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Psychedelics Advocates Launch Political Action Committee
Psychedelics reform activists have formed a political action committee to lobby policymakers on the therapeutic potential of the powerful drugs.
A group of psychedelics activists has formed a political action committee aimed at lobbying Congress to support research into the therapeutic use of compounds including psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine. The new group, dubbed the Psychedelic Medicine PAC, also plans to encourage lawmakers to ease restrictions on the powerful drugs, which have shown promise as potential treatments for mental health conditions including depression, anxiety and addiction.
“With the growing evidence of therapeutic benefits from psychedelics, we believe it is time for the American people to take action into their own hands by electing leaders that support policies that expand access to these life-changing treatments,” Melissa Lavasani, the president and co-founder of the political action committee, said in a statement.
The Psychedelic Medicine PAC points to the adoption of psilocybin legalization measures by voters in Oregon and Colorado as evidence that such reform is warranted at the federal level. The group’s leaders acknowledge, however, that lingering misconceptions about psychedelics present challenges to progress on the issue.
“We have to convince a historically stubborn audience around psychedelics that it’s not the 1960s,” said Ryan Rodgers, co-founder and executive director of Psychedelic Medicine PAC.
“People aren’t going to stare into the sun for their eyes to blow out. People aren’t going to jump off a building,” he added. “This is about healing trauma. It’s not about recreation.”
Continuing research has shown that psilocybin has the potential to be an effective treatment for several serious mental health conditions, including PTSD, major depressive disorder, anxiety and substance misuse disorders. A study published in 2020 in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Psychiatry found that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy was a quick-acting and effective treatment for a group of 24 participants with major depressive disorder. And separate research published in 2016 determined that psilocybin treatment produced substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer.
Lavasani has personally experienced the benefits of psychedelics after using the promising drugs to treat post-partum depression and chronic pain. She led a 2020 campaign to decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi in Washington, D.C. that was passed with the approval of 76% of the district’s voters. The same year, voters in Oregon voted in favor of a ballot initiative to legalize the therapeutic use of psilocybin, the primary psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms.
The leadership of the new PAC believes that before psychedelics can be legalized at the federal level, time must be spent educating members of Congress and the executive branch about the therapeutic potential of the compounds. Last year, the Biden administration announced it was considering forming a task force to study psychedelics in anticipation of possible upcoming approval of psychedelic-assisted therapy by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“A research approach and a science-drive approach is really the path of least resistance,” Lavasani said. “It’s going to take a little longer — it’s a very slow approach and it’s very methodical what we’re trying to do — but it’s a way to ensure people feel comfortable buying into this issue.”
The Psychedelic Medicine PAC also seeks to form relationships with politicians on both sides of the aisle, noting that cannabis policy reform activists have had some success by forging consensus. But some policies pressed by many cannabis advocates, such as social equity and restorative justice provisions, have failed to gain the support of many lawmakers in the Republican party.
“We want to ensure that what we’re advocating for doesn’t create an opposition to the issue within the halls of Congress,” Lavasani said. “We’ve seen how some of the strategies employed by the cannabis reform movement have been really divisive and that’s really delayed some of the progress. That’s a real lesson learned.”
One of the lessons learned by psychedelics policy reform activists is not to advocate for decriminalization and legalization until lawmakers have a better understanding of the therapeutic potential of the drugs.
“If their goal is to reschedule or decriminalize, they’re going to have an extremely hard time,” advised Dustin Robinson, founder of Iter Investments, a psychedelics venture capital firm. “But if their goal is to create more policies around what’s happening with psychedelics in the therapeutic space, the federal government appears very open to that.”
In November 2022, two House lawmakers launched the Congressional Psychedelics Advancing Clinical Treatments (PACT) Caucus to advocate for research into psychedelic drugs. Additionally, a bipartisan bill from Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and New Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker would create a pathway for psychedelics including psilocybin to be reclassified as Schedule II drugs instead of the more restrictive Schedule I they are currently listed under. But activists caution that the legalization of psychedelics will not happen overnight.
“We’re in the hype phase now,” said Ryan Munevar, campaign director of Decriminalize California, a group advocating for the decriminalization and legalization of entheogenic plants and fungi in the state. “Everything in politics should be taken with a grain of salt. It’s not a system designed to move quickly.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/psychedelics/psychedelics-advocates-launch-political-action-committee/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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