Today in cannabis news: Following a Supreme Court decision to overturn a voter-approved measure, Mississippi lawmakers hold a hearing on medical cannabis; a federal analysis finds that testing people for cannabis impairment based on THC levels is “not reliable”; and civil rights organizations including the ACLU and NAACP are urging Congress to pass a federal cannabis legalization bill as soon as possible.
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** First up: Lawmakers of the Senate Public Health Committee were informed that the essential concepts of the medical cannabis campaign adopted by Mississippi residents in November, but subsequently overturned by the state Supreme Court, must be honored.
The Mississippi Medical Marijuana Association’s executive director, Ken Newburger, admitted to the committee that there are aspects where the now-defunct Initiative 65 could be enhanced, including permitting municipal authorities extra leniency in zoning medical cannabis dispensaries and not putting the whole system within the scope of the Mississippi State Department, which faces lack of funding and resources.
Newburger, who helped move forward the medical cannabis measure, noted though that bills approved in responding to the Supreme Court’s decision to repeal Initiative 65 must follow the rules of permitting wide accessibility to medical cannabis, providing physicians the power to authorize medical cannabis use where they think it would be advantageous, and letting free enterprise determine who may run a dispensary.
The Senate Public Health Committee held its first meeting since the Supreme Court last month declared the medical cannabis proposal illegal, as well as the overall voter campaign procedure. State lawmakers and Gov. Tate Reeves (R) have explored the idea of calling a special session to accept the resumption of the medical cannabis system as well as the overall voter campaign procedure, which allows residents to collect signatures to place ballot measures for a vote.
** Next up: According to a government financed analysis, the level of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in an individual’s body following cannabis consumption does not accurately represent a level of intoxication.
The study, which was funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), featured 20 persons who ingested or vaped cannabis with different amounts of THC. After that, they were put through some standard field sobriety and cognitive screenings.
Whereas the factions that obtained dosages above 5mg of THC were all “negatively impacted” and encountered measurable psychomotor deficiency, the RTI International researchers discovered that “THC levels in biofluids were not reliable indicators of marijuana intoxication for their study participants.”
The analysis, released last year and supported by the National Institute of Justice in a recent tweet, also discovered that other tasks, such as standing on one leg, balancing, walking, and turning, were “not sensitive to cannabis intoxication for any of the study participants.”
** Last up: The ACLU and the NAACP are among a group of prominent activist organizations pressing lawmakers in Congress to schedule a vote on a U.S. House proposal to federally legalize cannabis by the month’s end.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR), an alliance of over 220 national groups, wrote to House members urging them to approve the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement (MORE) Act, which last year passed the body then stalled, but was lately reintroduced.
The coalition wrote that following House approval last year, “the circumstances of this past year have made the War on Drugs even more untenable and amplified the voices of those demanding transformation in our criminal-legal system.”
The letter continues: “In the face of a growing national dialogue on discriminatory law enforcement practices, including the disproportionate policing of drug use in communities of color, transforming our criminal-legal system and redressing its harms is more relevant and more pressing than ever before. Marijuana reform represents a modest but necessary first step toward that transformation and toward repairing the harm wrought by the War on Drugs. The MORE Act remains the most effective and equitable way forward.”
