The latest round of pardons for American citizens with federal simple possession, attempted possession and use of marijuana by President Joe Biden have excluded serving military personnel again. First issued on Oct. 6, 2022, the presidential proclamation pardoned several federal simple cannabis possession offenses before another proclamation extended the number of pardoned offenses on Dec. 22, 2023.
While the first round of pardons was lauded as a major step toward fixing the damage caused by decades of cannabis prohibition, many advocates noted that the pardons were severely limited in scope and did not provide relief to many drug-war victims. The pardons only covered around several thousand people who had been convicted of federal cannabis possession offenses but left out military service members, noncitizens and people convicted of selling cannabis.
President Biden extended the proclamation last December to include individuals who were charged with cannabis possession offenses on federal properties. In a statement released shortly after the proclamation, Biden said that cannabis use and possession offenses have prevented people from accessing employment, housing and educational opportunities. He acknowledged that the government’s approach to marijuana had failed and said that it was time to “right these wrongs.” However, the president’s pardons excluded service members with simple-possession and marijuana-use offenses on their records.
An official from the White House confirmed that the December 2023 proclamation does not apply to offenses prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This essentially means that military service members who were charged with cannabis offenses in the past would not qualify for Biden’s latest round of pardons.
Although none of the 2022 and 2023 presidential proclamations resulted in any American being freed from federal prison, the removal of a federal cannabis conviction from an individual’s record can eliminate barriers to housing, education and reliable employment.
If the pardons also covered military service members with cannabis-related convictions, they could change their military discharge status and gain access to certain benefits. Unfortunately, while the president does have the unilateral right to change some punishments under the Manual for Courts-Martial, any major changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (USMJ) would have to go through Congress.
The UCMJ currently levies a maximum punishment of two years, forfeiture of pay and dishonorable discharge for marijuana possession.
Florida International University associate professor of law and military justice specialist Eric Carpenter says it isn’t surprising that Biden excluded military service members from this round of pardons. He explained that the use of drugs in the military tends to be more serious than recreational drug use by civilians’ because it can compromise good order and discipline.
The entire marijuana industry, including actors like Verano Holdings Corp. (CSE: VRNO) (OTCQX: VRNOF), will be hoping that ways can also be explored to grant serving military personnel the pardons that civilians can access under the evolving regulatory landscape of cannabis.
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Researchers from Montclair State University recently dived into multitudes of social media posts to try and understand how psilocybin, the main psychedelic element within magic mushrooms, affects an individual’s self-perception. Published in the “Journal of Psychedelic Studies,” the recent study sought to understand how psychedelics, specifically psilocybin, affect self-perception and self-recognition.
Psychedelics such as psilocybin have attracted considerable attention in recent years, thanks to a growing body of scientific studies and anecdotal reports of their efficacy against a myriad of mental conditions. Scientific literature on psychedelics states that they can treat the symptoms of debilitating mental disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and treatment-resistant depression, especially when they are paired with traditional talk therapy.
However, although several studies have found that various psychedelics have some mental-health benefits, researchers still don’t have a full understanding of how psychedelics affect people’s mental states or deliver their benefits. For the study, self-perception referred to how an individual views themselves in light of emotions, characteristics and qualities while self-recognition is the ability/inability to identify oneself correctly using mirror reflection, or self-reflection.
Led by Montclair State University’s Sam Elias, the research team found that psychedelic users go through a considerable range of experiences while they are under the influence. The researchers searched for Reddit posts with the keywords “shroom mirror” or psychedelic mirror, then screened the relevant posts against the inclusion criteria such as other substances used, how they described the mirror-reflection experience and explicit mentions of ingesting psilocybin.
After identifying relevant excerpts related to psilocybin experiences, the research team divided the posts into 15 groupings based on their tone and content. Team members then analyzed each category’s percentage or frequency to determine the number of times certain phrases were mentioned in each category. They then leveraged statistical tests while comparing the categories associated with self-recognition and self-perception.
Self-recognition covers the ”real self,” which is an ability to recognize oneself correctly, vs. the “unreal self,” which an inability to recognize oneself correctly. Self-perception, on the other hand, covers ”positive affect, negative affect and neutral affect.
The team found 89 posts with 775 excerpts out of a total of 486 texts meeting the inclusion requirements for the study.
Researchers did not discover a statistically notable difference between negative affect and positive affect, suggesting that magic mushrooms tend to boost a positive perception of oneself in users. However, the research team acknowledged that the study was limited by its reliance on self-reported Reddit posts. Future studies on how psilocybin affects self-perception will require more control as well as clinical study methods to study how the psychedelic affects self-perception as well as self-recognition via mirror reflections.
As companies such as Compass Pathways PLC (NASDAQ: CMPS) carry on with their R&D programs on psilocybin and other hallucinogens, we could gain more insights into how these substances affect not only perceptions of self but also how they impact other aspects of one’s mental state.
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Since 1979, Penumbra Press books have been garnering praise for both their content and their elegance. We are confident that you will find much that is similarly rewarding in the handful of new titles I will introduce you to in the coming weeks as we celebrate our 45th anniversary.
As a small press publisher with a niche in northern and aboriginal subjects, we are offering a slight deviation from the norm with this season’s titles, looking both to the past and to the future for an understanding of who we were and who we are as global citizens in a troubled world.
The first 45 individuals who order books from our website will each receive a gratis copy of Volume 1, Then & Now, in the Bookmark Readerity Series, Readers & Writers on Books & Reading, which I wrote for Dan and Marlene MacDonald, proprietors of Bookmark in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Please visit our website, penumbrapress.com, or email me at john@penumbrapress.com for assistance in finding the right Penumbra Press book for you.
In the meantime, please enjoy this extract from Searchlights in People’s Hands, a new novel by Vivian Darroch-Lozowski. To begin, however, here is a brief description of what to expect.
— John Flood, Publisher & Producer john@penumbrapress.com
Are you concerned about the political and climate catastrophes that are enveloping humanity and all else that lives on the earth?
Fearlessly written, Searchlights is a remarkable story that tells about a community of humans, plants, and other species as it struggles to survive the effects of calamitous planetary changes with ways of thought and practice different from humanity’s past.
Mysterious signs begin to appear in this community’s territory. Various persons question, fear, and study the signs. The story follows how different people attempt to understand the signs. Unexpectedly, a woman receives a message about their strangeness. This message encourages the community to give form to the meaning of the signs so that the message and its meaning may be shared with others in other territories. The community becomes aware that all life on the planet participates in one universal consciousness.
Poetic and tender, Searchlights is a story that revitalizes human understanding of ourselves, of time, and of nature by providing an intuitive potential for a more merciful ecology on our Earth. There is healing in this book.
Vivian Darroch-Lozowski is Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto. She has authored several books. She continues to read, draw, and create various other traces and markings in her efforts to understand human nature.
FROM CHAPTER 11 – Annie’s letter to her mother
There are other things of nature here. Some have disappeared. Some are yet to come in the future. I am trying to find patterns. Primal patterns. Of existence. Immemorial patterns. I need. To find these things. I need to find a language to tell others about them.
Will changing our language help? I don’t know. Like Baba, like you, like everyone, I do not want to die in this world as it is.
The problem for me is that in this territory of the earthwatchers I feel suspended and need to find clarity. I want to tell you a little of what I see.
Although what I see and what I am are somehow blended. Forms. Thoughts. Ideas. Sensations. Are always merging together and carried through me.
When I look at the surroundings of the earthwatchers’ territory I see its environment as a magical symbol. A symbol of place for all that has ever lived and will live again.
My mind alone can’t comprehend this. Instead, meaning is given to my body by the vibrant notes of this place. I hear everything when I walk through the meadow. I hear the sleeping shadows of extinct animals. I hear the frost on the grasses. The glistening of everything. The light photons entering the green. When I walked through the wastelands to come here, I heard the space between what we call life and death, great winds, and through my eyes I heard the dust.
Earth. Sky. What great meaning-giving they evoked in humans before we had speech. They are yet able to evoke vital responses from us when we can respond to them without degrading them to things. All the signs and symbols and things we look at can be objectively determined in time and space. But only when we can respond to the evocation of what is beyond their appearance will we be able to draw upon our innate intuitive knowledge.
I love the wastelands and the polluted skies as much as the flowering earth and the sky of our meadow. I love them because in spite of how humans have stripped the earth and clouded the sky with waste, the soil and air yet exist in the present with what their significance has always been. We receive infinite creativity and nourishing from the earth. And the sky gives us air. Our breath. And light to see beyond the horizon.
Since Donald J. Trump declared in 2015, it’s been clear to anyone not living under a rock that a feral, invasive and perilous carnivore called Marxist communism has invaded to progressively rip the Republic to shreds. In a remarkable feat of unmitigated political projection, the charges of “Russian collusion” were borne out of a campaign destined to fail from a candidate no one wanted for president: Hillary Clinton. At the time, it was all authorized by the president and his CIA director; Barack Obama and John Brennan, respectively.
History tells us that Marxism is a formidable carnivore with the capacity to devour men and vanquish a nation to a bone pile stripped of flesh and where absolute tyranny is king of the jungle.
Marxism has nearly reduced this former Republic to sinew and bones such that in no way does it resemble what the Founders left us or what millions have perished defending.
The brutish and beastly savage of Marxism has a handler which has clutched its reins with an iron fisted grip since no later than 1963; once a problematic Executive was factored-out of the equation to begin the incremental transition.
John F. Kennedy’s assassination was the contextual introduction to the contemporary head of the snake, George H. W. Bush, and more recently where the factual attribution of JFK’s assassination has been assigned to the IC/CIA.
Where the beast of Marxism stands, at its feet you’ll find the snake of GHWB slithering in the grass.
GHWB was embedded in the Kennedy operations before joining CIA in an official capacity; later ascending to its directorship and then to the vice presidency before coming to occupy the Executive.
It was GHWB who created the Executive/Intelligence Community interface that permitted the IC to supersede the Executive in the hierarchical power structure of the nation; both in the light and in the shadows.
Everything we’ve seen today is borne out of that history and rests on a political continuum managed by the IC that I’ve branded ‘Dynastic Bush.’
Therein, all of the usual suspects are found save one: the single greatest threat to them, Donald J. Trump.
The deep and broad Moonshine analysis examines Dynastic Bush to identify plans, blueprints or schematics; whatever you prefer to call them, to effectuate the conversion to Marxism where things accelerated tremendously with 9/11.
Understand that such plans require individuals and teams to operate and execute them; and this bears a question that everyone should ask and reconcile: Do we have an identity crisis where the purveyors of Marxism and the forced transition to it have been the same people this whole time?
We ask this question while embarking on the most important year in U.S. history as it lies before us with an election on the back-end; and we do this from a position of having been terrorized and driven into a corner to stare the Marxist beast in the teeth.
We learned in 2020 that “elections” more accurately present as “selections” that interface with matters of crisis.
Matters of crisis include fake “pandemics” that are necessary to intercede on federalism in order to fraudulently determine the occupier of the Executive and who serves as the next CEO of the Corporation of the United States.
It used to be that the corrupt and criminal U.S. politburo was content to just steal elections in order to steal everything else material for themselves.
It has now come to be; however, that complacency, disastisfaction and boredom have seemingly set-in causing the politburo to decide that owning everything just wasn’t enough.
Nope, not for the creatures of this ilk.
Rather, they sought something greater with the enslavement of The People and they needed a stolen election to capture the Executive because slave masters don’t rule from the slaves’ quarters.
So, they set-out to take something that wasn’t theirs and they faked’ a “pandemic” to do it.
The “pandemic” was an act of biowarfare designed to terrorize and depopulate remembering that you can’t have a “PANdemIC” without the word “panic.”
Anthony Fauci said it best: “It’s the fear of the unknown which causes the panic.”
Those are the words of a “vaccine” salesman and a monster of Eugenics driving a depopulation agenda; not of someone giving fidelity to the words penned by Hippocrates in Of the Epidemics: “First, do no harm.”
Sidebar I – Despite popular belief, the phrase “First, do no harm” does not appear in the Hippocratic Oath.
Sidebar II – The evidence clearly implicates scandalous Harvard University, which was cited above relative to Hippocrates; and which includes this bit of evil to justify crimes against humanity at the hands of a pharma, medical and healthcare establishment that went off the rails and told Hippocrates to go to hell long ago:
“The fact is that when difficult, real-time decisions must be made, it’s hard to apply the “first, do no harm” dictum because estimates of risk and benefit are so uncertain and prone to error” [Robert H. Shmerling, MD, Senior Faculty Editor, Harvard Health Publishing; Editorial Advisory Board Member, Harvard Health Publishing].
So, when things get “difficult,” like during a fake “PANdemIC” of their own design and execution, they can simply decide not to apply “first, do no harm” dictum in order to do whatever the hell they want; like doing actual harm with mRNA injections that pose great “risk” because the protocols to “estimate” that “risk” were circumvented by enterprise fraud thus causing the mRNA bioweapons to be “prone to error” in the deadliest of ways.
With Hippocrates conveniently cast aside in irrelevance and in deference to this new version of the modern world where the ends always justify the means, it’s “first, do no harm” unless you coalesced with Bill Gates to determine that the planet has too many people and a bunch have to go right now.
Panicked people look here – scary virus!
Don’t look here – we’re stealing the Executive.
Definitely don’t look here – we’re killing you with mRNA bioweapons that we forced upon you and then enslaving those who survive it.
It all sounds crazy right up until you run it all down and I ran it all down to about every granular detail you can name in a massive catalog of analysis.
Running it all down included the U.S. Department of Defense mRNA contracts and the Bidens’ direct connection to U.S. DoD biolabs in Ukraine specifically working on “COVID-19” and SARS-CoV-2 before the term “COVID-19” was ever conceived and introduced to the world.
As Dr. David E. Martin routinely asks, “How can you have a thing before you have a thing?”
Easy answer: You can have a thing before you have a thing when the thing is planned, the plans are on paper and the thing’s introduction is scheduled for a later time; like right before an election.
The analysis includes laying-out myriad IC operational plans, schematics, blueprints, etc.; whatever you wish to call them, that were deployed by the IC to literally shape our reality towards designed ends.
Recall that such plans require personnel to operate and execute.
This bears a question: Would it be problematic at a fundamental level if the operators and executors were the same people who transition on the political continuum from operation to operation as functionaries for Dynastic Bush?
That would of course be problematic and it is indeed the case meaning that the U.S. overthrow and conversion to Marxist communism has an identity crisis because IT’S ALL THE SAME PEOPLE.
Those on the topside of terra firma sans earmuffs and blinders already know that IT’S ALL THE SAME PEOPLE, but the granular details matter.
Consider this recently posted by @DschlopesIsBack:
@DschlopesIsBack’s “what if” questions frame the understanding for how these operators function to conceal and cover-up or, in a worst-case scenario, steer the always problematic “unavoidable circumstances” to the most desired landing spot; knowing that the SBF/FTX prosecution is another perfect example of doing this.
When you look at who has hands on the steering wheel, IT’S ALL THE SAME PEOPLE.
Now consider this from Sundance at Conservative Treehouse:
“I have long been saying the Jack Smith special counsel team is the reassembly of the Robert Mueller team. Today, inside an article {SEE HERE} outlining other ancillary matters about the 2020 election challenges, Politico inadvertently confirmed my suspicions…The Clinton exoneration FBI Team became the Trump investigation FBI Team (Crossfire Hurricane) -which then became the Robert Mueller FBI Team (exact same people, plus some additions) – which then became the J6 Investigation FBI Team (exact same people, plus some additions) – which then became the Jack Smith FBI Team (same exact people). Not only is it one long continuum, but it’s also the EXACT SAME PEOPLE.”
It’s all these things: Marxist communism, plans, blueprints, schematics, lawfare operators, executors, targets, overthrow, enslavement and more.
Within all of those things, IT’S ALL THE SAME PEOPLE and that is fundamentally problematic to the posterity of the nation.
The good news about the identity crisis is this: If as one, The People can mangage to discern and reconcile the broader truth in order to pull itself up by its bootstraps and embrace its collective spirit and revolutionary heritage, prosecuting evil to the fullest extent of the law becomes a much cleaner and efficient endeavor because an examination of all the plausible defendants indicates that IT’S ALL THE SAME PEOPLE.
Therefore and as one, we The People are the sole author of the binary ending to this evil saga: ALL THE SAME PEOPLE BECOME OUR SLAVE MASTERS -or- ALL THE SAME PEOPLE ARE PROSECUTED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.
The head of Tilray Brands Inc. says he’s aiming to make the pot company a top beverage firm, in part by pouring resources into revitalizing a number of alcohol brands his business recently bought from Anheuser-Busch Cos.
“These brands have not had innovation done with them in the last couple of years, so I feel good about the innovation,” Irwin Simon, chief executive of Leamington, Ont.-based Tilray, said on a Tuesday call with analysts.
Tilray bought eight of Anheuser-Busch’s brands — Shock Top, Breckenridge Brewery, Blue Point Brewing Co., 10 Barrel Brewing Co., Redhook Brewery, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Square Mile Cider Co., and HiBall Energy — in a US$85 million deal brokered last summer.
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The brands joined Tilray’s other beverage companies like Breckenridge Distillery, Green Flash Brewing Co., Alpine Beer Co. and Montauk Brewing Co., which it purchased over the last five years.
The acquisitions are part of Simon’s goal to turn Tilray, which begun as a cannabis company, into a powerhouse in the beverage industry.
He plans to reach his goal by innovating in the flavoured malt and ready-to-drink cocktails and spirit categories and experimenting with selling multi-brand variety packs and installing more multi-brand tap rooms.
But “we’re not going to be just a beer business,” Simon warned.
“We’re going to expand into some water business, energy drink business and some other categories” he said.
Simon’s plans for Tilray’s beverage arm come as the company reported a net loss of US$46.2 million in its latest quarter while revenue rose 34 per cent compared with a year ago.
The cannabis company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, said the loss amounted to seven cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Nov. 30.
The result compared with a loss of US$61.6 million or 11 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
Net revenue for what was Tilray’s second quarter totalled US$193.8 million, up from US$144.1 million in the same quarter a year earlier.
Tilray’s results were helped along by its alcohol ventures, which saw their net revenue increase to US$47 million in the second quarter from US$21 million in the prior year quarter.
The company’s cannabis net revenue totalled US$67 million compared with $50 million a year earlier.
However, Simon sees some turbulence ahead for the cannabis market, where competition has escalated as brands have worked to cut costs since cannabis was legalized in Canada.
“More licensed producers will go away,” he said.
But there are also more opportunities to be had, he hinted.
“More consumers will get educated about cannabis and the cannabis market will grow,” he said.
Tilray posted its second quarter results revealing it generated a record net revenue of $193+ million, just short of Wall Street expectations. Like many in the U.S., the company is awaiting possible reclassification of Marijuana to a ‘Schedule III’ drug, which would have wide-reaching ramifications for taxation and research, and change business models for some.
Tilray CEO Irwin Simon joins Yahoo Finance to give insight into what might happen to his business if the Biden administration follows through with its pursuit of get the plant reclassified, and in turn getting the Drug Enforcement Agency to ease restrictions.
Simons comments: “I think it would help bringing in institutional shareholders that actually can hold the stock, for a lot of shareholders today or institutions that cannot hold cannabis stock, and it would help us with the banking world today because right now, any of our profits or proceeds from our Canadian cannabis business, even though Canada is legal, we can not use any of those proceeds within our US operations.”
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JOSH LIPTON: One big question, Irwin, out there is these US health officials recommending easing restrictions on marijuana, reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug. How do you think that plays out? Or when– and what would it mean for Tilray as a business?
IRWIN SIMON: It would mean a lot for Tilray. If you step back, number one, we have a major medical cannabis business in Europe and a major medical cannabis business in Canada. And taking that know-how and taking all those years of what we’ve built here in regards to working with the medical professions with prescriptions and bringing that to the US would help us tremendously to build a good medical cannabis business here in the US.
I think it would help bringing in institutional shareholders that actually can hold the stock where a lot of shareholders today or institutions cannot hold cannabis stock. And it would help us with the banking world today, because, right now, any of our profits or proceeds that come from our Canadian cannabis business, and even though Canada is legal federally, we cannot use any of those proceeds within our US operations.
JULIE HYMAN: So I guess, Simon, what do you think the likelihood then? Is that– that’s something that’s been reported upon as a possibility. Where do you think we are a year from now when it comes to regulation?
IRWIN SIMON:You know, great question. If you would ask me where I think we’d be a year today when Joe Biden became the President of the United States, I would say cannabis would have been legalized, OK? Listen, something’s got to happen, which is, you know, kind of crazy out there today. Cannabis in the U.S. is scheduled the same as heroin. Actually, cocaine does not have the same scheduling.
So there has to be a de-scheduling where cannabis is scheduled as number 3 from a scheduling standpoint. If you come back and look at it today, cannabis is legal in 27 different states in regards to recreational, about 10 states in regards to medical. Over 90 per cent today of the citizens of the United States of legal age want cannabis legalized. So something’s got to happen. It’s just our politicians got to go ahead and do it.
My belief, and this is nothing coming from any of the lobbyists or anything I know, I believe something will happen in regards before the elections. Now the question is, from a timing standpoint, would it ever get through Congress and Senate before next year’s election? And that’s what my concern would be.
(CNW) Vancouver — BZAM Ltd. is pleased to announce that, following the completion of the acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding shares of Final Bell Canada Inc. (FBC) from Final Bell Holdings International Ltd. (FBHI), BZAM, through its wholly owned subsidiary The Green Organic Dutchman Ltd, has today entered into a Second Amended and Restated Credit Agreement (SARCA) with its Canadian lender to incorporate the assets of FBC into the security collateral and, amongst other things:
(i) amend the EBITDA financial covenant to take effect on a rolling three month average basis; (ii) repay $1 million on the fixed portion of the facility from the proceeds of sale of the Edmonton property, such repayment amount then becoming available under the revolving portion of the facility and (iii) allow for the unsecured promissory note issued to Final Bell Holdings Inc., the prior affiliate of FBC. All other terms of its amended and restated credit agreement dated September 29, 2021 (as amended) not specifically amended will remain materially the same as before.
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