PR Governor Calls for Drug Decriminalization, Mendo Pot Farmers Catch a Break, More… (10/18/24)

The DEA is ringing the alarm bell in regards to the artificial drug “pink cocaine” in New York Metropolis, and extra. 

Marijuana Coverage

California Takes Step to Maintain Nearly 500 Mendocino Pot Growers within the Authorized Market. The state Division of Hashish Management (DCC) introduced on Thursday that it had taken a long-awaited motion to maneuver Mendocino County authorized marijuana growers extra firmly into the authorized market. The division stated it had lastly licensed an Environmental Impression Report (EIR) for the county, which implies growers there can transfer from provisional licensing to annual licensing. 

There are 535 energetic licensed marijuana growers within the county, and 476 (89 %) are listed as provisional licensees. Below state legislation, DCC can’t renew provisional licenses after the start of subsequent yr, and people provisional license holders should switch to annual licensing by 2026 or get out of the authorized market. The shortage of an EIR has been a serious impediment to these growers getting annual licensing. 

“Our purpose has at all times been clear: to help those that helped construct California’s hashish trade via a licensing program that’s environmentally aware and legally sound,” DCC Director Nicole Elliott. “With the EIR licensed, we’re one step nearer to retaining Mendocino’s pioneering hashish spirit alive.”

Mendocino growers confronted issues as a result of native officers arrange their program earlier than state licensing was in place and didn’t align it with mandates for site-specific opinions below state environmental legal guidelines.

“As a result of the state requires a site-specific discretionary assessment of each single venture with a purpose to qualify for the state license and CEQA compliance, Mendocino County basically didn’t have a system to fulfill the state licensing necessities,” stated Genine Coleman, director of the Origins Council, a nonprofit that advocates for roughly 900 small, unbiased hashish companies and homestead farming households, primarily within the rural areas of Northern California.

Now with a licensed EIR in place, the event of site-specific setting paperwork turns into a lot much less onerous than it could have been in any other case, paving that pathway for Mendocino County hashish cultivators to grow to be compliant with state environmental laws and acquire annual licensure.

“This venture is a testomony to what’s attainable when authorized operators and native and state authorities work collectively in the direction of addressing California Environmental High quality Act necessities and deal with assembly an necessary goal,” stated Mo Mulheren, chair of the Mendocino Board of Supervisors. “The answer developed and carried out by the Division of Hashish Management and Mendocino County makes it attainable for legacy cultivators to deal with what they do finest—rising high-quality hashish legally by eliminating the ultimate roadblocks,” Mulheren stated.

Drug Coverage

Feds Warn About Pink Cocaine AKA “Tusi” in New York Metropolis. The DEA is issuing a brand new warning a couple of artificial stimulant being peddled as “pink cocaine” or “tusi” within the metropolis. The drug has picked up the “tusi” moniker after 2C-B, a collection of psychedelic phenethylamines, although it’s not clear that any given pattern of “pink cocaine” really incorporates 2C-B.

“It is ketamine combined with methamphetamine, ecstasy. It could possibly be combined with something,” stated Bridget Brennan, New York Metropolis’s particular narcotics prosecutor. “It might probably put folks right into a ‘k-hole’ the place they really feel like they’re in a clean house like they’re disassociated from their physique, they’re disassociated from their mind, they do not know what is going on on.”

“It is being offered largely on-line and thru social media apps however being abused within the golf equipment in New York Metropolis,” warned DEA New York Metropolis Particular Agent in Cost Frank Tarentino. 

He stated that it goes for $20 to $100 a gram and he warned that it’s exhibiting up as an adulterant in different powder medication.

“We’re seeing increasingly of this drug being combined with fentanyl,” Tarentino stated. 

The troubles over “tuci” come as town works its method via record-high drug overdose numbers, with greater than 2,600 deadly overdoses in 2021, 3,026 in 2022, and 712 within the first quarter of 2003. However it’s unclear if “tuci” is implicated in any of these deaths.

Puerto Rico Governor Requires Drug Decriminalization—Not Legalization. Gov. Pedro Pierluis Urrutia stated Thursday in response to a query about fentanyl deaths that he favored decriminalizing medication however not legalizing them. 

“This legalization factor isn’t for me,” Pierluisi stated. “Decriminalization could possibly be completed to a sure extent, however with nice care and controls, as a result of we don’t need to encourage drug use in Puerto Rico; if something, we need to discourage it.”

However he appears prepared to throw some drug customers in jail anyway.

“I’ve at all times stated that drug customers, addicts, shouldn’t be imprisoned, besides when it’s a repeat offense and they’re committing a collection of crimes that don’t present options,” he continued.

The governor’s feedback got here amid a spate of concern over fentanyl, with authorities officers calling on “anybody who buys any substance illegally to pay attention to the danger that it could comprise fentanyl.” The identical day the governor spoke, the island’s Institute of Forensic Sciences confirmed {that a} collection of overdose deaths in Arecibo implicated fentanyl, in addition to cocaine and xylazine.