Author: News Room

This month’s elections put Republicans back in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, raising questions about the prospects of marijuana reform in the next Congress. In recent years it has been repeatedly shown that cannabis legalization and smaller, incremental reforms such as banking access have majority support to pass. But whether marijuana legislation advances or stalls in the next two years will largely come down to whether those who are in leadership allow the measures to even be brought up for votes. The full House still needs to formally elect a new speaker at the start of the new…

By Rick Fields Guru means teacher. A guru teaches you your own true nature, which all gurus agree cannot be expressed in words. Lao Tsu said, “Those who know don’t say.” However, that hasn’t stopped anyone from trying, including Lao Tsu. A guru can act in many ways: as friend, mirror, guide, God or psychic martial arts master. There is also always the possibility that a guru is even crazier than thou. More than one perfect master has turned out to be a perfect con man. Only you can tell, and when dealing with the mercury of your own mind,…

An Irish lawmaker has filed a bill to legalize marijuana possession nationwide for adults 18 and older—but a top government official has already raised concerns about the reform proposal. People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny introduced the long-anticipated legislation on Thursday. It would legalize possession of up to seven grams of cannabis and 2.5 grams of marijuana resin for personal adult use. The bill is currently before the Dáil Éireann, the lower chamber of Ireland’s legislature. It’s not clear if lawmakers from competing parties will work to advance it, but the the sponsor said that he expects the body to…

Nevada marijuana regulators announced on Wednesday that they will be holding lotteries at the end of the month to select 20 independent cannabis consumption lounge licensees, half of which will be reserved for social equity applicants. The state Cannabis Compliance Board (CCB) said it will conduct “two drawings via a random number selector” on November 30 to determine which businesses will be the first to receive approval for independent consumption lounge licenses. “The CCB anticipates the first lounges to be licensed and able to open during the first half of 2023,” a notice says. The CCB will conduct two drawings…

An Iowa regulatory board has voted to recommend that the legislature create a legal task force to explore seeking an exemption protecting the state’s limited medical cannabis program from federal interference. At a meeting of the Iowa Medical Cannabidiol Board last week, activist Carl Olsen proposed the task force, which he said should bring legal experts together to “carefully review the state, federal and international drug laws to come up with an application for an exception” under federal statutes. Olsen has long been pushing the state to submit such an application, and the legislature did pass a bill in 2020…

Halloween has recently passed and director Justin Kreutzmann has just trick-or-treated with his children. It’s the kind of father/kid bonding time that most children long for and enjoy. In the case of Kreutzmann, he’s simply passing along the gift of showing up as a father to his kids in the way his father provided fatherhood to him: By having fun. When we connect by phone, the Long Strange Trip producer is ecstatic at the release of his latest film, Let There Be Drums!, which explores the history of drummers in famous bands and the drummers’ relationships with their children. Over…

In a new report, congressional researchers highlighted the “uncertainty” of the federal government’s position on safe drug consumption sites, while pointing out that lawmakers could temporarily resolve the issue by advancing an amendment modeled after the one that has allowed medical marijuana laws to be implemented without Justice Department interference. As it stands, federal law has been interpreted in a way that makes it so the harm reduction centers, where people can use currently illicit drugs in a medically supervised environment, are prohibited. That policy is at the center of a federal lawsuit that the Justice Department initiated under the…

“If they just simply have a medical marijuana card, one, we wouldn’t check that, but two, it wouldn’t prevent them from getting a license.” By John Hult, South Dakota Searchlight Sioux Falls lawyer Ryan Kolbeck typically doesn’t deal with legal questions about hunting licenses. The criminal defense attorney did field multiple calls on the topic in the days following the November 8 election, however. They started coming in shortly after it became clear that South Dakota voters had voted to reject the legalization of recreational cannabis. Each question had the same framing: Since federal law prohibits gun ownership by habitual…

A new study funded by a top federal drug agency has found that state-level marijuana legalization is not associated with increased youth cannabis use. The research article, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine this month, looked at data from three longitudinal studies on past-year cannabis consumption and frequency of use among adolescents from 1999 to 2020 in Oregon, New York and Washington State. Washington voters legalized marijuana in 2012, followed by those in Oregon in 2014. New York moved to enact legalization last year, but retail stores haven’t opened yet, with regulators saying that will likely start happening…

A federal health agency is giving researchers guidance on the types of studies it’s interested in funding for the development of psychedelic drugs to treat certain mental health conditions, pointing out limitations for animal-based research and rules for trials involving children. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) published a notice of information last week, providing additional information about research criteria and priorities for psychedelic studies. “Psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), mescaline, and related compounds are being evaluated by the pharmaceutical industry for their therapeutic potential in treating depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other…