Business
Psilocybin Mushroom Bill Introduced in Utah
Senate Bill 200 would legalize psilocybin mushrooms for medical purposes in Utah.
Following in the footsteps of Colorado and Oregon, Utah is the latest state to consider the benefits in therapy that psilocybin mushrooms can provide.
Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, (D-Salt Lake City) unveiled Senate Bill 200 on Feb. 9, a bill that would legalize psilocybin mushrooms for medical use in Utah.
Deseret News reports that SB 200 would set up a program that mirrors the program behind Utah’s medical cannabis market. Utah’s compromise bill, the Utah Medical Cannabis Act, which was passed in 2018 allows patients with a healthcare provider’s verification, to purchase medical cannabis.
The bill would allow Utahns ages 21 and older to receive a psilocybin-assisted treatment directly from a psilocybin therapy provider. Qualifying conditions would include depression or anxiety if the patient has tried at least one other treatment route, PTSD, and people who are receiving hospice care.
Utah’s Republican-controlled Legislature will likely whittle down some of the bill’s provisions. Escamilla, for instance, said she’s prepared to propose changes to narrow the bill to a pilot program capped at only 5,000 participants. Escamilla compared the proposal to medical cannabis in the state.
“Cannabis has given us a really good opportunity to understand that we can use other natural things … to help us. Now, we have to be careful, and I think we have really good safeguards,” Escamilla said.
“This is not a free-for-all,” she said. “This is not for everyone, but if it’s for someone that is desperate (for help) with their anxiety, depression and PTSD—that’s pushing many, unfortunately, to suicide, I want them to have access in a way that’s safe, that we can regulate.”
“Seeing all the promising research, I really wanted to understand it better for myself,” Alaina Chatterley, a clinical social worker told Deseret News. “And I’ve had some traumas in my own life that I wanted to better understand.”
“It’s almost like finding the antidote, in my mind, to depression, to anxiety, because the antidote is (discovering) that you are ultimately powerful and ultimately lovable and loved and worthy,” she said. “And if you can find that antidote to depression and anxiety … you’ve gotten to the root cause, and everything else gets easier.”
Libertas Institute, a Utah-based libertarian think-tank, and the Utah Patients Coalition are backing the bill. “Many Utahns currently use psilocybin illegally and are seeing profound improvement in their mental health,” said Desiree Hennessy, executive director of the Utah Patients Coalition. “This medicine should be legalized so these patients don’t jeopardize their legal rights in pursuit of health.”
The bill would make significant changes to the state’s laws. ABC 4 news reports that currently in Utah, possession of psilocybin can result in a prison sentence of up to 10 years or a $5,000 in fine.
In 2022, the Utah Legislature passed House Bill 167, which called for the creation of a mental illness psychotherapy drug task force to review psilocybin mushroom research. The report issued by the task force found that psilocybin is safe and effective.
While the task force found psilocybin to be effective, the executive summary of the task force’s report reads that the “most rigorous and cost-effect approach to ensuring that the people of Utah have safe access to the most effective programs in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy would be to wait for the fast-track FDA rulings for psilocybin.”
Last month, non-profit Utah Mushroom Therapy launched a petition to encourage Utah legislators to pass a bipartisan bill that allows the legal use of psilocybin for clinical and academic purposes.
Escamilla hopes the proposal could be considered in a Utah Senate committee within about a week.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/psilocybin-mushroom-bill-introduced-in-utah/
Business
New Mexico cannabis operator fined, loses license for alleged BioTrack fraud
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/
Business
Marijuana companies suing US attorney general in federal prohibition challenge
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.”
Business
Alabama to make another attempt Dec. 1 to award medical cannabis licenses
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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