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National Park Service Asks Visitors To Stop Licking Toads
The National Park Service is warning people not to lick the Sonoran desert toad, a species that excretes the psychedelic compound 5-MeO-DMT.
The National Park Service is asking visitors to its facilities to refrain from licking toads, cautioning them that the practice can make a person sick. The warning included a night vision photograph of a toad with glowing eyes and the declaration, “ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!!!,” a reference to the animated television series Futurama.
The National Park Service posted the warning on its official Twitter account last week, noting that the “Sonoran desert toad (Bufo alvarius) is one of the largest toads found in North America, measuring nearly 7 inches (18 cm).” The toad, which is also known as the Colorado river toad, has a self-defense mechanism that causes the amphibian to secrete a toxic substance when disturbed. The secretion contains the compound 5-MeO-DMT, a tryptamine-class psychedelic drug that can also be found in some species of plants.
“As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking,” the National Park Service wrote on Twitter.
The psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT is similar to the drugs DMT and bufotenin. All three compounds have been used as entheogens by South American indigenous cultures in spiritual ceremonies. In New Mexico, the Sonoran desert toad is considered threatened by “collectors that want to use the animal for drug use,” according to a listing by the state’s Department of Game and Fish.
The drug is collected from the toads from glands that excrete a toxic substance when they are attacked by predators or otherwise disturbed. Once dried, the substance can be snorted, smoked or vaporized to ingest the 5-MeO-DMT it contains.
Please Don’t Lick The Toads
Toad licking to get high is a common trope in pop culture. But in its post, the National Park Service warned that the toad’s secretions can be toxic.
“These toads have prominent parotoid glands that secrete a potent toxin,” the agency added to its post on Twitter. “It can make you sick if you handle the frog or get the poison in your mouth.”
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) lists 5-MeO-DMT as a Schedule 1 drug that has no medical value and a high propensity for abuse. But researchers are studying the compound to determine if it can be therapeutically beneficial for people with a variety of mental health conditions including depression and anxiety. Alan K. Davis, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow in the Behavioral Research Unit at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, noted that 5-MeO-DMT has unique properties, including its fast action and short duration of psychedelic effects compared to other psychedelic drugs.
“Research has shown that psychedelics given alongside psychotherapy help people with depression and anxiety. However, psychedelic sessions usually require 7 – 8 hours per session because psychedelics typically have a long duration of action,” Davis said in a 2019 release from Johns Hopkins Medicine. “Because 5-MeO-DMT is short-acting and lasts approximately 30-90 minutes, it could be much easier to use as an adjunct to therapy because current therapies usually involve a 60 – 90 minute session.”
The use of 5-MeO-DMT outside the clinical setting has been popularized by public figures who have revealed their experimentation with the drug, including comedian Chelsea Handler and boxing legend and cannabis entrepreneur Mike Tyson. Hunter Biden, the son of President Joseph Biden, said last year that he used 5-MeO-DMT seven years earlier to help him treat addiction.
British scientist James Rucker, a psychiatrist at King’s College London, said this week that he welcomes the warning from the National Park Service, noting that there have been reports of people licking toads in Asia and elsewhere outside the United States.
“I’m sure the toads would appreciate their dignity and autonomy being preserved, too,” Rucker told The Washington Post. “The toad wants to be left alone. We should respect that.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/national-park-service-asks-visitors-to-stop-licking-toads/
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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