Business
Sen. Fetterman Calls Himself ‘Advocate of Psychedelics,’ Promotes Mushrooms For PTSD
John Fetterman made the comments last week during an agriculture hearing.
Sen. John Fetterman offered full-throated support for psychedelics as a form of mental health therapy, bringing the emerging drug reform movement to Capitol Hill.
Fetterman, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, made the comments on Wednesday during Senate Agriculture subcommittee hearing, saying he’s “been an advocate of psychedelics in terms of magic mushrooms for PTSD and for veterans especially.”
“I always thought it could be—and maybe I’m wrong—an amazing economic kind of boom for the mushroom [sector],” said Fetterman, as quoted by the website. “I think it could be a revolution in mental health.”
Fetterman, a Democrat who was elected to the United States Senate last year, asked Pietro Farms owner Chris Alonzo, who was testifying at the hearing, if he was “open to thinking of that.”
Alonzo, whose Pennsylvania-based farming cooperative grows white and portobello mushrooms, said his company is “absolutely open.”
“We’re entrepreneurs, but more importantly, we’re trying to create healthy food for the community, for the U.S.,” Alonzo said. “When we look at it, mushroom mycelium goes into products like furniture and soaking up oil—and the nutrition side of mushrooms we got through research through [the U.S. Department of Agriculture] with the mushroom council.”
Fetterman is the chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research. Wednesday’s hearing “focused on agricultural and economic issues critical to Pennsylvania, including expanding crop insurance to cover mushroom farmers, advocating research into psychedelic mushrooms for veterans and others with PTSD, combatting spotted lanternflies, and promoting organic farming,” according to a press release from the senator’s office.
“This is an opportunity to decrease risk for our farmers, stabilize our food and supply chains, increase access to healthy fruits and vegetables, and support an important sector of the agriculture industry,” Fetterman said, as quoted in the press release.
Fetterman has long been an advocate of drug reform. In August, while in the thick of a tough Senate campaign, Fetterman called on President Joe Biden to change the country’s draconian prohibition on cannabis.
“It’s long past time that we finally decriminalize marijuana,” Fetterman said in a press release at the time. “The president needs to use his executive authority to begin descheduling marijuana, I would love to see him do this prior to his visit to Pittsburgh. This is just common sense and Pennsylvanians overwhelmingly support decriminalizing marijuana.”
A little more than a month later, Biden announced that he was issuing pardons to individuals with federal convictions for marijuana possession, and signaled that he wants cannabis rescheduled under the Controlled Substance Act.
“As I’ve said before, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,” Biden said in his announcement. “Today, I’m taking steps to end our failed approach. Allow me to lay them out.”
The president added: “Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit. Criminal records for marijuana possession have also imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities. And while white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”
Fetterman is also a champion of his home state’s biggest cash crop. Pennsylvania is the leading mushroom producer in the United States, and earlier this week, Fetterman and fellow Keystone State senator Bob Casey introduced the Protecting Mushroom Farmers Act, which would require “the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to conduct a study on providing crop insurance for mushroom farmers” that would “analyze the effects of threats to production, such as inclement weather and pests uniquely harmful to mushrooms, in addition to farmers’ ability to grow mushrooms and maintain profitability,” according to Medianews Group.
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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