SAFE Banking Act to Get Committee Vote Soon, Study Finds Opioid Busts Could Increase ODs, More… (6/8/23)

A federal bill to fund university research on medical maerijuana gets filed, a federal asset forfeiture reform bill moves, and more.

Marijuana Policy

SAFE Banking Act to Get Senate Committee Vote Within Weeks, Chairman Says. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has said that the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act (S. 1323) would get a committee vote within weeks. "We’re looking at markup on the fentanyl issue, the executive compensation issue, and the Safe Banking Act issue and we want to do all that in the next two or three weeks,"Brown said.

The bill would give state-legal marijuana businesses access to the American banking system. Previous efforts to advance the bill stalled in the last few congressional sessions. But Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Steve Daines (R-MT), and Reps. Dave Joyce (R-OH) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) refiled the bill in their respective chambers in April.

Medical Marijuana

New Federal Bill Would Appropriate Millions for Medical Marijuana Research. This week Congresswoman Dina Titus (D-NV) and Congressman Joe Neguse (D-CO) introduced the Higher Education Marijuana Research Act of 2023, legislation that would eliminate obstacles to the academic research of cannabis, protect universities and researchers who study it, and promote the responsible study of marijuana.

While 38 states have legalized marijuana for medicinal use and 23 states including Nevada and Colorado have legalized it for recreational use, myriad federal rules and regulations create barriers to academic research. The bill would establish a new grant program within the National Institutes of Health to fund studies assessing cannabis’ medical benefits. It would appropriate up to $150 million in federal funding for university-sponsored medical cannabis research. The legislation also permits academic institutions to purchase state-licensed cannabis products for the purpose of "biological, chemical, agricultural, or public health research."

Asset Forfeiture

House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee Approves Asset Forfeiture Reform Bill. The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government on Tuesday voted to advance the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act of 2023 (HR 1525). The bill passed the subcommittee with bipartisan support and now awaits a full committee vote.

The bill would require that before seizing cash or property law enforcement show "a substantial connection between the property and the offense" and that the owner "used the property with intent to facilitate the offense" or "knowingly consented or was willfully blind to the use of the property by another in connection with the offense."

The bill would also eliminate the "equitable sharing" program under which state and local law enforcement agencies circumvent state asset forfeiture laws by turning cases over to the feds, who return 85 percent of the proceeds to the state or local law enforcement agency. And it would require that seizures be approved by a federal judge, not an administrative agency, such as the DEA, and that any funds go to the Treasury's general fund, not the fund of the seizing agency.

Drug Policy                                                       

Wisconsin Legislature Approves Bill to Increase Penalties in Overdose Deaths. With a final vote in the Assembly Wednesday, the legislature has approved a bill that increases maximum prison sentences for people who produce or sell drugs that cause another person's death, Senate Bill101. The bill would increase the maximum penalty from 25 years to 40 years in prison and increase the maximum period of supervision from 15 years to 20 years.

The bill comes as the state reported a record high number of overdose deaths in 2021 and easily passed both chambers. The only opposition to the bill comes from the ACLU of Wisconsin

"While reducing rates of overdose deaths is certainly an urgent priority, SB 101 won't alleviate the crisis," ACLU of Wisconsin policy analyst Jon McCray Jones said. "An extensive body of research – as well as our own lived experiences – tells us that punitive drug laws don't reduce drug use, substance abuse disorder, or overdoses."

Law Enforcement

. A new study found that when law enforcement agencies seize illicit opioids, fatal overdoses in the vicinity of the seizure increase over the next three weeks.

"This casts doubt on the core assumption of state and federal drug policy and suggests that police officers intending to protect the public’s health and safety may be inadvertently exacerbating harms such as fatal overdose," the study’s authors wrote.

The report does not say that drug raids caused the uptick in overdoses, but one of the study’s authors laid out a potential reasoning in a tweet: a person addicted to drugs does not simply stop using because police disrupt their supply. Instead, they go into withdrawal. They get more and more desperate, more willing to acquire drugs from dealers they don’t know. By the time they get new drugs, their tolerance likely decreased, putting them at risk of an overdose.

"Unknown tolerance, unknown potency, reduced risk aversion, and no margin for error in safely dosing fentanyl can all lead to increased fatal overdose observed in our study," Brandon del Pozo, an assistant professor of health services, policy and practice and an assistant professor of research at Brown University, wrote on Twitter.

Almost 1 million people have died from an overdose across the US in the past 20 years. The report proposes forming public safety partnerships where organizations can step in and assist people who use drugs after police perform a seizure; such groups could provide overdose prevention services, outreach and refer people to care.

"As drug markets become less predictable and morbidity and mortality among people who use drugs increases, it is critical that communities not only create low barrier access to evidence-based treatment but also implement harm reduction strategies that directly address supply-side drivers of accidental overdose," the report reads. "Naloxone distribution, drug-checking, and overdose prevention sites are strategies first developed and implemented by people who use drugs that can be facilitated or enhanced by law enforcement cooperation through exceptions or ‘carve-outs’ of drug criminalization to protect public health."