Government
California Lawmakers Approve Bill Authorizing Safe Consumption Sites
The California Senate passed a bill this week allowing four local jurisdictions to operate overdose prevention centers—sites that allowed people to use illicit drugs in a safe, medically supervised location.
The California Senate took new strides in the effort to control the steep increase in drug overdose deaths this week with the passage of legislation to authorize safe consumption sites in the state. The measure, Senate Bill 57 from Democratic Senator Scott Wiener, was passed by the Senate on Monday after receiving the approval of the California State Assembly a month earlier. The bill now heads to the desk of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom for consideration.
“Every overdose death is preventable,” Wiener said after the legislation was passed by the state Assembly on June 30. “We have the tools to end these deaths, get people healthy, and reduce harm for people who use drugs. Right now, we are letting people die on our streets for no reason other than an arbitrary legal prohibition that we need to remove. SB 57 is long overdue, and will make a huge impact for some of the most vulnerable people in our community.”
SB-57 authorizes four local jurisdictions to operate overdose prevention programs, also known as safe consumption sites or safe injection sites, as a five-year pilot program. The legislation provides approval for such facilities in Los Angeles County and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles. A statement from Wiener’s office noted that the city councils or board of supervisors in all four jurisdictions had requested to be included in the legislation.
Overdose Prevention Centers Save Lives
Safe injection sites offer places where people can inject or otherwise consume drugs under the supervision of trained healthcare professionals, who can intervene in the event of a drug overdose or other medical emergency. The facilities also offer other services including referrals to drug treatment, housing assistance, and HIV prevention services. Safe injection sites have operated successfully in Switzerland, Canada, and eight other countries for years, with no overdose deaths among people using the facilities recorded.
The legislation passed this week also includes protections for professionals who work at the authorized safe injection sites, exempting them from professional discipline, civil liability, and existing criminal penalties due to good-faith conduct and actions under the overdose prevention program. The Medical Board of California and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California would still be permitted to take disciplinary action against licensed medical professionals under the bill.
Wiener’s bill was passed as California and the nation continue to suffer the effects of an epidemic of overdose deaths, largely fueled by the opioid crisis and the introduction of fentanyl into the illicit drug supply. In May, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 107,000 people died of a drug overdose last year, setting a grisly new record for drug-related deaths in the country. And in California, overdose deaths spiked by 83% from 2017 to 2020, according to CDC data.
Safe Injection Sites Opened in NYC Last Year
Late last year, civic officials in New York City announced that the city had opened the first publicly recognized overdose prevention centers. Since then, research published by the American Medical Association found that New York’s safe consumption drug sites have decreased overdose risk, encouraged people not to use illicit drugs in public and provided ancillary health services to people who use illicit substances. As in other safe injection sites around the world, no overdose deaths have occurred at New York’s facilities, leading city leaders to call for nationwide support for overdose prevention centers from the Biden administration.
But opening safe injection sites has been a challenge in many communities because of provisions of federal law that prohibit providing a location for the use of illegal drugs. Shane Pennington, an attorney with the law firm Vicente Sederberg LLP, said that action on authorizing safe consumption sites across the country is needed at the federal level.
“The Biden administration promised to bring harm-reduction strategies to the fight against the U.S. overdose epidemic. Safe consumption sites are one such strategy that mountains of evidence proves saves lives,” Pennington wrote in an email to High Times. “The fact that the Federal government is inexplicably dragging its feet in implementing that strategy should not cause the states to do the same. Safe consumption sites save lives. I hope the Governor signs the California bill into law and other states pass similar life-saving measures as soon as possible.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/california-lawmakers-approve-bill-authorizing-safe-consumption-sites/
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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