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Ythan
ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


Registered: 08/08/97
Posts: 18,840
Loc: NY/MA/VT Borderlands
Last seen: 1 hour, 45 minutes
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Anti-cannabis groups sue to overturn New York's marijuana laws
#28374488 - 06/25/23 07:27 PM (10 months, 18 days ago) |
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Anti-cannabis groups sue to overturn New York's marijuana laws www.timesunion.com
ALBANY — A coalition of anti-cannabis interests filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court this week seeking to overturn New York’s legalization of marijuana, comparing the industry to tobacco companies that made fraudulent claims about their products.
The petition was filed in Albany by the Cannabis Impact Prevention Coalition and a group called Cannabis Industry Victims Seeking Justice, as well as eight individuals associated with those groups, including a former Delaware County STOP-DWI coordinator and a father who claims to be worried about his son’s marijuana consumption.
“What the tobacco companies have done the marijuana companies are doing now,” the petition states. “It is only a matter of time before there are RICO lawsuits against marijuana stores and growing operations in New York.”
The lawsuit asserts that marijuana consumption, sale and possession remains illegal under federal law and that the state Legislature usurped Congress when it passed the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act in 2021, legalizing marijuana for adults and setting up a framework to roll out a retail industry that includes growers, processors and licensed shops.
The groups cite information they contend shows that marijuana consumption is harmful and that claims made about its medicinal benefits are unfounded and dangerous.
“False advertising may mislead vulnerable patients and the public,” the complaint states. “ 'Medical' use may inadvertently result in addiction, increased risk of psychosis, mental or psychosocial impairment, lung damage when smoked, and complications for unborn children when used during pregnancy. The presence of 'medical marijuana' dispensaries may increase access to recreational marijuana for minors.”
Marijuana remains a schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law, a list that includes bath salts, heroin, ecstasy and acid. The Food and Drug Administration also promulgates rules that note marijuana has a high potential for abuse and that its use as a “dietary supplement” has not been approved. Many of the products being sold in both retail and medical marijuana outlets in New York and other states are “edibles” that contain THC and CBD.
The lawsuit also cites information it says indicates the claims about the medical benefits of THC and CBD have not been subjected to studies that satisfy the FDA’s standards for determining safety and effectiveness.
The lawsuit also points to what it claimed were “recent” remarks from the FDA commissioner that were gleaned from a statement by former Commissioner Scott Gottlieb when the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 was signed into law, legalizing hemp and removing it from the Controlled Substances Act.
“Cannabis and cannabis-derived products claiming in their marketing and promotional materials that they’re intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of diseases… are considered new drugs or new animal drugs and must go through the FDA drug approval process for human or animal use before they are marketed in the U.S.,” Gottlieb said five years ago. “Selling unapproved products with unsubstantiated therapeutic claims is not only a violation of the law, but also can put patients at risk, as these products have not been proven to be safe or effective.”
Officials with the state Office of Cannabis Management declined to comment on the lawsuit.
David G. Evans, a New Jersey attorney and organizer of the group Cannabis Industry Victims Seeking Justice, said he believes it is the first lawsuit of its kind in the nation. Evans, a former research scientist with the New Jersey Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, said that multiple presidential administrations, beginning with former President Bill Clinton, took no action as states began establishing government-sanctioned medical and recreational marijuana industries.
“The biggest problem that we deal with is the public perception that marijuana is relatively harmless,” Evans said. “And the American industry is very smart and they began pushing it as a medicine. And that’s how they gained a lot of their money during the Bush administration. Then they plowed that into lobbyists and focus groups and so forth, and then began turning state after state.”
Evans cited numerous medical doctors and researchers across the United States that he said have cast doubt on assertions that marijuana is not dangerous or that it is effective for many medicinal purposes.
“So, we’ve basically passed all these marijuana laws based on anecdotal studies,” he said. “Anecdotes — people coming in and saying, 'yeah, it helped me.' This is not the way we do medicine in the United States.”
New York’s retail marijuana market roll out has been plagued with problems and thousands of illicit marijuana shops have proliferated as just more than a dozen retail shops have opened across the state — far short of the goal regulators and lawmakers had set in their timeline.
That has left more than 200 growers with stockpiles of marijuana they grew last year but have been unable to sell. The Legislature recently passed a bill that would temporarily allow growers to sell that product to tribal nations in New York.
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durian_2008
Cornucopian Eating an Elephant



Registered: 04/02/08
Posts: 18,037
Loc: Raccoon City
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Re: Anti-cannabis groups sue to overturn New York's marijuana laws [Re: Ythan]
#28374664 - 06/25/23 11:26 PM (10 months, 18 days ago) |
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Quote:
people coming in and saying, 'yeah, it helped me.' This is not the way we do medicine in the United States.
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Panchote
& L (my dog)



Registered: 09/19/22
Posts: 34
Last seen: 17 hours, 50 minutes
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Re: Anti-cannabis groups sue to overturn New York's marijuana laws [Re: Ythan]
#28374994 - 06/26/23 08:21 AM (10 months, 18 days ago) |
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Rage Against the Machine....
Some of those that work forces / Are the same that burn crosses
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jack_straw2208
Doctor



Registered: 02/12/07
Posts: 3,122
Loc: Earth
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Re: Anti-cannabis groups sue to overturn New York's marijuana laws [Re: Panchote]
#28375016 - 06/26/23 08:54 AM (10 months, 18 days ago) |
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They're gonna fail. Also, something tells me the leaders of this group likely use marijuana themselves, maybe even grow a bit?
-------------------- If you can’t tell what you desperately need, it’s probably sleep.
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Holybullshit
Stranger
Registered: 01/06/19
Posts: 1,576
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Re: Anti-cannabis groups sue to overturn New York's marijuana laws [Re: jack_straw2208] 1
#28375020 - 06/26/23 08:58 AM (10 months, 18 days ago) |
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I thought the only anti-cannabis groups left were organized crime.
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