E. program and discussed the failure of the War on Drugs. Callaghan attended D.A.R.E.’s annual conference, which was held in Las Vegas, Nevada last July. An estimated 500 attendees were present for D.A.R.E. officer training.

Part of the conference included presenting awards for 2023 D.A.R.E. Student of the Year and 2023 D.A.R.E. Officer of the Year Mark Gilmore, from Kosciusko, Mississippi. Gilmore commented on his ability as a D.A.R.E. officer to apprehend any students who possess any amount of drugs, which includes even the smallest amount of weed.

D.A.R.E.’s 2022 Officer of the Year, Alex Mendoza of the Irvine Police Department spoke with Callaghan about shifting D.A.R.E.’s approach to drug prevention deterring kids from using drugs. “For me, it’s really about educating the youth that are out there,” Mendoza said. “To give them the tools necessary to navigate whatever pain that they’re going through. I think that if you don’t have that self-love for yourself and that resiliency, then you’re gonna go to that external source, whatever that might be.”

Callaghan asked, “Do you feel the same way about alcohol?” to which Mendoza replied, “Absolutely. I mean, alcohol is a gateway drug.” Callaghan then asked Mendoza if he drinks alcohol, and Mendoza confirmed that he does so rarely, or “maybe once or twice within a month period of time.” He gave an example, stating that he recently had an alcoholic drink at his daughter’s wedding during a toast.

Callaghan addressed this issue in the documentary, citing the validity of calling alcohol a gateway drug. He asked Mendoza if he felt cannabis could be treated in the same way as alcohol. “You know, there’s so many things about marijuana that go far beyond, I guess, really our understanding, right?” said Mendoza. “From a lot of the statistics that are out there, obviously, they say that it can be more dangerous than tobacco products.”

However, he did note that there are many instances where cannabis is being used to help patients to deal with the symptoms of their condition. “I think the problem that you run into is that you have the people that truly legitimately have a need and a purpose behind it and will use it to help them navigate their pain,” said Mendoza. “My brother-in-law recently passed away of cancer, and he didn’t want to go with any type of prescription medication. He wanted something natural and he resulted to using THC to deal with his pain. And it helped him. He passed away, but it helped him navigate that, right? And then you have, unfortunately, people that will use that as an excuse to try to use that product for recreational purposes.”

D.A.R.E. President and CEO Francisco Pegueros, who formerly worked for the Los Angeles Police department, concluded the conference with a speech. In a one-on-one interview, Callaghan mentioned that people being critical of the War on Drugs, Pegueros said “Well, there was some evidence that certain governmental agencies were involved in a lot of activity that were kind of contrary to the whole concept of the war on drugs,” Pegueros said. Callaghan called the “CIA giving crack to Freeway Ricky Ross,” or how the federal government was supplying Ross with cocaine for illegal sales. “It’s an unfortunate part of our history. But evidently, it’s reality,” Pegueros said.

The documentary also interviewed one individual named Hailey, who was the only protester outside of last year’s D.A.R.E. conference last year. “We don’t try to outlaw sex. We don’t try to outlaw driving. We don’t try to outlaw guns,” Hailey stated. “We don’t try to outlaw all these things that come with risk but can be easily have these safety measures put in place, much like we do with pharmaceuticals.”

Callaghan briefly spoke with Bill Russel, also known as RETRO BILL, who has spoken to kids across the country for more than 25 years in partnership with D.A.R.E. to warn kids about how drugs, including cannabis, are harmful and dangerous.

The documentary stated that the D.A.R.E. program cost American taxpayers up to $750 million per year in the 1990s, up until a 1998 University of Michigan study showed that drug use continued to rise between 1992-1995, despite the nationwide prevalence of D.A.R.E.

It also reviewed the rise of the War on Drugs through actions from former presidents Richard Nixon and later, Ronald Reagan. Former President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, and D.A.R.E. lost its federal funding in 1998.

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A new technique has arrived that measures the potency of psilocybin and psilocin, great news for those medicated by mushrooms. 

Credit goes to teams at the University of Texas at Arlington, Scottsdale Research Institute in Phoenix, Shimadzu Scientific Instruments in Maryland, and Millipore-Sigma in Round Rock, Texas. They comprise the brilliant minds behind the method for quantifying the potency of psilocybin and psilocin in magic mushrooms, known in the medical and scientific community as Psilocybe Cubensis. “These legislative changes are expected to facilitate further research and potential clinical applications,” stated Kevin Schug, the Shimadzu Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Psilocybin is not a psychoactive compound. Psilocin, however, has a strong relationship to our 5-HT receptors, which are responsible for the infamous psychoactive effects. 

Schug and the team’s discovery was originally published in a recent issue of Analytica Chimica Acta, breaking down the experimentation and final results. It took ten authors to explain the results, including Sabrina Islam, Sue Sisly, and Arun Babu Kumar, among other significant team members behind the breakthrough in testing.

Here’s how they did it: utilizing liquid chromatography (LC) with tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), they extracted and measured the potency of the mushrooms. For those without a scientific background in the audience, liquid chromatography separates molecules. As for tandem mass spectrometry, it dissects ions into fragments and reveals the chemical structure.

By combining these two techniques, the researchers studied five strains of dried, intact mushrooms: Blue Meanie, Creeper, B-Plus, Texas Yellow, and Thai Cubensis. (Familiar names to mushroom aficionados, no doubt.) The study found that the average total concentrations of psilocybin and psilocin for the Creeper, Blue Meanie, B+, Texas Yellow, and Thai Cubensis strains were 1.36, 1.221, 1.134, 1.103, and 0.879%. The entire process is surprisingly described as “relatively low-cost,” which inspires hope for present and future clinics and patients.

The revelatory results were cross-referenced in two separate labs, including a non-affiliated lab, to confirm accuracy. “As medical professionals identify more safe and effective treatments using mushrooms, it will be important to ensure product safety, identify regulatory benchmarks, and determine appropriate dosing,” Schug added about the discovery. “Established and reliable analytical methods like the one we describe will be essential to these efforts to use mushrooms in clinical settings.”

Now, time for a bit (or A LOT) of history.

Mushrooms grow in mundane substrates such as dung, mosses, soil, and wood. They can flourish in various conditions. Consider it a part of their magic. Among the hundreds of species in the Psilocybe genus, the popular kid is P. Cubensis. Growing kits for P. Cubensis are commercially available, even if they are sadly illegal in many states.

At their best, Psilocybe Cubensis and other magical mushrooms can induce perceptual distortions, mood alterations, mystical experiences, and euphoria. Under the right circumstances and perhaps with the right group of people, they not only provide a good time but an enlightening one that makes you and the world around you glow (aka a “serotonergic psychedelic”). For thousands of years, they’ve been ingested and appreciated, all the way back to indigenous tribes and civilizations. Of course, to this day, magical mushrooms are ingested in ceremonies for religious and spiritual purposes. Or, in most cases, just to have a damn good, mind-expanding time. 

In 1970, Uncle Sam attempted to kill the party and curb the mushroom fun, as well as the mushroom healing. The anti-hippie President Richard Nixon and his famously corrupt administration passed the Controlled Substances Act. Nixon, a devilish general of sorts in the war on drugs, made the possession of psilocybin and psilocin illegal. Mushrooms were classified as Schedule 1 substances. In the Act’s own, outdated words, a Schedule 1 drug is essentially one with “no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse.”

Due to government restrictions, research on shrooms slowed down significantly. Not much support was ever there for it; researching Schedule 1 drugs in the United States necessitates registration and licensure by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Not an easy task, basically. It was a topic of importance that went undiscussed in the ‘70s, but eventually, the truth came into the light: mushrooms are viable medical treatments. 

The beautiful drug’s legal status continues to evolve, albeit at a slower than desired pace. Oregon – which was the first state to decriminalize cannabis in 1973 – became the first U.S. state to legalize the federally illegal psilocybin-assisted therapy. Since then, Colorado has also decriminalized the possession of magic mushrooms. As a result, more research and potential clinical applications have been pursued and produced groundbreaking developments, such as the new technique to measure potency, that will continue to improve and even save lives, thanks to all the advocates and researchers involved. 

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On Feb. 1, the official X account of The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) posted a photo of former President Richard Nixon and a caption meant to celebrate the legacy of the War on Drugs, but the comment section didn’t go as planned. Making things worse, the DEA posted it on the first day of Black History Month, which is especially ironic given that cannabis laws were unfairly enforced mostly on Black and brown Americans.

“On Dec. 14, 1970, at the White House, the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers’ Association presented President Nixon with a ‘certificate of special honor’ in recognition of the outstanding loyalty and contribution to support narcotic law enforcement,” the post reads. The post was marked with a tag for Throwback Thursday, #TBT.

A chorus of rebuttals swiftly followed as people asked essentially the same question: Is the drug war something we should be celebrating? People like Cat Packer—the director of drug markets and legal regulation at the Drug Policy Alliance and former executive director of Los Angeles’ Department of Cannabis Regulation—immediately explained why the post is fundamentally wrong on multiple levels.

“On the first day of Black History Month 2024 the Biden Administration’s DEA is celebrating President Nixon—this is the same agency responsible for marijuana scheduling,” Packer wrote.

Black Americans are arrested for violating cannabis possession laws at nearly four times the rates of white Americans, even though both demographics consume pot at relatively the same rates, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) notes. This racial disparity in cannabis arrests is much worse in certain areas. For instance in New York, a 2021 analysis of cannabis-related arrests in New York City’s five boroughs during 2020 reported that people of color made up 94 percent of people who were arrested. If laws cannot be enforced equally on the people, after decades of attempts, then why enforce them at all?

“It is an incredible affront to do Nixon today. You should remove this post. Nixon did more to harm the black community than any other President in the 20th century. And he did it with the War On Drugs,” Erik Radle, CEO of The Miller Ad Agency wrote in response.

Why is the War on Drugs Considered Racist?

Nixon’s own administration now admits that the War on Drugs—particularly the war on cannabis—was intentionally used as a weapon to target Black Americans and anti-Vietnam War demonstrators.

John Ehrlichman, who worked under Nixon and was a Watergate co-conspirator, blew the whistle in Harper’s Magazine in 2016—fully admitting the racist intentions of the Nixon administration in launching the War on Drugs.

“You want to know what this was really all about?” Ehrlichman asked. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Nixon unceremoniously resigned from office under Section 1 of the 25th Amendment on August 9, 1974 when his impeachment materialized and became imminent. Throughout the history of America, only Andrew Jackson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump (two times) were impeached in the House, however only Nixon was completely removed from office.

Other presidents may have picked up in Nixon’s footsteps. The Atlantic ran an expose in 2019 on recently uncovered audio, captured in October 1971, alleging that then-California Governor Ronald Reagan held a damning conversation with Nixon before ascending to the Oval Office. The audio transcript shows how Reagan singled out and disparaged Black Americans before his presidency. Famously, Reagan was the president who launched the War on Drugs 2.0 along with First Lady Nancy Reagan, the “Just Say No” era when the federal government ramped up attacks on cannabis consumers and drug users.

The recent post on Feb. 1 shows the level of denial in the DEA about the success of the War on Drugs and how out of touch they are with the public. It wasn’t a success: Overdose deaths continue to hit all-time highs, billions of dollars are wasted, and the drug laws aren’t enforced fairly on Black and brown Americans.

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South Dakota members of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, with a vote of 5-2, decided last Wednesday to postpone any additional proceedings regarding legislation (SB 82), which aims to limit the medical cannabis access to a sweeping number of patients, NORML reports. 

The proposed bill aimed to limit patients to receiving medical cannabis recommendations exclusively from their primary care physician or other healthcare providers suggested by their primary doctor. Any doctors who provided recommendations but did not comply with the bill’s strict criteria would have faced criminal charges.

As South Dakota Searchlight reports, out of nine bills proposed to modify South Dakota’s medical cannabis regulations in this legislative session in Pierre, seven are still under review. These include measures to increase the cost of dispensary licenses, authorize cops to search dispensaries, and require prescribers to inform a patient’s primary care doctor when they get their medical cannabis card.

According to Jeremiah Murphy, a lobbyist for the Cannabis Industry Association of South Dakota, the good (if you can call it that), news is that of the nine bills, the shut down Senate Bill 82 was the most troubling. It would have made it significantly easier for doctors who offer medical cannabis as a treatment option to face criminal charges.

“Senate Bill 82 was absolutely the most critical threat out of what’s out there,” Murphy told South Dakota Searchlight. “They got a lot of feedback from patients on that one. They poked the beehive, and bees came out.” 

In his testimony, Murphy stressed that 30% of Americans do not have a primary care physician. 

The potential for criminal charges against doctors was a crucial consideration for Sen. Erin Tobin, R-Winner. Tobin, a nurse by profession and chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, also serves on the Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee alongside the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jim Mehlhaff, R-Pierre. For Tobin, a major issue with the bill was its effort to legally define “primary care provider,” a term and profession that’s tricky to concretely specify due to the flexible nature of roles within our healthcare system. Some folks see specialty doctors for their primary care, others rely on clinics. Putting aside all the War on Drugs rhetoric within the bill, we simply don’t have a solid, organized enough health care system for it to make sense. 

Tobin challenged that should the bill pass, doctors who fall somewhere in the gray area, or would as a result, be quite hesitant to prescribe cannabis to patients who would otherwise benefit from it. “If there’s a questionable piece to this, doctors are just going to pull out,” Tobin noted.

Back in 2020, South Dakota’s electorate voted to legalize medical cannabis, as favored by 74% of voters. As often happens, in the year since, anti-cannabis lawmakers have put concerted effort into dialing back or revoking this law however possible. There are presently more than 13,000 residents who are officially registered with the state for medical marijuana access, and over 250 practitioners are authorized to provide cannabis recommendations.

Opponents additionally pointed to the lack of solid evidence suggesting that anyone is taking advantage of this current system. One must also keep in mind how it would impact the veterans, who often greatly benefit from cannabis for PTSD, who see a primary doctor through the Veterans Affairs Health System. VA doctors currently aren’t allowed to prescribe cannabis. This could be changing. 

As High Times reported, in June of 2023, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a budget bill that incorporates an amendment permitting doctors from the VA to recommend medical cannabis to their patients in states where it’s legal. This amendment is now part of the sanctioned legislation set to finance the VA for the Fiscal Year 2024.

The amendment, approved through a voice vote and introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, aims for outcomes similar to those in a House-reintroduced bipartisan bill. This bill has the support of Oregon Democrat Representative Earl Blumenauer and Florida Republican Representative Brian Mast, an Army veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan. Blumenauer and Mast jointly serve as co-chairs of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus.

Senator Merkley explained that the recently passed measure in The Senate Appropriations Committee “simply says, in states that have a medical cannabis program, that a veteran’s doctor can talk to their veteran patient about the pros and cons of medical cannabis and fill out related paperwork should a veteran decide to participate in a state program where such paperwork is required.”

Back in South Dakota, it’s also important to understand the challenge faced by Native American citizens in finding a primary care doctor. Often, the only viable healthcare option available on these reservations are the physicians at the Indian Health Service (IHS). Similar to the VA, the IHS prohibits its doctors from prescribing medical cannabis, as it remains illegal under federal law. 

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Local government officials in the Swiss capital of Bern are discussing the possibility of launching a pilot program to study the effects of legal cocaine sales on the general public.

According to Reuters, legislators in the Bern Parliament have proposed the idea as a potential solution to increased cocaine usage in a country already infamous for some of the highest levels of cocaine use in Europe. The discussion began just weeks after a select few Swiss cities, Bern included, launched a similar pilot program to analyze the effects of legal adult-use cannabis sales, the first of its kind in Europe.

“The war on drugs has failed, and we have to look at new ideas,” said Eva Chen, a member of the Bern council from the Alternative Left Party who co-sponsored the proposal. “Control and legalization can do better than mere repression.”

Legislators in support of the idea proposed that due to falling prices of cocaine and rising levels of use, especially in Switzerland, the most common sense solution would be to regulate and control the flow, distribution and purity of the supply rather than continue to fight the uphill battles of prohibition policies. 

“We have a lot of cocaine in Switzerland right now, at the cheapest prices and the highest quality we have ever seen,” said Frank Zobel, deputy director at Addiction Switzerland. “You can get a dose of cocaine for about 10 francs these days, not much more than the price for a beer.”

The measure has already passed the Bern Parliament but still needs approval from the city government before a program can be officially implemented. The measure would also require a legislative change at the national level, so there are still many hurdles to overcome before Bern residents can expect to walk into a cocaine store without fear of legal repercussions. This is at least part of the reason why the proposal is for a pilot program/study rather than direct legalization.

“We are still far away from potential legalization, but we should look at new approaches,” Chen said to Reuters. “That is why we are calling for a scientifically supervised pilot scheme trial.”

This program would be the first of its kind in the world at large where cocaine remains largely illegal for any purpose in a majority of Earth’s sovereign nations. There are some notable exceptions. In Mexico, for instance, it is legal to carry up to a half-gram of cocaine for personal use. In some South American countries low-level possession and cultivation of a small number of coca plants is legal. Many countries have decriminalized personal possession of cocaine and in the United States there are some states like Oregon which have decriminalized as well. In many countries cocaine can also be prescribed for medical purposes, though the rates or prescription are likely very low because comparable medicines exist with far lower rates of abuse. 

Nowhere on God’s Green Earth, however, is cocaine legal to be sold under the guise of adult-use. Swiss legislators hope to change that in the name of personal safety and harm reduction, to say nothing of the economic incentives that must exist for texable cocaine sales.

“Cocaine can be life-threatening for both first-time and long-term users. The consequences of an overdose, but also individual intolerance to even the smallest amounts, can lead to death,” the Bern government said.

The issue remains hotly contested both around the world and among addiction experts in Switzerland and not all are in favor of legalization. Boris Quednow, group leader of the University of Zurich’s Centre for Psychiatric Research told Reuters the issue differed from alcohol 

“Cocaine is one of the most strongly addictive substances known,” Quednow said.

Those in favor of legalization have expressed that common sense measures need to happen because of prohibition’s abject failure to keep cocaine out of Swiss cities, not to mention everywhere else. 

“Cocaine isn’t healthy – but the reality is that people use it,” said  Thilo Beck, from the Arud Zentrum for Addiction Medicine to Reuters. “We can’t change that, so we should try to ensure people use it in the safest, least damaging way.”

Before anyone gets all gung-ho about emigrating to Switzerland, these proposed changes could take years before they go into effect. National law would need to be amended, as aforementioned, and that process largely depends on the success of the adult-use cannabis pilot program currently underway. Many other measures would also need to be taken before any sort of launch date or approval process could be considered. Quality control measures, supply chain concerns and harm reduction practices to name a few would all need to be ironed out to stand up to full Swiss legislative scrutiny. 

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Yahoo News! in a recent interview that believes the end to the federal cannabis prohibition is on the horizon, with legislation to provide cannabis industry access to banking services in the works.

He’s talking about the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation Banking Act  (SAFER Banking Act) which was passed in late September by a bipartisan majority in the Senate Banking Committee. The bill would allow financial institutions to give out additional small business loans while also providing legal protection for banks that work with cannabis retailers, like any other industry.

“Its time has come,” Schumer told Yahoo News! in a video interview. Thanks to the legalization of adult-use cannabis in Ohio, tipping the scales in terms of U.S. populations that now live in legal states, the pressure is on.

It’s important to note that the U.S. House of Representatives has approved earlier versions of the SAFER Banking Act—seven times—but the bill failed to gain 60 votes in order to advance to a Senate vote.

“Fifteen years ago, before marijuana was legalized anywhere, people said, ‘Oh, there’ll be a lot more crime’, ‘People will become much more addicted’. Guess what? None of that happened,” Schumer said, noting the lasting harm of the War on Drugs, which failed to extinguish drug abuse but instead led to the harsh criminalization of Black and brown communities. It’s bad enough that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the War on Drugs “the New Jim Crow.” 

A 2020 analysis by the ACLU found that 43% of drug arrests in 2018 were for charges of possession and sale of cannabis, and even though data shows that white and Black Americans use cannabis at equal rates, Black Americans are nearly four times more likely than white Americans to be arrested.

“The bill tries to rectify some of these injustices,” Schumer said.

We’ve heard these comparisons before. Schumer said similar things in 2021, as the Biden administration was first gearing up. Two years ago, he said the sky didn’t fall when pot became legal for adult use in a handful of states.

“In 2018, I was the first member of the Democratic leadership to come out in support of ending the federal prohibition. I’m sure you ask, “Well what changed?” Well, my thinking evolved. When a few of the early states—Oregon and Colorado—wanted to legalize, all the opponents talked about the parade of horribles: Crime would go up. Drug use would go up. Everything bad would happen,” Schumer told Politico. “The legalization of states worked out remarkably well. They were a great success. The parade of horribles never came about, and people got more freedom. And people in those states seem very happy.”

Why the SAFER Banking Act Needs to Be Adopted into Law

The cash-only cannabis industry is open season for burglars and criminals who know that dispensaries are loaded with cash, not having capabilities to run purchases on debit or credit cards.

“Forcing legal businesses to operate in all cash is dangerous for our communities,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, lead sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “The only people benefiting from the current system are criminals.”

Some are doubtful the outcome will be any different this time around, after the Senate was done making revisions to the bill.

“The Senate’s rewrite … throws out carefully crafted bipartisan work and crams in gross overreach to potentially crush industries not in line with the president’s agenda,” Republican Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer told Politico in September. “As it’s currently written, it is dead on arrival in the House.”

The SAFER Banking Act advanced in the Senate Banking Committee last September, clearing a big hurdle in the path to legal cannabis businesses potentially moving away from the dangerous cash-only system they currently operate on.

“Cannabis banking is just one part of the necessary conversation about marijuana policy. There is still much work to be done to acknowledge and mend the damage done by the war on drugs, work to make sure everyone—including our veterans—has access to the medicine they need and allow medical and scientific research on cannabis,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Sherrod Brown, in a press release.

SAFER Banking would provide much-needed legal protections for financial institutions to serve businesses in the currently cash-dependent cannabis trade.

If passed, the SAFER Banking Act could provide a much needed lifeline for an industry forced to do business in cash which puts thousands of budtenders, delivery drivers, growers and other ancillary cannabis sector employees at risk of violent crime. It would also provide capital for businesses currently forced to operate using their own money or capital secured through private sources.

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Thousands of cannabis shops opened across Thailand after the nation became the first in Asia to decriminalize cannabis, and there are no signs of a slowdown as opposition to the industry grows, led by the country’s new prime minister. 

On June 9, 2022, Thailand removed cannabis from the nation’s list of banned drugs, making the country the first Asian nation to decriminalize pot. Government officials claimed that the move does not legalize cannabis for recreational purposes. Under Thailand’s new regulations, marijuana and hemp cultivation and commerce are no longer illegal. Restaurants and cafes are permitted to sell foods and beverages infused with cannabis, but only if they contain no more than 0.2% THC. Products with higher concentrations of THC are allowed for medical purposes.

Thailand’s new prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, declared war on drugs as a national agenda in his campaign, Bangkok Post reports, focusing on meth, but with part of the plan to scale back the country’s cannabis policy. “A consensus has been reached among the 11 coalition parties as well as all other parties in the opposition that the need to tackle the drugs problem is high on the agenda,” he said. “Let’s make today the start of a new fight to stamp out drug problems from society.” The falling price of meth in the country led to a surge in use. He also vowed to reclassify cannabis as a narcotic.

Thailand’s new leadership is rushing to rewrite the nation’s cannabis policy after around 6,000 cannabis shops opened up, and people found legal loopholes to sell psychoactive cannabis despite the country’s low limit on THC. 

The Strait Times reports the new law created a “regulatory vacuum,” following last year’s decriminalization measure, and it created a green rush with over 6,000 dispensaries spanning across the country.

Some in favor of cannabis, however, argued that adding new regulations, such as a track and trace system used for narcotics, could actually benefit consumers.

The massive growth isn’t being ignored, but leaders say the industry policies have to be revised. Health Minister Cholnan Srikaew said in a statement late on Tuesday, “Between economic and health benefits, we put health first.”

A new draft of Thailand’s cannabis bill failed to clear parliamentary hurdles before an election in May. The bill was significantly rewritten due to concerns that misuse of cannabis could lead to addiction.

The Guardian reports that Thavisin, has said his administration will “rectify” the country’s cannabis law and limit its use to medical purposes—all within six months. PM Srettha came into power last August, and ran his campaign under the Pheu Thai Party—with a hardline anti-drug agenda, promising to control the nation’s exploding cannabis market. Furthermore, the Pheu Thai Party is now in a coalition with Bhumjaithai Party led by Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, which led to the decriminalization of cannabis in the first place.

“The law will need to be rewritten,” Srettha told Bloomberg reporter Haslinda Amin in an interview in New York, where he was attending the UN general assembly. Bloomberg posted a video of the interview on X, formerly Twitter.

“It needs to be rectified. We can have that regulated for medical use only.”

When asked if there will be a compromise for recreational use of cannabis, Srettha answered “no,” adding that problems due to cannabis use have been “widespread lately.”

High Times covered exactly how widespread the industry is getting.

A four-part series by High Times Vice President of Content Jon Cappetta, starting with Part 1, covered the new cannabis scene in Bangkok, Thailand. There, dispensaries dotted the streets all over and strip malls were home to as many as 20 cannabis businesses.

Thanet Supornsahasrungsi, group executive director of Sunshine Hotels and Resorts in Pattaya, said most of the cannabis shops that are open sell products meant for recreational use.

“If we would like to use it for medical purposes, law enforcement should be stricter to make sure we can offer them medical treatment which is safe for their health,” Thanet told Bangkok Post in September.

Things have been shaping up to loosen cannabis laws for years in the country. In 2018, Thailand became the first Southeast Asian nation to legalize cannabis for medical use. Two years later, the Thai cabinet approved amendments to the country’s drug laws to allow for the production and sale of medical cannabis, including flower. 

Thailand remains an island of tolerance of cannabis, amid other countries like Singapore and Malaysia that impose strict corporal and capital punishments for cannabis-related offenses.

The country’s new prime minister aims to change that, ensuring that only medical dispensaries stay put.

The draft bill will likely be submitted for Cabinet approval in December. 

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