White House holds summit on reducing overdose toll, Nevada psychedelic study bill goes to governor, and more.

Marijuana Policy

New Coalition of Major Marijuana Groups Launches Push for Scheduling Reform. A new coalition of marijuana companies and advocacy groups calling itself the Coalition for Cannabis Scheduling Reform announced Tuesday that it is launching a campaign to reschedule marijuana even as it pushes for full-on legalization. The group will work with advocates, stakeholders, lawmakers and administration officials to promote education about the need to remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

That is a less bold position than that held by advocacy groups calling for outright legalization, but the coalition says that moving marijuana to Schedules III, IV or V of the CSA would still represent "historic progress." that shouldn’t be discounted.

The coalition includes Acreage Holdings, American Trade Association for Cannabis & Hemp (ATACH), Columbia Care, Cresco Labs, Curaleaf, Dutchie, Green Thumb Industries, Marijuana Policy Project, National Cannabis Roundtable, Scotts Miracle-Gro, US Cannabis Council, Weldon Project, and Vicente LLP.

Advocates of full-on legalization warn that placing marijuana in another, less restrictive schedule (as opposed to completely descheduling it) could wreak havoc in existing legal marijuana markets and lead the way to further big business consolidation within the industry.

Psychedelics

Nevada Assembly Approves Psychedelic Task Force Bill. A bill to create a working group to study psychedelics and develop plans to allow for regulated access for therapeutic purposes that has already passed the Senate, Senate Bill 242, passed  the Assembly on Sunday. When introduced, the bill had language legalizing psilocybin and promoting research into the psychedelic, but it was amended in the Senate to now have only the working group, which would examine the use of psychedelics "in medicinal, therapeutic, and improved wellness." The bill now goes to the desk of Gov. Joe Lombardo (R).

Drug Policy

At White House Summit, Biden Administration Vows Renewed Effort to Fight Drug Overdoses. At a White House summit held jointly with public health officials from Canada and Mexico, the Biden administration vowed to improve its fight to combat drug overdoses, which took 109,000 lives last year. Administration officials pledged a multifaceted approach to tackling illicit drugs, especially fentanyl.

"Today's summit is needed because the global and regional drug environment has changed dramatically from just even a few years ago," Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP, the drug czar's office), told the summit. "Synthetic drugs have truly become a global threat," he added. "Today, we're here to ... look at how our collective response can be improved, and the role data collection has on saving lives," Gupta said.

International

Taliban Opium Ban Is Taking Hold. An April 2022 prohibition on opium-growing from Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada did not result in significant reductions in cultivation last year, but this year is different. The BBC traveled the country, consulted with farmers, government ministers, and experts, and used satellite analysis to report the following:

"The Taliban leaders appear to have been more successful cracking down on cultivation than anyone ever has. We found a huge fall in poppy growth in major opium-growing provinces, with one expert saying annual cultivation could be 80% down on last year. Less-profitable wheat crops have supplanted poppies in fields - and many farmers saying they are suffering financially."

"It is likely that cultivation will be less than 20% of what it was in 2022," said Afghanistan drug trade expert David Mansfield. "The scale of the reduction will be unprecedented. The high resolution imagery of Helmand province shows that poppy cultivation is down to less than 1,000 hectares when it was 129,000 hectares the previous year," said Mansfield, noting that would be a 99 percent reduction in the crop in that formerly key opium-producing province.

Farmers aren't happy, though: "You're destroying my field, God destroy your home," one woman shouted angrily at a Taliban eradication unit as they razed her poppy field.

A bid to condemn Canada's safe supply drug policy in British Columbia fails in Parliament, Vermont's governor signs an overdose prevention omnibus bill into law, and more.

Marijuana Policy

Minnesota Becomes 23rd Legal Marijuana State. With the signature Tuesday of Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) on a reconciled bill, the state became the 23rd to legalize marijuana and the second this year. Delaware legalized it earlier this year. Passage of the bill after years of effort came after the Democratic Farm Labor Party won majorities in both houses of the legislature. Marijuana use and possession will be legalized as of August 1, but it is likely to take a year or longer to get the state's legal marijuana commerce system up and running

Harm Reduction

Vermont Governor Signs Omnibus Overdose Prevention Bill into Law. Gov. Phil Scott (R) last Thursday signed into law an omnibus overdose prevention bill, House Bill 222. The move comes as the state sees its third year in a row of record drug overdose fatalities. The bill contains measures aimed directly at reducing overdoses, such as funding to launch drug-checking services around the state and providing for liability protection. It also contains provisions aimed at breaking down barriers to receiving drug treatment, such as reducing wait times for preauthorization for medication-assisted treatment and expanding the availability of recovery and sober living homes. The measures are being funded with $8 million the state received from settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors.

Pregnancy

Ohio Appeals Court Rules Law that Criminalizes Providing Drugs to Pregnant Women Does Not Apply to the Pregnant Woman Herself. Last week, Ohio's 5th District Court of Appeals ruled that it is not a crime for a pregnant women to administer illicit drugs to herself. The ruling came in the case of Muskingum County woman who was found guilty of violating a law that makes it a crime to "administer a controlled substance to a pregnant woman" after she confessed to injecting fentanyl in the hospital parking lot before entering the hospital to deliver her baby. In overturning the verdict, the appeals court held that the administration of drugs must be done by another person—not the pregnant woman herself. As a result, similar cases against four other women have been suspended and the woman in the original case has been released from prison. Prosecutors say they will appeal.

International

Canadian Conservatives' Motion to Condemn Liberals' Safe Supply Drug Policies Fails. A motion from Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre to condemn the Liberal federal government's drug policies, and especially its decision to fund the supply of pharmaceutical alternatives as alternatives to illicit street drugs in the province of British Colombia, failed to pass in the House of Commons last Friday. BC's safe supply approach comes as some 35,000 Canadians have died of drug overdoses since 2016. Poilievre argued that the "tax-funded drug supply" fueled addiction rather than recovery and suggesting diverting money from that program into drug treatment. His motion called on the House to "immediately reverse its deadly policies and redirect all funds from taxpayer-funded, hard drug programs to addiction, treatment and recovery programs." But the House didn't buy it. 

Washington state is bordered on the north by British Columbia, which has decriminalized drug possession (at least for the next five years) under a federal waiver in January, and on the south by Oregon, which decriminalized drug possession by popular vote in 2020. But Washington state lawmakers this week made it clear that they would not be following their neighbors down the decriminalization path.

There has been an opening for drug decriminalization in the Washington ever since the state Supreme Court threw out the state's felony drug possession statute in 2021 in Washington v. Blake because it did not require the defendant to knowingly possess forbidden drugs. Rather than have no drug possession statute at all, the legislature that year produced a bill to make it a misdemeanor. That bill was set to expire on July 1.

This year, as the clocked ticked down, lawmakers debated a variety of possibilities from decriminalization to re-felonization, and at the session, a conference committee produced a version of the drug possession law, Senate Bill 5536, that called for making possession a gross misdemeanor (punishable by up to 364 days in jail, as opposed to 90 for a misdemeanor) and skimped on funding for treatment. No Republicans voted for the final version of the bill, saying it was soft on crime.

Democrats and progressives were angered by the imposition of the gross misdemeanor penalties and the levels of treatment funding. Enough disaffected Democrats voted no to kill it.

"The notion that this bill is soft on crime is ridiculous. The House caved to pressure to escalate the penalty back up from a misdemeanor to a gross misdemeanor, with diversions allowed only with the consent of the prosecutor," said Allison Holcomb, director of political strategies for the ACLU of Washington. "A gross misdemeanor carrying a penalty of up to 364 days and a $5,000 fine is harsher than the felony penalty that applied before the Blake decision. The standard range for a felony [drug possession] offense was 0-60 days for the first three offenses, lower even than a misdemeanor -- 90 days."

The session ended last month without a new drug law and that left open the possibility that the state would soon have no drug possession law at all. Gov. Jay Inslee (D) then called a special session to meet this week with the drug possession law as its sole agenda item.

On Tuesday, the legislature passed a revised version of SB 5536, and Gov. Inslee signed it into law that night.

The bill signed into law maintains drug possession as a gross misdemeanor, but limits jail terms to 180 days -- not the 364-day term typical for that level offense. And it creates a new offense of public drug use with the same penalties. For both offenses, the maximum fine was lowered to $1,000.

It also includes $44 million to expand treatment and recovery efforts, more than double the $20 million allocated in the original bill.

But to appeal to conservatives, it also allows localities to continue to prohibit harm reduction services, including needle exchanges and safe injection sites, and it continues to give courts and prosecutors some discretion in a new pretrial diversion program, including jailing defendants who repeatedly reject drug treatment.

"This bill is not designed to fill our jails, it's designed to fill our treatment centers," said Inslee as he signed the bill. "And the investments we're making will create treatment resources in small townships and big cities. This is a statewide solution to a statewide problem."

Some progressives who voted for the bill still had concerns. State Sen. Yasmin Trudeau (D-Tacoma) said the state was still relying on the criminal justice system to bully people into treatment that too often isn't there.

"We don't have the infrastructure to offer services to everyone who will need it, and that gives me great pause," Trudeau said.

But veteran drug reformer state Rep. Roger Goodman (D-Kirkland) called it "a fair compromise that addresses urgent concerns about public disorder but follows evidence-based practices in helping people in need."

A bipartisan bill addressing xylazine gets filed, Texas Republican senators block a fentanyl test strip bill, and more.

Psychedelics

Colorado Senate Advances Psychedelic Regulation Bill Without Local Ban Authority. The Senate on Tuesday approved Senate Bill 23-290, which amends the regulatory framework created by the voter-approved Natural Medicine Act. The bill creates regulations for unlicensed psychedelic facilitators, restrictions on home mushroom and natural medicine cultivation, and criminal penalties for the unlicensed sale of those substances. Under the bill, the Department of Revenue, which already oversees the state's liquor, marijuana, and gambling industries, would regulate licensed psychedelic manufacturing, distribution, and other business activities. The bill does not include language allowing local governments to ban psychedelic businesses. The bill now goes to the House, where it first heads to the House Finance Committee.

Drug Policy

Senators Cruz and Welch File Bill Targeting Xylazine. Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Peter Welch (D-VT) on Wednesday filed the Testing, Rapid Analysis, and Narcotic Quality (TRANQ) Research Act to address the rapid rise of the veterinary tranquilizer as a drug used in conjunction with street narcotics. The Office of National Drug Control Strategy (ONDCP -- the drug czar's office) designated xylazine mixed with fentanyl as an "emerging threat" earlier this month.

While xylazine has some opioid-like properties, it is not an opioid and is not responsive to opioid overdose reversal drugs. It is also linked to physical ailments such as necrosis, which can result in the loss of limbs.

The TRANQ Research Act "directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to take steps to enhance understanding of tranq and other novel synthetic drugs, develop new tests for detection, and establish partnerships with front-line entities that are often the first points of contact with new street drugs." It does not contain any criminal provisions. Companion legislation has also been filed in the House.

Harm Reduction

Texas Fentanyl Test Strip Decriminalization Bill Stalled in Senate. Even as the state faces a fentanyl overdose crisis, Senate Republicans are blocking action on a bill to decriminalize fentanyl test strips, House Bill 362, that has already passed the House. Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston) said Republican members of the committee fear that the move will encourage drug use. "It's just illogical, but there's a belief by some members that it might safeguard the use," he said Tuesday. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) supports the legislation, and the legislative session still has a few more weeks left, so supporters continue to hope it can still pass this year.

International

Singapore Ignores International Appeals, Executes Man for Two Pounds of Marijuana. Singapore hung Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, on Wednesday after he was convicted of conspiring to traffic two pounds of marijuana. The execution came despite an international campaign to spare his life, including an appeal from the UN Human Rights Commission and another from Global Drug Policy Commission member Richard Branson. While many other countries, including some of Singapore's neighbors are moving towards a more lenient approach to drugs and rejecting the death penalty, Singapore remains unmoved. "Tangaraju was accorded full due process under the law and had access to legal counsel throughout the process," the Central Narcotics Bureau said, adding without a hint of irony that the death penalty is "part of Singapore's comprehensive harm prevention strategy."