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Spotted: Cannabis comes up at FDA listening session focused on tobacco.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration periodically hosts stakeholders for listening sessions on a variety of topics.
One recent one, held on Aug. 22, focused on “Developing FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products’ Strategic Plan.”
Stakeholders at this meeting included Phillip Morris, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and the R Street Institute.
Pamela Ling, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, spoke about the Center’s goals.
The Center “should actively integrate the relationship between cannabis and tobacco use into its tobacco regulation and prepare for regulation of cannabis. Tobacco and cannabis co-use is common. And as cigarette smoking rates are falling, cannabis use rates are increasing. Cannabis use and exposure to cannabis smoke are increasingly perceived as safe. However, the risks of co-use of tobacco and cannabis are greater than use of either product alone,” Ling said.
“Dual-use results at a higher level of dependence to both nicotine and THC and is associated with a greater prevalence of mental illness. The tobacco and cannabis markets are co-evolving. For example, the popularity of nicotine vaping was accompanied by an increase in cannabis vaping products. And regulatory action eliminating flavored tobacco products opens market opportunities for cannabis products like flavored CBD vapes,” Ling added.
“Tobacco product regulations that can be readily applied to cannabis include prohibition of unsubstantiated health claims; limitations on advertising and packaging that appeal to youth; effective warning labels; prohibiting product formulations that increase health risks; prohibiting menthol and other flavors; and recognizing the need to prevent regulators and public employees from having conflicts of interest with the cannabis industry. As part of the Strategic Plan, CTP should identify best practices from tobacco regulation to support research and inform comprehensive regulations for cannabis.”
A Republican pushback on rescheduling.
This week, a dozen Republican members of Congress signed on to a letter, led by Senator James Lankford (R-OK) and Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX), that argues against rescheduling cannabis.
“It is irresponsible for Health and Human Services (HHS) to recommend that marijuana be removed from Schedule I. It would also be irresponsible for DEA to act on this recommendation. Our country relies on DEA to enforce our nation’s drug laws. We ask you to uphold your mission by rejecting any effort to remove marijuana from Schedule I,” they wrote.
+ More: read Cannabis Wire’s recent coverage of the HHS recommendation to the DEA, and the backstory of President Joe Biden’s call for a reconsideration of how the federal government classifies cannabis.
NY legislature’s ag leaders push Hochul on tribal lands cannabis bill.
Whatever happened to that cannabis and tribal lands bill in New York?
Nothing.
The state legislature passed (A7375A/ S7295A), a bill that would “temporarily allow the sale of adult-use cannabis to Tribal Nations.” Gov. Kathy Hochul hasn’t signed it.
Cannabis Wire reached out to Hochul’s office throughout the summer for updates on this bill.
“We are reviewing the legislation,” a spokesperson told us in late June. In July, when Cannabis Wire asked for an update, the answer was “none as yet.”
The agriculture leaders in the legislature have been increasingly anxious about how the state’s cannabis farmers are faring. These conditional cannabis cultivators have weathered years of difficult hemp markets and were specifically tapped for a leg up in New York’s adult use cannabis industry. But that leg up has hardly materialized for most.
The Cannabis Control Board meeting on Tuesday was focused on the adult use rules package, but the public comment period turned from desperate to dire when commenters even referenced suicidal ideation when talking about their farms.
Katherine Miller, a conditional cultivator, said during the meeting that biomass from last year is still “sitting in bags on the floor of the processors as they wait to see if orders are going to materialize.”
“An extremely wet summer has led to a multitude of issues from greatly increased pest and disease pressure to outright crop losses. Many of these issues would have been mitigated if not eradicated had we been able to grow indoors,” Miller said. “This is another example of how the ROs coming in and growing at a huge canopy will push the rest of us out of the market. We just cannot compete.”
Now, Sen. Michelle Hinchey and Assemblymember Donna Lupardo have joined Ranking Members Sen. George Borrello and Assemblymember Chris Tague to publish a joint statement yesterday practically begging Hochul to sign a bill that they say would help out the state’s conditional cannabis cultivators.
“While lawsuits are being litigated and illegal stores are flourishing, NY’s cannabis farmers are suffering. Crops were grown last year with the understanding that there would be a legal market for them to sell it. Now, 250,000 pounds of unsold cannabis is losing value each day,” the group wrote in a statement.
“In June, we supported and passed a bill through both houses of the Legislature that would allow NY-based Tribal Nations to purchase a portion of our oversupply (A7375/S7295). We are urging the Governor to quickly sign this short-term solution, one that will help provide some measure of relief to what is quickly becoming an agricultural emergency.”
