Drug War Chronicle #1140 - September 24, 2021

The Taliban Says It Will Stop the Opium Trade, But Is That Likely? [FEATURE]

One of the first announcements the Taliban made as it seized power in Afghanistan last month was that they were going to end illicit drug production. But, as with other promises of change from the Taliban -- like women's rights or press freedoms -- there is a whole lot of skepticism about the claim.

At its first press conference in Kabul after entering the city and solidifying their control over the country, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid vowed that their new government would not let Afghanistan become a full-fledged narco-state: "We are assuring our countrymen and women and the international community that we will not have any narcotics produced,"Mujahid said. "From now on, nobody's going to get involved (in the heroin trade), nobody can be involved in drug smuggling."

But in addition to the general skepticism about the Taliban's plans for the country, the notion of them imposing a ban on opium production runs afoul of economic and political realities on the ground. The challenge is that the opium crop is a key component of the Afghan economy, accounting for somewhere between seven and 11 percent the country's Gross Domestic Product, and bringing in as much as $2 billion in 2019, more than Afghanistan's entire licit agricultural sector.

It is also a job creator in a country where opportunities are scarce. The opium harvest employs the equivalent of 119,000 full-time jobs, not counting the farmers themselves and their family members. The broader opium economy also supports untold thousands in the domestic trade (opium traders, heroin producers, domestic dealers) and as service providers for that trade (packers, transporters), as well as internationally connected individuals working in the international trade. The opium economy is especially strong in areas of key Taliban support, such as Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south.

Afghanistan has accounted for between 80 percent and 90 percent of global opium production throughout this century, a pattern that began, ironically enough, in the 1980s, when the CIA waged a secret war against the Soviet occupation of the country and enlisted both Islamic radicals and the opium trade in the battle. Opium "is an ideal crop in a war-torn country since it requires little capital investment, is fast growing and is easily transported and traded,"the State Department reported in 1986.

As noted by global drug historian Alfred W. McCoy, author of the groundbreaking "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,"in a 2018 article:

"As relentless warfare between CIA and Soviet surrogates took its toll, Afghan farmers began to turn to opium 'in desperation', since it produced 'high profits' that could cover rising food prices. At the same time, the state department reported that resistance elements took up opium production and trafficking 'to provide staples for [the] population under their control and to fund weapons purchases'."

"As the mujahideen guerrillas gained ground against the Soviet occupation and began to create liberated zones inside Afghanistan in the early 1980s, the resistance helped fund its operations by collecting taxes from peasants who grew the lucrative opium poppies, particularly in the fertile Helmand valley. Caravans carrying CIA arms into that region for the resistance often returned to Pakistan loaded down with opium -- sometimes, reported the New York Times, 'with the assent of Pakistani or American intelligence officers who supported the resistance.'"

And nearly four decades later, Afghanistan remains the world's number one supplier of opium and its derivative, heroin, with the latter going into the veins of habitues from Lahore to London. And now, with the withdrawal of the West and all its billions of dollars of economic assistance and with the key role opium plays in the economy, the Taliban is going to ban it?

It would be a risky move for the Taliban, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

"The Taliban can risk a ban, but it would be politically costly in ways that are more complex than in 2000 [when they also banned it] and it could lead to tremendous destabilization,"she told the Chronicle in a phone interview. "This is a country where 90 percent of the population lives in poverty. It's also a situation where many mid-level Taliban commanders are dependent on opium for their income and livelihoods for their fighters. To impose a ban would require the Taliban to maintain a high level of aggression, which would create political fissures and fractures and would play into the hands of other actors. One reason local warlords didn't fight the Taliban this summer was that the Taliban was promising them access to the local economy, and in many places, that means opium."

Even in the best of circumstances, replacing a lucrative illicit economy with legal alternatives is a long-term project, and these are not the best of circumstances, to say the least.

"The Afghan economy is more or less tanking,"Felbab-Brown said. "A massive influx of foreign aid has been an inescapable component of the economic life of the country, and now, the Taliban does not have any way of dealing with stopping opium by delivering alternative livelihoods. Even if they had a well-designed program, you are looking at decades to suppress it,"she said.

Still, the Taliban has done it before.

"When it comes to banning opium, we are looking at a possible replay of the 1990s,"said Felbab-Brown. "What the Taliban want is international recognition. In the 1990s, they kept promising they would ban poppies in return for international recognition, but then said they could not do it because they could not starve their people, until in 2000, they did it. Will they risk that again? My expectation is that we are going to see the same bargaining with the international community, but as I said, if the Taliban does try to do a ban, they will struggle to enforce it."

The Taliban also face a possible loss of the opioid market share if they enact a ban and then change their mind because of adverse circumstances, Felbab-Brown said.

"The difference now is the synthetic opioids,"she said, alluding to the production of fentanyl and its derivatives coming from Chinese and Indian chemical factories. "If the Taliban move to ban and then decide it is too difficult to sustain politically or financially, it might not find it easy to just return to the same markets; the European markets, for instance, could be snatched away by synthetic opioids."

As for how the much vaunted "international community"should approach Afghan opium production, that's a complicated question.

"There is no unity in the international community on how to deal with Afghanistan,"Felbab-Brown said. "The Chinese and Iranians are warming up to the Taliban, and the Russians will be urging the Taliban to go for a ban. I suspect the ban talk is mainly to satisfy the Russians. But we should not be pushing the ban; that would be catastrophic in terms of humanitarian consequences."

Afghan government and Western efforts to suppress the opium trade proved futile throughout the Western occupation, and now the likelihood of any sort of robust international campaign to suppress Afghan poppies appears next to nil. Outside of legalization of the trade, which does not appear even remotely likely, the only alternative for suppressing opium production is to cajole farmers to grow other crops in a bid to wean them off the poppy, but even those sorts of programs are now in question.

"Should the international community be working with the Taliban to try to implement alternatives livelihoods?"asked Felbab-Brown. "It's a difficult question and can't be considered in isolation. It will be part of the bargaining over a whole set of policies, including women's rights and human rights."

Uncertainty abounds over what the Taliban's opium policy will actually look like. In the meantime, the farmers are planting the seeds for next year's crop right now.

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Chronicle Book Review: "This Is Your Mind on Plants" by Michael Pollan

Chronicle Book Review:This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan (2021, Penguin Press, 274 pp., $28.00 HB)

A long time ago, in the days of Ronald Reagan, I once fell into conversation with an indigenous campesino at a rustic roadside café on a lonely road through the Sierra Madre Mountains in the state of Oaxaca, long notorious for its marijuana cultivation. We conversed in Spanish, a second language for both of us, about peasant life thereabouts and, eventually, about la mota.

One remark he made has stayed with me to this day: "How can a plant be illegal?" he wanted to know. This was not a question of understanding legal systems, but of wrapping his native head around the arrogant Western notions that plants -- an essential part of nature and the source of much healing -- are "good" or "bad" and that we can decree part of nature to be a crime.

Renowned foodie and plant author Michael Pollan has long dealt with that question, not so much wrestling with it as observing and noting the absurd, arbitrary, capricious, and historically-contingent laws privileging some psychoactive plants -- coffee or tea, anyone? -- while demonizing and even criminalizing others. He took on marijuana (as well as apples, potatoes, and tulips) in The Botany of Desire (2002) and plant- and fungi-based psychedelics (as well as synthetics) in How to Change Your Mind (2018).

And now he's back with This Is Your Mind on Plants, in which he examines our relationship with four psychoactive plants -- opium, caffeine, and the mescaline-bearing cacti peyote and San Pedro. Pollan recognizes that such plants are not good or bad, but good and bad -- they can heal and stimulate and they can addict and kill (or in the case of psychedelics, really mess with your head) -- and relates how the original Greek word for drug, pharmakos, meant both medicine and poison. Prohibitions crush such subtle understandings beneath demonizing dogma. As Pollan notes in his introduction:

But the blunt instrument of a drug war has kept us from reckoning with these ambiguities and the important questions about our nature they raise. The drug war's simplistic account of what drugs do and are, as well as its insistence on lumping them all together under a single meaningless rubric, has for too long prevented us from thinking about the meaning and potential of these very different substances. The legal status of a molecule is one of the least interesting things about it. Much like a food, a psychoactive drug is not a thing -- without a human brain, it is inert -- but a relationship; it takes both a molecule and mind to make anything happen.

The legal status of a molecule may not be of much interest to Pollan -- he acknowledges his privilege as he admits he's not really afraid of getting busted for the peyote cactus in his Berkeley garden -- but it has cast shadows over some of his research, particularly his chapter on his experience growing opium poppies, written in the 1990s and originally published with some "how to" pages removed out of fear of possible federal persecution.

Opium poppies, the plants that produce morphine and all its derivatives, such as heroin, are legal to buy and grow in the United States. But make that first cut on a mature seed pod to release the opium sap and you could find yourself looking at a federal drug manufacturing charge. Or, worse yet, have the feds think you know too much about how you get morphine from your pretty flowers and you could get yourself arrested for possessing legal poppy straw that you bought at the local flower shop.

That's what happened to Jim Hogshire, author of Opium for the Masses, the book that inspired Pollan's opium article in the first place. Hogshire's persecution, which occurred as Pollan was growing his own poppies, made him acutely concerned about the legal status of the molecule and the murky borderlines where one transforms from avid gardener into drug manufacturer.

The chapter is a chilling reminder of Clinton-era war on drugs paranoia, but also of DEA stupidity. While quietly seeking to suppress a handful of amateur poppy-growing gardeners, it was busily ignoring what would prove to be the actual opium epidemic of our time, the prescription opioids. The same year the feds were going after the gardeners, is also the year when PurduePharma rolled out Oxycontin, followed by years of aggressive marketing that had a skewing physician perceptions about when or for how long this useful but also abusable medication should be prescribed.

Pollan quit drinking coffee for his chapter on caffeine. He writes that he usually takes drugs he writes about because he feels he has to to understand them, but that with coffee, to which he like hundreds of millions of others around the planet is addicted, he felt that he had to experience life without the miracle molecule. It didn't go well, but he survived to tell the tale.

And it's a tale, of coffee's role in the making of industrial civilization. Caffeine, after all, Pollan notes, made the night-shift possible, improved concentration, and increased worker productivity. Of course, it's a legal drug! That despite it occasionally being banned, the denizens of European coffeeshops being suspected of being quite clear-headed, argumentative, and capable of political subversion, not to mention the mingling of classes that went on. With coffee, England roused itself from its alcoholic haze and went on to conquer the world.

In his chapter on mescaline, Pollan writes about his adventures with the San Pedro cactus, a mescaline-bearing succulent like peyote (although not as potent), which, unlike peyote, is legal in the United States. But as with his experiment with poppy growing back in the '90s, Pollan runs into legal ambiguity: When does growing a San Pedro cross the line into manufacturing mescaline?

To be accurate, peyote is not completely illegal in the US. Bizarrely enough, it is a substance whose legality is not determined by itself but by who is consuming it. If you are a member of the Native American Church, it is legal. If you're not, it's not. That's weird, but it does at least protect the ability of Native Americans to consume peyote, which is central to their religious practice.

Pollan does well in navigating the complexities of using substances that come from long traditions of indigenous use, and grasps the point made by the church that the best thing white people can do for peyote is leave it alone. That has led to conflict with groups like Decriminalize Nature, which want to legalize plant-based psychedelics, or entheogens, for everyone. Pollan handles that division with aplomb and respect, much as he does with the entire book. This isn't really a book about drug policy, but it is a wonderful book about some very special plants and the role they play.

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Chronicle Book Review: "Undoing Drugs" by Maia Szalavitz

Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction by Maia Szalavitz (2021, Hatchette Books, 372 pp., $30 HB)

Last Sunday, I drove to the community center of a small town in southwestern Oregon to find a trio of young women seated at a picnic table in the grass outside the building. The women, two volunteers and a paid staffer from the local HIV alliance, come the first Sunday of every month to provide fentanyl test strips, clean syringes, and packages containing the injectable version of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone to local drug users and their friends and family members.

They also have informational pamphlets about the dangers of various substances and how to reduce those dangers. The young women are part of Rogue Valley Harm Reduction, a group devoted to reducing those dangers, and if you would like a clue about how we got to young women in rural Oregon handing out needles and overdose prevention drugs to local drug users, there is no better place to start than Maia Szalavitz's Undoing Drugs.

Szalavitz has been doing excellent journalism around drug policy and addiction issues for years now, and her acumen, expertise, and passion are all on display in Undoing Drugs, her brand new book that tells the story of the rise of harm reduction and uses that narrative to unpack (to "undo") all kinds of harmful paradigms in the realm of drugs and drug policy.

Harm reduction is not a difficult idea. As Szalavitz writes, "The concept itself is surprisingly simple. Harm reduction applies the core of the Hippocratic oath -- first, do no harm -- to addiction treatment and drug policy."

But the concept is even broader than that. We can see harm reduction principles applied in everything from wearing motorcycle helmets or seatbelts to providing condoms for high school students. Or wearing masks and social distancing during a pandemic. Or even more broadly yet, in not criminalizing people over the substances they choose to use.

While Szalavitz neatly documents that the benefits of harm reduction measures such as needle exchanges, opioid maintenance programs, and pill checking programs are amply proven -- such practices save lives, reduce crime and disorder, and allow drug users to achieve less chaotic lives -- she also wisely notes how harm reduction subverts the paradigm of "fighting drugs" and prohibiting them.

Harm reduction flips the morality of drugs on its head. Instead of measuring reductions in drug use as the highest value, harm reduction demands reductions in human misery -- and recognizes quite clearly the human misery generated by drug prohibition: "Once the negative consequences of policy actions count in evaluating their usefulness -- and success isn't just tallied by the amount of drugs seized or the number of people arrested -- it is quite hard to avoid concluding that the damage done by prohibition outweighs any benefit the war on (some) drugs could conceivably have," Szalavitz writes.

Undoing Drugs proceeds both chronologically and thematically, with Szalavitz digging into harm reduction's origins in British heroin prescribing and pioneering Dutch efforts on needle exchanges, propelled by the user activists of the Junkiebund, as well as its American roots in the HIV crisis of the 1980s, when it wasn't only gay men but also injection drug users who were dying of the disease.

Szalavitz, an injection drug user herself at the time, was terrified of getting AIDS from needle sharing and infuriated when she learned that there were simple steps she could have taken to reduce her risk -- but that no one was telling drug users about them. That experience led her on the personal and professional journey that resulted in this book.

As she proceeds, Szalavitz introduces us to a larger than life cast of characters -- drug users, former drug users, public health geeks, academics, major donors, social and racial justice workers -- who propelled harm reduction from the back alleyways to increasingly accepted public policy. A lot of these names will be familiar to longtime readers of the Chronicle: Pioneering harm reductionist Dave Purchase of the North American Syringe Exchange Network, overdose prevention pioneer Dan Bigg at the Chicago Recovery Alliance, and Canadian drug user organizer and Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) cofounder Ann Livingston, all get their stories told, along with dozens of others.

Szalavitz has done us all a great service with Undoing Drugs. She applies the lessons of harm reduction to the fields of public health, psychology, addiction treatment, and racial justice, subverting the narrative of drug prohibition on every page, and opening our eyes to the revolutionary potential of harm reduction. But what is really striking and inspiring is the clear message that individual agency can make a real difference, whether it's a single medical practitioner, an impassioned social worker or street drug users organizing themselves to make sure that "if policies are about us, they're not without us." Harm reductionists are changing the world for the better.

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This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

It's all Sunshine State rogue cops this week, with a DEA supervisory agent nailed for helping a major drug dealer and more. Let's get to it:

>In Fort Myers, Florida, a state prison guard pleaded guilty last Wednesday to participating in a plot to smuggle drugs into the prison. Guard Leslie Samuel Spencer, 49, went down in a sting where he agreed to smuggle three ounces of methamphetamine, one ounce of MDMA, a small amount of synthetic marijuana and two cellphones into the prison and give it to an inmate in exchange for a payment of $400. Spencer met with an undercover FBI agent posing as prisoner's family member and accepted the fake drugs, the cellphones, and the cash. He was then arrested. He pleaded guilty to attempted distribution of methamphetamine and MDMA and is looking at up to 20 years in prison.

In Jacksonville, Florida, a former DEA supervisory agent pleaded guilty Tuesday to taking bribes from a major drug dealer to provide information about investigations into a drug ring that stretched from Florida to California. Former DEA Special Agent and Group Supervisor Nation Koen was arrested in 2018 after a drug dealer reached out to him to help get reduced sentences for family members charged in his drug conspiracy case, Koen turned him into a confidential informant, then asked him if he wanted to get "back to work" selling drugs. The dealer did want to go back to work and was soon paying Koen thousands of dollars to help keep his operation free from law enforcement interference. Koen ran the names of the dealer's associates through a DEA database to see if they were informants, warned the dealer when shipments were under surveillance, and helped at least one dealer avoid arrest by telling him the DEA was looking for him. He was originally charged with bribery and drug distribution, which would have had him facing up to life in prison but agreed to a plea deal where he pleaded guilty to one count of bribery, reducing his exposure to just 15 years.

In Fort Myers, Florida, a state prison guard pleaded guilty last Wednesday to participating in a plot to smuggle drugs into the prison. Guard Leslie Samuel Spencer, 49, went down in a sting where he agreed to smuggle three ounces of methamphetamine, one ounce of MDMA, a small amount of synthetic marijuana and two cellphones into the prison and give it to an inmate in exchange for a payment of $400. Spencer met with an undercover FBI agent posing as prisoner's family member and accepted the fake drugs, the cellphones, and the cash. He was then arrested. He pleaded guilty to attempted distribution of methamphetamine and MDMA and is looking at up to 20 years in prison.In Fort Myers, Florida, a state prison guard pleaded guilty last Wednesday to participating in a plot to smuggle drugs into the prison. Guard Leslie Samuel Spencer, 49, went down in a sting where he agreed to smuggle three ounces of methamphetamine, one ounce of MDMA, a small amount of synthetic marijuana and two cellphones into the prison and give it to an inmate in exchange for a payment of $400. Spencer met with an undercover FBI agent posing as prisoner's family member and accepted the fake drugs, the cellphones, and the cash. He was then arrested. He pleaded guilty to attempted distribution of methamphetamine and MDMA and is looking at up to 20 years in prison.

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ICC Will Investigate Philippine Drug War Killings, KY Supreme Court Narrows Good Samaritan Law, More... (9/15/21)

Detroiters will vote on psychedelic decriminalization in November, the International Criminal Court takes a key step in the investigation of Philippine drug war killings, and more.

Harm Reduction

Kentucky Supreme Court Narrows Good Samaritan Protections. In a decision late last month, the state Supreme Court ruled that a 2015 Good Samaritan law designed to protect overdose victims and the bystanders who seek assistance for them does not apply when the bystanders who call do not know for certain that a drug overdose has occurred. In the decision in Kentucky v. Milner, the court took up the separate cases of two people for whom assistance was called after they were found passed out in a car.

Both had indeed suffered drug overdoses and were revived, but they were then charged with various crimes, including possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. Prosecutors argued that the Good Samaritan law did not apply because the bystanders did not see the people use drugs, did not know overdoses were occurring, and had no reason to believe the victims were at risk of arrest if authorities arrived.

The defendants' attorney said it would be unrealistic to expect bystanders to search an unconscious body for evidence of drug use before calling for help. "Requiring a Good Samaritan to be certain that an overdose was occurring before the exemption would apply would potentially expose both the person overdosing and the Good Samaritan to danger," attorney Steven Nathan Goens wrote in one of his briefs to the Supreme Court. But the court sided with prosecutors, effectively narrowing the scope of the law.

Psychedelics

Detroit Will Vote on Psychedelic Decriminalization in November. A proposed municipal initiative to decriminalize psychedelics has qualified for the November ballot in Detroit. The question voters will have to answer is: "Shall the voters of the City of Detroit adopt an ordinance to the 2019 Detroit City Code that would decriminalize to the fullest extent permitted under Michigan law the personal possession and therapeutic use of Entheogenic Plants by adults and make the personal possession and therapeutic use of Entheogenic Plants by adults the city's lowest law-enforcement priority?" Detroit is Michigan's largest city, but psychedelic reform has already taken place in the university town of Ann Arbor, which approved a lowest priority ordinance last year.

International

International Criminal Court Opens Official Investigation into Philippine Drug War Killings. The International Criminal Court (ICC), which finished a preliminary investigation into human rights abuses in President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs earlier this year, announced Wednesday that it has decided to open an official investigation not only into Duterte's drug war abuses but also into killings by death squads in Davao City when he was mayor and vice mayor. "For these reasons, the chamber hereby authorizes the commencement of the investigation into the Situation in the Philippines, in relation to crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court allegedly committed on the territory of the Philippines between 1 November 2011 and 16 March 2019 in the context of the so-called 'war on drugs' campaign," said the pre-trial chamber 1 of the ICC.

By deciding to move forward with an official investigation, the ICC is setting the stage for summons and arrests warrants if requested by Prosecutor Karim Khan. Recently retired Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who led the preliminary investigation, had asked for authorization to open an official investigation, saying there was copious evidence of human rights abuses, and the chamber agreed. "On the basis of the above, the Chamber concludes that there is a reasonable basis for the Prosecutor to proceed with an investigation, in the sense that the crime against humanity of murder appears to have been committed, and that potential case(s) arising from such investigation appear to fall within the Court's jurisdiction," said the judges.

Human Rights Watch welcomed Wednesday's announcement: "The International Criminal Court's decision to open an investigation into brutal crimes in the Philippines offers a much-needed check on President Rodrigo Duterte and his deadly 'war on drugs,'" said Carlos Conde, the rights group's senior Philippines researcher. "Victims' families and survivors have reason to hope that those responsible for crimes against humanity could finally face justice." The Philippines government has acknowledged some 6,000 police or military drug war killings, but human rights groups say the true number could be north of 30,000.

Read more civil society reactions and other information on the web site of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC).

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White House Releases Annual List of Drug Producing & Transit Countries, WA Drug Decrim Initiative Organizing, More... (9/16/21)

Granite State lawmakers are looking at a voter-approved constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana, Washington activists are laying the groundwork for a 2022 drug decriminalization initiative, and more.

Marijuana Policy

New Hampshire Lawmakers Move Toward Marijuana Legalization Constitutional Amendment. Stymied at the state house, three state representatives have separately filed requests with the Office of Legislative Services for help drafting a bill that would let the voters decide directly whether or not to legalize marijuana. The bill would take the form of a constitutional amendment, but for it to pass, it would require a supermajority of 60 percent in both the House and Senate. It would also require the support of 67 percent of voters once it made the ballot. Meanwhile, lawmakers will take up a legalization bill early next year. A legalization bill managed to pass the House last year but died in Senate committee.

Drug Policy

Washington State Drug Reformers Announce Plan to Put Drug Decriminalization Initiative on 2022 Ballot. A group of drug reformers organized as Commit to Change WA has announced plans to try to qualify a drug decriminalization initiative for the 2022 ballot. The group has yet to release a draft of the proposed initiative but said they will file it in January. Still, the group identified three broad principles for the measure: Ending treating drug use as a crime, a robust commitment to incorporating the experiences of actual drug users, and an emphasis on public health approaches. Neighboring Oregon decriminalized drug possession at the ballot box last year, becoming the first state to do so.

Foreign Policy

White House Releases Annual List of Major Drug Producing and Transit Countries. President Biden on Wednesday released the annual list of drug producing and transit countries, as required by the 2003 Foreign Relations Act. "I hereby identify the following countries as major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries:  Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela," Biden wrote. Of the 22 countries, the president designated only two -- Bolivia and Venezuela -- as "having failed demonstrably to make substantial efforts during the previous 12 months to both adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements and to take the measures required by section 489(a)(1) of the FAA." It may be worth noting that the only two countries to be so designated have socialist governments. Biden did, however, waive the requirement that aid to the two countries be cut off, writing that "the United States programs that support Bolivia and Venezuela are vital to the national interests of the United States."

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CA Psilocybin Legalization Init Cleared for Signature Gathering, DE Supreme Court on Pot Odor, More... (9/17/21)

Supporters of a proposed Philadelphia safe injection site have asked the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision blocking it, the Delaware Supreme Cout rules the mere odor of marijuana is not sufficient cause for a warrantless arrest, and more.

Marijuana Policy

Delaware Supreme Court Rules Marijuana Odor Not Sufficient Grounds for Warrantless Arrest. The state Supreme Court ruled 4-1 that the mere odor of marijuana does not give police "reasonable grounds to believe" that either a felony has been committed or that a person has committed a misdemeanor in the presence of an officer -- the only two grounds for which warrantless arrest is allowed. Possession of up to an ounce of marijuana is decriminalized, and the court held that the mere odor of marijuana cannot lead police to presume that a felony amount of marijuana would be present.

Psychedelics

California Psilocybin Initiative Cleared for Signature Gathering. A proposed initiative that would legalize the possession, cultivation, and sale of psilocybin mushrooms has been cleared for signature gathering by the state attorney general's office. The office has issued an official title and summary for the California Psilocybin Initiative, which is being sponsored by Decriminalize California. It would allow the "personal, medical, therapeutic, religious, spiritual, and dietary use of Psilocybin Mushrooms" for people 21 and over, as well as allowing legal psilocybin sales and cultivation. The campaign will now have 180 days to come up with 623,212 valid voter signatures to qualify for the November 2022 ballot.

Harm Reduction

Philadelphia Safe Injection Site Supporters Ask Supreme Court to Review Appeals Court Ban.Supporters of a proposed safe injection site in Philadelphia that was blocked by a Trump-era appeals court ruling asked the Supreme Court on Friday to overturn that ruling. The appeals court held that allowing a safe injection site would violate a 1980s "crack house" law by allowing the use of drugs on site. The case will be closely watched because public officials and harm reductionists in a number of cities and states want to move forward with the harm reduction measure. The move is risky, though, given the current makeup of the court.

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Vancouver Clinic Offers Take-Home Prescription Heroin, Nepal Marijuana Protest, More... (9/20/21)

Violence linked to cartel infighting continues to rock Mexico's state of Michoacan, a Vancouver clinic is now offering take-home prescription heroin to a small number of patients, and more.

nternational

Vancouver Clinic Doing Take-Home Prescription Heroin. In a North American first, the Providence Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver has begun providing take-home medical grade heroin to a small number of addicted patients. The program began as an emergency response to the COVID epidemic, when the provincial health authority allowed clinic staff to deliver syringes filled with heroin to patients so they could stay isolated for 10 to 14 days. "Having done that and done that successfully without any problems, we were able to show and demonstrate the strict requirement of the medication to only be [administered] at the clinic was not necessary," said Dr. Scott MacDonald, head physician at the clinic. The program is currently serving only 11 patients, but MacDonald said expanding the program is a crucial step toward addressing the province's opioid crisis, which has seen more than a thousand overdose deaths so far this year. "Their lives can change dramatically. People can go from accessing street opioids, perhaps having unstable housing and unable to work to stabilized and being able to work, and some people working full-time," he said.

Mexico's Michoacan Sees More Cartel Violence. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) besieged the Michoacan municipality of Tepalcatepec last week, killing and beheading five local men who were manning a checkpoint aimed at keeping cartel gunmen out of town. The cartel had tried to seize control of the city but was met with resistance from local residents and the National Guard. Cartel gunmen then switched their focus to the community of La Estanzuela, located near the border between Tepalcatepec and the Jalisco municipality of Jilotlán. The CJNG has been trying to take control of the region for the past two years and is locked in battle with the Carteles Unidos over control of the region and the state.

Nepal Protest for Marijuana Legalization. Sparked by the September 6 arrest of prominent marijuana legalization advocate Rajiv Kafle for consumption, possession, and distribution of marijuana, a youth group from Kathmandu Valley staged a protest calling for legalization at Maitighar on Monday. Protesters chanted slogans and held up signs citing the medicinal and economic benefits of legalization. Nepal has a history of cannabis use dating back centuries and its charas was enjoyed by Western travelers on the Hippie Trail in the 1060s, but under US pressure canceled the licenses for all cannabis businesses in 1973, and then criminalized cannabis in 1976.

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Houston Narc & Suspect Killed in Drug Raid, FL Marijuana Init Can Gather Signatures, More... (9/21/21)

A Houston drug raid proved deadly Monday, mass killings are on the rise in one of Colombia's cocaine conflict zones, and more.

Marijuana Policy

Florida Activists Mount Third Effort to Get Legalization Initiative on 2022 Ballot. After the state Supreme Court quashed two previous marijuana legalization initiative attempts earlier this year, the group behind one of them, Regulate Florida, is trying again. The group has filed a new petition with the state and it has been approved for signature gathering. The measure would allow people 21 and over to use and possess marijuana and allow them to grow up to nine plants, but not allow retail sales. Now, campaign organizers must gather 222,898 valid voter signatures to prompt a judicial and fiscal impact review, and if they pass that hurdle, must then come up 891,850 total valid signatures by February 1 to qualify for the November 2022 ballot.

Law Enforcement

Houston Narcotics Officer, Suspect Killed in Drug Raid. A Houston Police narcotics officer was shot and killed and a second officer shot and wounded while serving a drug search warrant early Monday. A suspect was also shot and killed. William "Bill" Jeffrey, a nearly 31-year veteran of the force, was shot several times and succumbed to his injuries. Sgt. Michael Vance, who's been on the force for 20 years, was also wounded and was in surgery Monday. Police said the unnamed suspect came out firing when they knocked on the door. The only information police released about the suspect was his race, Black.

International

Colombia Sees Rising Number of Mass Killings in Drug Conflict Zone. The Colombian Defense Ministry has reported a 91 percent increase in mass killings -- defined as the killing of four or more people -- across the country between January and July compared to the same period last year. Hardest hit has been the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca, where at least nine mass killings have occurred this year. Using a slightly different metric, the think tank Indepaz reported 260 people killed in 71 mass killings of three or more people. Valle del Cauca is contested terrain for a number of armed actors involved in the drug trade, ranging from FARC dissidents to rightist paramilitary to international drug trafficking organizations such as La Oficina de Envigado and local drug trafficking groups. According the Medical Examiner's Office, at least 8,566 were murdered nationwide between January and August, which is 26% more than in the same period last year and the highest number since 2013. The rightist government of President Ivan Duque has announced various strategies to deal with violence and drug trafficking since taking office in 2018, but none have had much impact.

Italian Referendum to Decriminalize Marijuana, Psilocybin, Other Drug Plants Meets Signature Requirement. It took Italian activists only a week to come up with some 500,000 online signatures to qualify a ballot measure decriminalizing the use and possession of marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, and other psychoactive plants for the spring 2022 ballot. But they are calling on Italians to continue to sign the petition through the end of the month so they can build a buffer of surplus signatures in case some are invalidated. Once the signatures are formally submitted at the end of the month, the Court of Cassation and the Constitutional Court will then review the measure. If those two courts sign off, a vote would take place next spring.

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Congress to Temporarily Extend Fentanyl Analogue Ban, House to Vote on Marijuana Banking, More... (9/22/21)

Protections for banks dealing with state-legal marijuana businesses will get a House floor vote as part of a defense spending bill, the Congress is poised to temporarily extend the ban on fentanyl analogues, and more.

Marijuana Policy

Amendment to Protect Banks That Service Marijuana Industry Will Get House Vote. The House Rules Committee on Tuesday approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to provide protections to financial institutions that service the state-legal marijuana industry. The amendment is identical to the SAFE Banking Act, which has already passed the House four times. A House floor vote could come as soon as this week. But advocates were disappointed that other reform measures, including an amendment to promote research into the therapeutic uses of certain psychedelics, were rejected by the committee. Adding non-related amendments to spending bills that are difficult to vote against is often used to get legislation passed that is otherwise stalled.

Medical Marijuana

Pennsylvania Bipartisan Bill to Remove DUI Penalties for Medical Marijuana Users Filed. State Reps. Chris Rabb (D-Philadelphia} and Todd Polinchock (R-Bucks) have introduced legislation that would ensure the rights of the more than 500,000 medical cannabis patients in Pennsylvania, protecting them from DUI penalties. Under current state law, the presence of marijuana metabolites, which remain present for days or weeks after ingestion, is considered evidence of impairment. "A medical cannabis user can take a miniscule amount of medicine for their ailment and weeks later, with traces of cannabis still in their system, be subject to arrest on a DUI charge if pulled over -- not because they've driven impaired, but because our state laws haven't caught up with the science," Rabb said. "And, if you think you don't know someone who falls into this category -- a person who has been prescribed medical cannabis and who drives and is fearful of the potential DUI charge they could face -- you're wrong. I am a card-carrying medical cannabis patient, and I drive regularly, including in and around Philadelphia and to Harrisburg conducting the people's business."

Opioids

Congress to Temporarily Extend Fentanyl Analogue Ban. Rather than make a final decision on whether to make permanent a ban on fentanyl analogues, the House is preparing to vote to extend a temporary ban set to expire October 22, pushing the expiration date to January 28 as part of a stopgap spending bill. The White House has asked Congress to permanently schedule all fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I, but advocates and some lawmakers say such a move is wrongheaded and will lead to over-policing. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has made such arguments and says he is "not a fan" of extending the deadline. "We have consistently said that this anti-science policy must expire," Maritza Perez, director of the Drug Policy Alliance's Office of National Affairs, said. "This extension will hopefully give Congress ample time to come up with a public health solution that is desperately needed to save lives."

Overdoses Climbed as Opioid Prescriptions Declined, AMA Report Finds. Both fatal and non-fatal drug overdoses have increased over the past decade, even as physicians have prescribed 44 percent fewer opioids during the same period, the American Medical Association said in a new report. The report cited the rise of prescription drug monitoring programs as a key factor in reducing prescribing. The AMA said lawmakers need to "act now" to address the overdose crisis. "The nation's drug overdose and death epidemic has never just been about prescription opioids," said AMA President Gerald E. Harmon, MD. "Physicians have become more cautious about prescribing opioids, are trained to treat opioid use disorder and support evidence-based harm reduction strategies. We use PDMPs as a tool, but they are not a panacea. Patients need policymakers, health insurance plans, national pharmacy chains and other stakeholders to change their focus and help us remove barriers to evidence-based care." The AMA is calling for an end to requiring prior authorization for medications to treat opioid use disorder, evidence-based care including opioid therapy for patients with pain, and support for harm reduction services, such as needle exchanges and the wide distribution of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone.

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Meth Deaths Were on Rise Before Pandemic, Scotland Moves Toward "De Facto" Drug Decrim, More... (9/23/21)

Violence continues in Colombia's coca producing regions, marijuana researchers appeal a US 9th Circuit Court dismissal of their rescheduling petition, and more.

Medical Marijuana

Marijuana Researchers Ask 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals to Reconsider Failed Classification Appeal. Researchers and veterans seeking to see marijuana federally reclassified have asked the US 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its dismissal of their petition last month. A three-judge panel in August held that plaintiffs Dr. Sue Sisley and the Scottsdale Institute had not yet exhausted all administrative options to get the DEA to reschedule marijuana. But the plaintiffs argue that controlling Supreme Court precedent holds that federal judges cannot force litigants to pursue all administrative appeal avenues before turning to the courts for redress. The case is Suzanne Sisley et al. v. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration et al., case number 20-71433.

Methamphetamine

Meth Deaths Tripled in Years Before Arrival of Pandemic. Methamphetamine-related overdose deaths nearly tripled among adults aged between 18 and 64 from 2015 to 2019, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. The study pointed to more frequent meth use and mixing of drugs as possible reasons for the increases. The number of people using meth increased by 43 percent, but overdose deaths from stimulant drugs other than cocaine increased by 180 percent during the same period. While meth has traditionally been a drug associated with middle-aged white people, it is now spreading to other groups, such as Native Americans, and Black meth use disorder without injection increased 10-fold during that period.

International

Colombia Drug Traffickers Kill Five Soldiers. The Gulf Clan, Colombia's most powerful drug trafficking group, is being blamed for an attack Tuesday on the armed forces in a coca-growing region of Cordoba department that left five soldiers dead and tree more injured. Soldiers were patrolling in a vehicle when they were attacked with "explosive artifacts by presumed members... of the Gulf Clan." Leftist FARC dissidents, rightist paramilitaries, and criminal drug trafficking organizations all compete for control of the lucrative coca and cocaine business there.

Scotland Moves Toward De Facto Drug Decriminalization. Scottish police can now issue a formal warning for possession of Class A drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, instead of arresting and prosecuting people caught with personal use amounts of such drugs, Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain told members of the Scottish Parliament. Conservatives called the move "de facto decriminalization," but it's actually more like discretionary decriminalization since police could still file drug possession charges. Police already are able to issue warnings for possession of Class B and C drugs. Bain said she decided to expand that policy so "officers may choose to issue a warning for simple possession offences for all classes of drugs," and also refer people accused of drug offenses to "diversion," where they are handled by social work teams instead of the criminal justice system. The move comes as the country confronts Europe's highest drug overdose rate and saw more than 1,300 drug overdose deaths last year.

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