Monthly Archives: June 2021

Theres arguably no piece of legislation in the modern era which has been more ineffective, needlessly cruel or morally insane than the Misuse of Drugs Act. Last week saw its 50th anniversary. And over the course of that half century it has maimed and mutilated countless lives, thrown hundreds of thousands of people pointlessly in prison, and accomplished the square root of absolutely nothing at all.

The facts speak for themselves. Dame Carol Blacks review of drugs for the Home Office last year found that 3 million people took drugs in England and Wales in 2019. Drug use has shot up since 1971, when the Act was passed. Less than 10,000 people took heroin back then, whereas over 250,000 do now. Cannabis use has gone from under half a million to over 2.5 million today. Around one per cent of adults had tried drugs in the 60s, compared to around a third now. Its fair to say that the legislation has not worked for that which it was intended to achieve.

The illicit drugs market is worth an estimated 9.4 billion a year, most of which is directed towards sustaining criminal gangs. In recent years, the county lines system has begun to supply drugs from an urban hub towards rural or coastal towns, displacing local dealers. One of its marked features is the exploitation of children, typically aged around 15-17, who are deployed as runners transporting drugs and money.

On any given day, a third of the prison population is there for drug related crime around 40% for convictions on the basis of specific drug offences and 60% for crimes related to drug addiction, like theft. In prison, they continue to use drugs. Random drug test data suggests 12,500 inmates about 15% of the total population are using drugs on any given day. Most users entered prison with a drug problem, but eight per cent of female inmates and 13% of males developed their problem with drugs while they were incarcerated.

These figures do not include the people who are given a caution for drug possession, many of them teenagers. We rarely talk about this, because it doesnt involve a prison sentence, and therefore seems fairly small-fry. But cautions involve an admission of guilt and therefore constitute a criminal record. They freeze countless thousands of young people out of many of the professions and kneecap their career before it has even begun.

Under any possible analysis, the war on drugs has been an unmitigated failure. More people take drugs, more people die of them, more people end up in prison, and more money is funnelled into criminal gangs. For half a century we have tried to accomplish something which cannot be done. We have legislated for what is inconceivable. And, in reality, we have fuelled the worst possible side-effects of drug use: broken lives, dead bodies and rich criminals.

If the world made any sense, the political class would accept that the legislation has failed. It would acknowledge that people are clearly going to take drugs regardless of whether they are banned or not. It would prioritise their protection rather than their criminalisation. It would read the data, recognise the endless wave of needless suffering it reflects, and do something to change it.

But the world does not make any sense and therefore the political class has done something else, which is actually quite startlingly insane. It has drawn the curtains, turned off the lights, and pretended that reality does not exist. It has closed itself off from expert opinion and the basic facts of narcotics use so that it can justify continuing with a demonstrably failed policy.

In many ways, drug policy was an early forerunner of post-truth politics. Anyone who tried to point out what was really happening was ignored, or, if they refused to keep ignoring reality, punished. In 2009, David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, a statutory body which reports to the government on drug harms, contributed to a paper assessing the damage of various narcotics. His analysis of nine parameters of harm suggested alcohol was the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine barbiturates and methadone, but ahead of LSD, ecstasy or cannabis. The response of the then-home secretary, Alan Johnson, was to dismiss him.

This is the standard operating model which successive governments have used. For decades now, parliamentary select committees have called on the government to investigate drug law reform, only to be ignored by whoever was in No.10. And that approach remains in place today. Dame Carol Blacks review of drugs was explicitly barred by the government from considering changes to the existing legislative framework.

It makes no difference who is in power. The policy is the same under Labour or Conservatives. There isnt even any distinction within the parties. For all their differences, and the ferocious infighting that goes with them, you could fit a thin blue Rizla paper between the drug policy of Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband, Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer. The closest we ever got to sense was Tony Blair downgrading cannabis to Class C a decision that was soon reversed.

It doesnt even matter what politicians views were on drug reform before they took office. In 2002, David Cameron was part of the home affairs committee when it recommended a discussion on the possibility of legalisation and regulation. Ten years later, when he was prime minister, he ruled out a suggestion from the very same home affairs committee that there should be a royal commission on drugs. No matter who sits in No.10, the view never changes. People who saw sense magically became impervious to it when in power. And then, like former home secretary Jacqui Smith, rediscover their sense after they have left it.

The curtains stay down, the lights stay off, the war on drugs continues, and all evidence discounting it is rejected.

If we were going to be honest about drugs, we would admit the following six things.

First: you cannot stop people using drugs. People have used drugs for millenia. As far as we can tell, they have done it since the dawn of man. Wherever you find a human activity that cannot be stopped, you are best off trying to regulate it, so that you can minimise harm, instead of trying to outlaw it, which will merely drive it underground.

Second: we should not try to ban drugs, even if we did have a chance of succeeding at it. It is up to people to decide what they want to put in their body. Many drugs are harmful. Even relatively harmless drugs like cannabis can suck the dynamism and ambition out of people. Other drugs, like methamphetamines, are much more dangerous. But in every case, it is peoples right to choose to do it.

Some people find that opinion shocking. And yet they at the same time believe alcohol should be legal. This simply makes no sense. Alcohol can make people violent, damage the body, and be addictive. We respond by helping those who struggle with it, while respecting the decision of those who choose to consume it. The same applies to other drugs and there is no morally consistent position to claim otherwise.

Third: our moral duty as a society is to help people who decide to take drugs. That involves providing addiction services for those who cannot stop, advice for people experimenting, and regulating the market so that drug dealers are prevented from mixing dangerous ingredients in with the active ones.

Fourth: the war on drugs has created a ceaseless grind of broken lives, in which tens of thousands of people are funnelled into prisons for a non-violent crime, where they are brutalised all over again by an under-funded system, and then become more likely to take drugs and commit crime in order to buy them. Even the caution system, which devastates young peoples professional prospects, constitutes a cruel and needlessly vindictive response to a perfectly normal youthful curiosity.

Fifth: the war on drugs ignores the rich while punishing the poor. Look at the government. Around the Cabinet table, prime minister Boris Johnson and minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove have admitted taking cocaine, while foreign secretary Dominic Rabb has admitted taking cannabis. Why are they any different from the people currently languishing in prison? Why should they be allowed to treat drugs as youthful high-jinks, when others have their lives ruined by the police response? The answer is because of their class. Overwhelmingly, people from more elevated social backgrounds avoid the brutality of the system, while those from poorer backgrounds do not. As Barack Obama said: Middle-class kids dont get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do.

Sixth: the war on drugs is racist. It was from the beginning and it still is today. Black people are stopped and searched for drugs at almost nine times the rate of whites. They are convicted of cannabis possession at 11.8 times the rate, despite having lower rates of self-reported use. As a UN group of human rights experts said in 2019: The war on drugs has operated more effectively as a system of racial control than as a mechanism for combating the use and trafficking of narcotics.

The cruel irony is that the world around us is realising the insanity of the war of drugs, even as Britain stays trapped in its curtains-down, self-imposed blindness. In the US, state after state has experimented with drug reform. The pressure is now building at the federal level, with the House of Representatives voting to pass a bill to decriminalise cannabis late last year. In Europe, several countries are pursuing liberalisation to various degrees, including Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, the Czech Republic and Germany.

Britain stands increasingly alone, pursuing a deranged fantasy agenda which drives users into danger and money into gangs. The war on drugs cannot be won and it should not be won, even if it could be.

We cant put up with another 50 years of this deranged masquerade. The price in human lives is too steep. But where is the political leader with the bravery, the insight and the backbone to say so? At the moment they are nowhere to be seen. So instead, we stay in our self-imposed madness, keeping the curtains locked down tight, patrolling the light switch, and dismissing anyone who speaks the truth.

Ian Dunt is editor-at-large for Politics.co.uk. His new book,How To Be A Liberal, is out now.

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50 years in, the war on drugs is an unmitigated disaster - Politics.co.uk

A rider that has effectively blocked recreational cannabis for years in Washington, DC appears in President Joe Bidens proposed 2022 budget, which may keep weed on the back burner yet again.

Even though residents of DC voted to legalize possession of recreational marijuana in 2014, the measure has been in limbo since then, derailed by a rider to DCs appropriations bill first introduced by Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), that prohibits the District from spending its local funds on commercialization of recreational cannabis, such as dispensaries. And Bidens proposed 2022 budget includes the riders language yet again.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said in a statement she was having a hard time reconciling the Biden administration's support for DC statehood with its budget that would prevent DC from commercializing recreational cannabis. With Democrats controlling the White House, House and Senate, we have the best opportunity in over a decade to enact a D.C. appropriations bill that does not contain any anti-home-rule riders, Norton said.

Asked if the president plans to remove the language from the proposed budget, a Biden administration official said in an email to The Verge that the president continues to strongly support DC statehood, under which the people of DC could make policy choices just like other states.

DC has long had a so-called gray market for marijuana, with medical cannabis legal, and recreational cannabis technically legal, but unable to be taxed or regulated because of the Harris rider. DC voters first approved medical marijuana in 1998, but it too was initially blocked, by the Barr Amendment, legislation that Congress finally overturned in 2009.

Biden, once a leading voice in the War on Drugs of the 1980s and 90s, said during the 2020 presidential campaign that it was time to decriminalize marijuana use, but so far during his administration theres been little action to do so at the federal level. Dozens of US states have legalized medical marijuana, recreational marijuana, or both, and public opinion supporting legal weed is at an all-time high. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), have said they would work together to advance comprehensive cannabis reform.

In February, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed legislation to create an equitable adult-use cannabis program in DC, which would impose a 17 percent tax on cannabis sales. But its unlikely to take effect if the rider remains in Bidens proposed 2022 budget.

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Bidens proposed budget keeps a block on recreational weed sales in Washington, DC - The Verge

The COVID-19 pandemic has been cataclysmic for much of the planet, and the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes it, is far from finished with us.

After earlier good control of the pandemic, Taiwan, Singapore and other countries are experiencing a surge, and India is facing a catastrophe, with millions of deaths counted already and the nations healthcare system devastated.

In spite of the progress in suppressing the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S., U.K. and some other countries, primarily through remarkably effective vaccines and non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as masking, social distancing, and good hygiene, it seems likely that COVID-19 will not in the foreseeable future completely disappear butwill become endemic, with seasonal variation, similar to influenza.

Because people will continue to fall ill, there will be an ongoing need for treatments, which are currently in short supply.Althoughsome moderately effective drugs are already being used, new treatments are needed to treat severe COVID-19 infections.

The anti-viral drug remdesivir, which binds to the viruss RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and inhibits viral replication, is currently the only drug that is approved by the FDA for the treatment of COVID-19.It is recommended for use in hospitalized patients who require supplemental oxygen.

RELATED:Industry VoicesIn a time of need, hospitals must be able to transform

The corticosteroid dexamethasone has been found to improve survival in hospitalized patients who require supplemental oxygen, with the greatest benefit observed in patients who are on ventilators.Adding the monoclonal antibody tocilizumab to dexamethasone therapy was found to improve survival among patients who were exhibiting rapid respiratory deterioration due to COVID-19.

In outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19 who are at high risk for disease progression, anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody-based therapies may have the greatest potential for a clinical benefit during the earliest stages of infection. For these patients, apanel of NIH experts recommendsadministering monoclonal antibodies bamlanivimab plus etesevimab or casirivimab plus imdevimab, both of which are available through Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Other analogous approaches that via various mechanisms blunt the activity of the immune response are promising.

One of these attempts to therapeutically modulate the activity of an often-overlooked system called the lectin pathway, a part of the bodys complement system that helps the immune system respond to infection. When over-activated, as happens with severe COVID-19, it can lead to an uncontrolled cascade of inflammation, endothelial damage, dangerous blood clots, and cytokine storm, whichcan, in turn, lead to severe respiratory distress, organ failure, and death.

Once the coronavirus reaches the lungs, it soon infects the surrounding blood vessels. This triggers a response from part of the immune system called the lectin pathway. The lectin pathway releases an enzyme called MASP-2, which causes uncontrolled inflammation in the blood vessels, further damaging them and leading to thrombosis, or blood clots, in the arteries.

A monoclonal antibody called narsoplimab blocks the MASP-2 enzyme and is, thus, an inhibitor of the lectin-pathway.

It inhibits the binding of cytokine IL-6 to its receptor, and thereby modulates the excessive, damaging inflammatory response of the immune system to infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Narsoplimab has shown impressive responses in advanced clinical trials for several illnesses marked by endothelial cell injury, and because similar pathophysiology is found in COVID-19 infections, ithas been tested in a small number of infected patients, withpromising results.

The largest study, conducted in Italy in six severely ill COVID-19 patients,concluded: (1) [n]arsoplimabdown-modulates SARS-CoV-2-induced activation of the lectin pathway and endothelial cell damage; (2) [n]arsoplimab can reduce the thrombotic risk of Covid-19 patients; and (3) [a]ll patients treated with narsoplimab improved and survived without any drug-related adverse events. This was a far better result than would have been expected, based on retrospective control groups.

Narsoplimab is only one example of the frenzy of clinical research on various treatment protocols for COVID-19, including the use of drugs, new and repurposed.This is critical, especially if new variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerge that are not effectively combated by existing vaccines.

Henry I. Miller is a physician, molecular biologist and senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. He was the founding director of the FDAs Office of Biotechnology.

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Industry VoicesVaccines are pivotal in the war on COVID-19, but better treatments for acute COVID patients are critical - FierceHealthcare

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Published June 3rd, 2021 at 6:00 AM

A sharp pain from a recent surgery jolts an elderly woman awake in the middle of the night, and she fights through the fog in her brain to ponder, Did I already take my pain meds?

A young man buys marijuana, but he has no idea that the supplier laced it with the deadly drug fentanyl to enhance the high.

A chronic pain patient has been taking opioids without issues for years, but they develop a respiratory disease and suddenly have a bad reaction to their medication.

These are just a few of the scenarios in which an unwitting person ends up overdosing an occurrence that rose about 27% nationwide from 2019 to 2020.

Missourians know this grief all too well.

A recent study from WalletHub ranked Missouri third in the nation for drug use, behind only the District of Columbia and West Virginia. Kansas is much further down the list at 39th.

The study compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia by gathering 21 relevant metrics that were grouped in three overall categories: drug use and addiction; law enforcement; and drug health issues and rehabilitation. Each state was then assigned a weighted score.

Amid the COVID pandemic, another public health disaster has been looming in the background: the growing opioid crisis.

Dr. Teresa Long is the medical director for the Persistent Pain Management Clinic at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Over the years she has watched the opioid epidemic develop in real time.

A number of years ago there was a lot of teaching that patients should not be feeling any pain, Long said. Many more doctors were willing to give much higher doses (of opioids).

The result of this medical practice was many more people being exposed to opioids than before. While the common conception is that drug dependency starts in the streets, doctors like Long recognize the role that health care practices have played in addiction as well.

Pain management care has changed along with the opioid epidemic. Now, doctors will commonly communicate that pain with procedures should be expected but can be managed with some medication.

Opiates are helpful for the management of pain, but they can be used too frivolously, Long said.

Dr. Roopa Sethi specializes in addiction psychiatry at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Sethi and Long both said that the lines between using a drug, dependency and addiction can become blurred.

This is one of the numerous reasons that people addicted to drugs can have a difficult time identifying the issue.

Addiction doesnt necessarily have a look, Sethi said.

Sethi explained that someone could be using opioids as pain management for years, but a change in dosage or life circumstances could trigger an addiction.

Misconceptions about what addiction looks like have contributed to shame and difficulty coming to grips with the illness.

The war on drugs defined by such imagery as an egg being cracked into a frying pan and gritty cop shows left little nuance in the conversation around the many forms addiction can take.

For example, withdrawal isnt just something that happens when someone is itching to find their next dose. If a pain patient doesnt get their prescription refilled on time, they might start to feel withdrawal symptoms that Sethi described as intolerable.

Those are normal psychological symptoms, Long said.

According to Long, it becomes time to label an addiction when the focus of a persons life starts to revolve around the drug itself getting it, recovering from the use and finding the next dose.

To pharmacist and University of Missouri-Kansas City professor Dr. Heather Lyons-Burney, one of the largest roadblocks to recovery is the stigma around addiction.

The more stigma there is, the less likely people are to seek care, she said.

Lyons-Burney also believes that heavy stigma around drug abuse, particularly in rural areas, is part of the reason that Missouri is ranked so high in drug use.

Its like a chronic illness, she said. Lets treat it that way.

As opposed to treating it like a character flaw, advocates like Lyons-Burney are pushing for education so that more people recognize substance use as a disorder.

Recently, the state of Missouri has been catching up to the rest of the country by adopting measures to address the states drug issue.

After years of being the countrys lone holdout, the Missouri Senate voted this April to create a statewide prescription drug monitoring program. Other states have been using this program in an attempt to prevent drug abuse by tracking drug use.

Also this April, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services issued a standing order for the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone. This means that naloxone, a life saving drug, can be issued to qualified candidates without a prescription.

Lyons-Burney says the role of naloxone is paramount. Despite efforts of both doctors and people addicted to drugs to safely move away from opioid use, mistakes happen. And if a relapse occurs after someones tolerance has been lowered, the result can be deadly.

Advocates say Missouris new efforts to treat substance use disorders paired with the work of existing treatment centers hopefully will improve the states rank when it comes to drug abuse.

Its a multi-pronged approach, theres not one solution to this problem, Lyons-Burney said. As a society and as a community we need to stand up and help our neighbors.

Catherine Hoffman covers community affairs and culture for Kansas City PBS in cooperation withReport for America.

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Missouri Feels the Pain of Drug Dependency and Overdose More than Most States - Flatland

The Honorable Nancy PelosiSpeaker of the House of Representatives1236 Longworth House Office BuildingWashington, DC 20515

The Honorable Steny HoyerMajority LeaderH-107, The CapitolWashington, DC 20515

The Honorable Kevin McCarthyMinority Leader2468 Rayburn House Office BuildingWashington, DC 20515

Re: Co-sponsor the MORE Act (HR 3617) and Support Swift Passage in the House

Dear Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, Minority Leader McCarthy, and Honorable Members of the US House of Representatives:

I write on behalf of Human Rights Watch to urge you to co-sponsor the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (MORE Act) and support its swift movement to the House floor for a vote this month. Last year, the bill introduced in the 116th Congress by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Representative Jerry Nadler was backed by 120 House co-sponsors and the House of Representatives passed the MORE Act with a 228-164 vote. The passage of the MORE Act represented a landmark step toward a rights-respecting criminal legal system while furthering racial justice and equity. Human Rights Watch again calls upon members of Congress to take the necessary steps to further racial justice by swiftly ending marijuana prohibition and repairing the harm it has caused.

The MORE Act removes marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and begins to repair the harm marijuana prohibition has caused to millions of people, particularly Black and brown communities, by establishing a fund for social equity programs to reinvest in affected communities. It also would protect noncitizens from immigration consequences due to a cannabis-related event and creates a process by which people with federal marijuana convictions can have these convictions expunged or be resentenced.

Reduce the Role of Policing in and Ending Disproportionate Drug Arrests

In 2016, research by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) showed that in the US, someone was arrested for drug possession for personal useevery 25 seconds, and half of those arrests were for marijuana possession.[1] Drug possession for personal useremainsby far the offense for which people are arrested the most in the United States, with 1.35 million people arrested for drug possession in the United States in 2019.[2] The largest share of drug possession arrests is marijuana-related.

Theracial disparities in these arrests remain acute.[3] Despite using drugs at similar rates as white people, Black adults are more than two-and-a-half times as likely as white adults to be arrested for simple possession. AnApril 2020 ACLU reportfound that in 2018, Black people were 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people.[4] To fundamentally reform policing in the United States, Human Rights Watch calls on Congress to decriminalize the possession of all drugs for personal use and encourage state and local authorities to reduce the role of police in addressing societal problems including substance use disorder.[5]

Ending federal marijuana prohibition would not address criminalization of marijuana or other drugs at the state level, but would remove federal obstacles to state-level marijuana reform and send a powerful signal about the importance of pursuing it.

Protect the Rights of Immigrants and Prevent Family Separation

Marijuana criminalization has played a major role in tearing apart families. In a 2015 report, A Price Too High: US Families Torn Apart by Deportations for Drug Offenses, Human Rights Watch analyzed data received from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act.[6] Between 2007 and 2012 almost 266,000 deported immigrants had a drug conviction as their most serious conviction; of those, over 34,000 were for marijuana possession. Even lawful permanent residents can be deported for marijuana possession. People who use marijuana or work in the marijuana industry in a jurisdiction in which such activities are legal can face deportation for such activities or be barred from ever gaining legal status and citizenship. Due to federal prohibition, a conviction for simple possession of marijuana can trigger mandatory detention provisionspeople who would never face jail time under criminal laws faced months or even years of detention under immigration laws. Many of the people Human Rights Watch interviewed had US citizen family, who also suffered the consequences of these harsh immigration laws. By ending the federal prohibition against marijuana, the MORE Act would end such draconian outcomes and help keep families together.

A Path to Repair and Redress for the Devastating Toll of Marijuana Prohibition

The MORE Act is a bill that will begin to repair harms, particularly in Black, brown, and immigrant communities, as a result of the war on drugs. The bill would direct federal excise tax on marijuana sales toward funding reinvestment in communities adversely impacted by drug prohibition[7] and build up programming to support a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive industry.[8]

For all these reasons, passing the MORE Act represents a real opportunity at the federal level to address racial justice and equity in the US policing and criminal legal system.Human Rights Watch urges you to co-sponsor the MORE Act and support its swift movement to the House floor in June.

Sincerely,

Laura PitterDeputy Director, US ProgramHuman Rights Watch

[1] Human Rights Watch, Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2016), https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/10/12/every-25-seconds/human-toll-criminalizing-drug-use-united-states.

[2] Common Sense for Drug Policy, Total Annual Drug Arrests in The United States by Offense Type, 2021, https://www.drugpolicyfacts.org/node/234 (accessed April 21, 2021).

[3] Thomas J. Rachko, Jr., US Congress Should End Marijuana Prohibition, commentary, Human Rights Watch Dispatch, August 25, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/25/us-congress-should-end-marijuana-prohibition.

[4] American Civil Liberties Union, A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana, April 16, 2020, https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/new-aclu-report-despite-marijuana-legalization-black-people-still-almost-four-times (accessed April 21, 2020).

[5] Human Rights Watch, A Roadmap for Re-imagining Public Safety in the United States: 14 Recommendations on Policing, Community Investment, and Accountability (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2020), https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/12/roadmap-re-imagining-public-safety-united-states.

[6] Human Rights Watch, A Price Too High: US Families Torn Apart by Deportations for Drug Offenses (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2015), https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/06/16/price-too-high/us-families-torn-apart-deportations-drug-offenses.

[7] Marijuana Justice Coalition Asserts Statement of Principles on Federal Marijuana Reform, Human Rights Watch news release, July 9, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/09/marijuana-justice-coalition-asserts-statement-principles-federal-marijuana-reform.

[8] US: Bill Seeks to End Federal Marijuana Prohibition, Human Rights Watch news release, July 23, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/23/us-bill-seeks-end-federal-marijuana-prohibition.

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Human Rights Watch Urges Congress to Support the MORE Act - Human Rights Watch