Business
New York Approves Bill Legalizing Overdose Prevention Center
It’s a significant win for the harm reduction movement in New York and beyond.
A New York Senate committee passed a bill authorizing the establishment of a state-sanctioned overdose prevention center (or OPC, also referred to as supervised consumption sites or safer consumption spaces). Safer consumption spaces are supervised places to use illegal drugs under medical supervision. The legislation, Senate Bill S399A (the enactment of the Safer Consumption Services Act, or SCSA), would require the New York State Department of Health to authorize at least one supervised consumption site. While OPCs already exist, this bill will make it easier for harm reduction workers to do their jobs and solidify the work that is already happening.
New York City opened the first city-authorized safe consumption sites in late 2021. The advancing legislation will provide a sterile environment for people to use pre-obtained substances (they won’t provide you with any), giving them a safe alternative to bathrooms or other sites frequented. In addition, the prevention center will also keep medical workers on site to ensure folks are administering the drug more safely. Such sites also offer protection that’s not available when using the drug in a non-monitored establishment, as medical workers will be there to treat any overdoses properly. Naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses will be at the safer consumption site. On-site workers will also educate participants on safer consumption practices and information on treatment. While the site can collect aggregate data on its participants and their experiences, participants and the staff at the safer consumption site will have immunity from prosecution for the sanctioned activities.
For some history, in 2015, IDUHA (the Injection Drug Users Health Alliance) released a memo essentially directing Harm Reduction agencies to act on the assumption that people using their bathrooms would likely be using opioids and therefore be at risk of overdose, a New York City harm reduction worker explains to High Times. However, most agencies have a policy wherein anyone using the bathroom gets a knock on the door every few minutes, and staff can access the bathroom and provide overdose support (including naloxone and rescue breaths and contacting EMS) when the occupant is unresponsive. “On average, my team responds to one overdose a month in our bathroom, with several utilizations a day not resulting in overdose. We have to wait for someone to stop breathing and stop responding to a knock at the door, at which point they may have been not breathing for several minutes,” our source says. “The SCSA is an important bill because it acknowledges work that is already happening—harm reduction workers and people who use drugs and their peers are already on the front lines of the overdose crisis.”
The Senate Health Committee passed the harm reduction legislation from Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D) in a voice vote on Tuesday, and it will now go to the Finance Committee for consideration. The Assembly companion version of SCSA, sponsored by Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal (D), cleared the chamber’s Health Committee in March.
“Harm reduction works. Harm reduction is a modality—a way to approach dealing with an issue which assumes, first, that a person who uses drugs is a person, and that they have to be met where they are,” Rivera said at the hearing. “Fact number two, criminalization has not worked.”
“Over decades of the drug war, it is pretty clear that we have lost said war,” he continues. “The notion that we could arrest our way out of addiction—that we could arrest our way out of overdoses and deaths—has been proven to be a lie based on all of these years of experience. Criminalization does not work.”
It marks a milestone in harm reduction history. “Today, the Senate recognized the dire situation New York is in because of the overdose crisis and failed War on Drugs era policies,” the advocacy group VOCAL-NY said in a press release on Tuesday. “New York is one step closer to seeing Overdose Prevention Centers authorized across the state,” the group’s Users Union leaders elaborated. “The legislature needs to keep the momentum and pass the Safe Consumption Services Act out of both houses by the end of session.”
However, the New York City harm reduction worker High Times spoke with explains that this bill may be simply securing what already exists, thanks to the hard work of passionate harm reduction groups. “Every OPC will be placed in already existing harm reduction agencies. In a very real way, the bill will not change much. Last week I went to Albany with a cohort of workers and participants at VOCAL-NY, Housing Works, and OnPoint to speak to legislators who had not signed on yet. When we met with [New York State Senator] Tim Kennedy’s legislative director, I told her: we are already doing this, but because we can’t acknowledge it, we have to keep the bathroom door closed. Let us leave the door open—that’s all we’re asking.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/new-york-approves-bill-legalizing-overdose-prevention-center/
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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