Author: News Room

Psychedelics policy came sharply into focus in 2023, with advocates chalking multiple wins as the drug policy reform movement’s momentum continued to expand beyond marijuana at the local, state and federal levels. It was a year defined by firsts: historic federal legislation signed into law mandating psychedelics clinical trials, first-ever Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance on conducting research using entheogenic substances, a novel congressional hearing, psilocybin services opening in Oregon and a new opportunity to legalize MDMA as a prescribed medicine, to name a few examples. What started as a local decriminalization project has quickly become one of the…

Beyond major marijuana developments in the U.S. at the federal and state levels this year, momentum for drug policy reform continued to build across many parts of the globe in 2023. From the issuance of the first licenses in the European Union for nonprofit cannabis associations to the EU’s largest economy taking steps toward legalizing marijuana for adults, a number of countries, especially in Europe and South America, marked drug reform milestones in the past year. Yet 2023 also saw a rash of setbacks. Delays to cannabis legalization efforts in countries like Colombia and Germany, to name a few, have…

Even as federal drug policy reform efforts picked up in 2023, U.S. states continued to lead the country’s push for marijuana legalization during the past year. States passed news legalization measures, launched adult-use retail sales and set a raft of sales records as markets matured. Lawmakers at the state-level also continued to adjust laws around legal cannabis and how to regulate commercial activity and private use. Among the trends in 2023 were efforts at allowing legal marijuana businesses state-level tax deductions, providing protections to workers who consume while off duty and preparing to open up borders to interstate cannabis commerce.…

The GOP leader of Wisconsin’s Assembly says a limited medical marijuana bill will be introduced next month—though he expects that lawmakers are “going to have to pass it with just Republican votes” because his Democratic colleagues want broader legalization and aren’t willing to accept the scaled-back reform. In an interview with Spectrum News 1 that was published on Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) said that it’s “taken us a while to find a consensus on the Assembly Republican side” to craft a passable medical cannabis bill. But he’s “pretty confident” the votes will be there, even without Democratic support.…

“When you’re putting these things into the stream of commerce and you look at the 10th Amendment, there’s really nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says that we can’t clearly legislate this type of issue.” By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent A Republican state senator has filed legislation to renew last spring’s failed effort to regulate intoxicating hemp products in Missouri, such as Delta-8 drinks and edibles. Delta-8 THC products can be sold in stores in Missouri because the intoxicating ingredient, THC, is derived from hemp, not marijuana which is a controlled substance. And hemp is federally legal. There’s no state…

A newly published study of high school students in Canada found that the proportion of those who said marijuana was easy to access fell in recent years, during a period in which the country legalized cannabis for adults and retail sales locations opened across the country while people also spent months social distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite a growing body of literature examining marijuana use among adults since national legalization in 2018, the six-person team behind the paper, published this month in the journal Archives of Public Health, wrote that “there appears to be a paucity of research dedicated to…

Arizona has awarded the first round of Justice Reinvestment Grants to 18 community nonprofits, state officials announced last week. The program, created by the state’s 2020 marijuana law, is funded by revenue from taxes on legal cannabis sales. The grants program supports a variety goals of including public and behavioral health, such as substance use prevention and treatment; workforce development and mentorship programs in economically disadvantaged areas; “addressing the underlying causes of crime” and reducing the state prison population; and developing technology or programs to restore civil rights and expunge criminal records. By statute, the program receives 35 percent of…

The year 2023 brought a mixed bag of federal developments in the marijuana space—marked by historic news such as the Biden administration’s rescheduling recommendation and pardon expansion, as well as setbacks on the congressional path to enacting cannabis banking reform. And with Congress now in recess for the holiday season, advocates and stakeholders are left to reflect on the ups and downs of the past year, with hopes of building on their work in 2024. While the review into cannabis scheduling that President Joe Biden directed last year is still underway, arguably the biggest news of the year has been…

“Maintaining a program that lauds the success of the few who find recovery through mandated treatment at the cost of the many who don’t is a twisted calculus, valuing one person’s abstinence over others’ lives.” By Morgan Godvin, Oregon Measure 110 Oversight and Accountability Council via Oregon Capital Chronicle Experts—and editorials—have recently claimed that no one has been imprisoned for drug use for years, long before Oregon’s Measure 110 was approved in 2020. But that is not accurate. You don’t have to be sent to prison to be incarcerated for drug use. I know. Between 2013 to 2014, I was…

Plans to legalize medical marijuana in Ukraine have been delayed following actions by the opposition party Batkivshchyna to block the signing of a bill approved by the country’s unicameral legislature earlier this month. The leader of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, Yulia Tymoshenko, who has consistently opposed the measure, said recently that her party intends to appeal to the Constitutional Court to cancel the legislative vote because “the amendments to the bill were considered in a half-empty chamber,” according to a report in the New Voice of Ukraine. Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of the country, claimed that the proposal would…