NE MedMJ Inits Leading in New Poll, Mexican Army Kills 19 Sinaloa Cartel Gunmen, More… (10/24/24)

New Hampshire gubernatorial candidates break up on marijuana legalization, a Central California county will vote on requiring welfare recipients to endure drug assessments, and extra. 

Marijuana Coverage

New Hampshire Gubernatorial Candidates Cut up on Marijuana Legalization. There’s a clear selection for Granite State voters who’re involved with marijuana coverage. Republican nominee Kelly Ayotte opposes marijuana legalization, whereas Democratic contender Joyce Craig is for it. 

Craig mentioned Tuesday she might get behind a legalization mannequin that “helps our small companies, our native farmers, and that gives native management. Clearly must be correctly regulated and labeled,” added the previous Manchester mayor, “and I might counsel that the revenues that we obtain from this be put towards public training and inexpensive housing, two issues that we have to give attention to over the subsequent few years.”

Craig additionally famous that legalization has broad well-liked assist within the state, with polls exhibiting “the overwhelming majority” of residents assist legalization. These polls put the extent of assist at round 70 p.c. 

However Ayotte demurs, citing considerations about youth use, downside drug use, and impaired driving. 

“One of many deep considerations I’ve about legalizing marijuana is the affect that marijuana has on youth psychological well being,” mentioned the previous U.S. senator and state lawyer normal. “Additionally, the research present between the ages of 15 and 25 that it truly will increase incidents of tension, schizophrenia [and] psychological well being points, and I don’t need to add that to the combo with challenges we have already got on psychological well being.”

Ayotte additionally repeated her speaking level that the drug restoration neighborhood opposes legalization. 

“I’ve but to satisfy somebody in restoration who thinks we must always legalize marijuana as we tackle, you already know, the challenges we’ve got with dependancy within the state,” she mentioned.

For the previous few years, marijuana legalization payments have come near passage within the legislature however have been unable to get previous the end line. A legalization invoice final session that lastly gained the assist of Gov. Chris Sununu (R) would have created a state liquor retailer legalization mannequin, nevertheless it was defeated by lawmakers who mentioned they most well-liked one other legalization mannequin. 

Medical Marijuana

Nebraska Ballot Has Nebraska Paired Set of Medical Marijuana Initiatives Successful. Voters within the Cornhusker State are set to approve a paired set of initiatives that might legalize medical marijuana within the state if a brand new Emerson School Polling and Midwest Newsroom ballot is right. Some 59 p.c of respondents mentioned they’d vote sure on legalizing medical marijuana, with solely 33 p.c saying no, and eight p.c undecided. 

If the ballot is correct, even when each undecided vote broke towards the initiatives—a extremely unlikely situation—they’d nonetheless win. 

The primary measure, the Nebraska Medical Hashish Affected person Safety initiative, would create a doctor-patient system for medical marijuana to guard sufferers from arrest. It could permit sufferers to own as much as 5 ounces of drugs.  

The second measure, the Nebraska Medical Hashish Regulation initiative, would create a framework for a regulated medical marijuana trade within the state. The plan envisions a fee to create guidelines and rules for a industrial market, with licensed companies earlier than October 1, 2025. 

The one demographic teams that didn’t assist the initiatives have been Republicans (42.3 p.c mentioned sure), previous Trump voters (41.6 p.c sure), and other people 70 or older (45.6 p.c sure). 

Nebraska Public Media host Dale Johnson mentioned the broad discovering of assist underscores a distinction between voters and their elected officers. “This is able to return to my statement about voters differentiating from lawmakers within the legislature,” Johnson mentioned. “Right here in Nebraska, there’s enormous opposition to medical hashish [in the legislature], however but, you ask the particular person on the road they need it handed…”

“So many states that border Nebraska have it,” replied Midwest Newsroom information journalist Daniel Wheaton. “The truth of what’s authorized versus what is feasible to acquire is totally different in Nebraska.”

That is the third time activists have tried to get the problem earlier than the voters, and they’re hoping the third time would be the allure.

Drug Testing

California’s San Joaquin County Will Vote on Drug Testing Welfare Recipients. Voters in San Joaquin County within the Central Valley east of the San Francisco Bay space will vote on an area ordinance that might require welfare recipients suspected of drug use to endure drug testing or lose their advantages. Those that examined constructive for medication can be pressured to enter drug remedy or lose their advantages. 

The proposed ordinance is Measure R. It asks:”[Should we require] single adults age 65 and beneath, with no dependent kids, who obtain County funded public help advantages and whom the County moderately suspects are depending on unlawful medication, to take part in screening, analysis, and remedy for drug dependency to ensure that these adults to be eligible for these advantages be adopted?”

An accompanying clarification says its purpose is to assist individuals on medication get into remedy: “Though cheap participation in remedy packages shall be required, sobriety of members is not going to be … Perfection isn’t the purpose; improved well being and life outcomes is.”

County welfare advantages aren’t enormous. People can get $75 month-to-month on an EBT card and a most of $367 in rental help, with $340 paid on to a landlord. 

Below the measure, the county Human Companies Company can be charged with figuring out whether or not there may be “cheap suspicion to imagine that a person depends upon unlawful medication.” How it could accomplish that is just not specified. 

The proposed ordinance displays a broader development within the state. San Francisco voters earlier this yr permitted Measure F, which additionally removes advantages from individuals who refuse to undergo drug testing. That measure will take impact in January. 

“Therapy needs to be voluntary and available and humane—not coercive. “California is in the course of an id disaster,” mentioned Denise Elerick, founding father of the Hurt Discount Coalition of Santa Cruz County. “We now have been a pacesetter in justice reform, however no person’s had the braveness to push again on these police unions and the far-right wing who’s behind loads of this, and to carry our so-called progressives accountable for purchasing into it.”

Worldwide

Mexican Troops Kill 19 Sinaloa Cartel Gunmen on Outskirts of Culiacan. Nineteen Sinaloa Cartel gunmen are useless after a “conflict” during which troopers suffered no accidents, elevating suspicions that like comparable previous incidents, the “conflict” might have been a mass execution. 

The confrontation occurred Monday night time on the outskirts of the state capital, Culiacan, and was solely the most recent bloody incident in a Sinaloa Cartel faction struggle that has been ongoing for the reason that kidnapping of cartel chief Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada by one of many son’s of imprisoned cartel chief Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The son turned each Zambada and himself in to US authorities at an airstrip in Texas. 

Based on the army, the useless gunmen belonged to Zambada’s faction, “Los Mayitos,” and attacked the troopers after they detained a prime member of the faction. The army mentioned there have been 30 attackers and that 11 escaped. It mentioned troopers fired in self-defense and “strict adherence to the rule of regulation and with full respect for human rights.”

The same occasion passed off in Mexico state in 2014, when troopers killed 22 suspects at a grain warehouse. Whereas some died in an preliminary confrontation with a military patrol that left one soldier wounded, a later investigation decided that a minimum of eight and as many as a dozen have been summarily executed after surrendering. In that case, seven troopers have been ultimately arrested, then freed, then arrested once more on costs of abuse of authority. These costs have but to be settled. 

(This text was ready by StoptheDrugWar.org’s 501(c)(4) lobbying nonprofit, the Drug Reform Coordination Community, which additionally pays the price of sustaining this web site. DRCNet Basis takes no positions on candidates for public workplace, in compliance with part 501(c)(3) of the Inner Income Code, and doesn’t pay for reporting that could possibly be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)