The Kensington-based 501(c)3 nonprofit has two main areas of direct service, shaped by the experience of its founder: harm reduction outreach and recovery housing. Savage Sisters operates 11 recovery houses across South Philadelphia and Delaware County, and conducts weekly street-based outreach in Kensington. In addition to wound care and other harm reduction supplies like Narcan, they distribute safer-use supplies like sterile syringes.

Safer-use equipment like syringes and pipes are criminalized under Pennsylvania’s drug paraphernalia statute. The state doesn’t have an exemption for syringe service programs (SSP), but some jurisdictions including Philadelphia have sanctioned SSP at the local level.

A trauma survivor, Laurel was put on a two-year wait list for therapy when she enrolled in Medicaid, and works to approach Savage Sisters outreach holistically. A brick-and-mortar location would help them bridge more people to the wraparound services they expressed needing. 

City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada had a message for their landlord: Don’t renew the lease.

In October 2023, a grant funded with some of Philadelphia’s $180 million in opioid settlement payouts allowed Savage Sisters to rent a property where they began operating a drop-in center that allows them to offer wound care and showers. 

Then Philadelphia City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada (D), who represents a district that contains part of Kensington, had a message for their landlord: Don’t renew the lease.

Savage Sisters tried for months to meet with Lozada before one was held in late January. Laurel, who serves as executive director, told Filter that Lozada vowed to do everything in her power to not only get Savage Sisters out of Kensington, but to get harm reduction out of Kensington altogether.

“She actually came out and publicly stated that; I didn’t think that she would, to be quite honest,” said Laurel. “[I thought] she would be a little bit more cloak and dagger about it.”

Savage Sisters is heavily involved in harm reduction advocacy, regularly organizing demonstrations and offering trainings at schools across the city. But Lozada has powerful support—her approach to law enforcement aligns with the mayor’s.

On March 14, 2024, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker unveiled an annual budget that heavily invests in “community policing.” Parker campaigned on the concept, inspired by Operation Sunrise—a 1998 police onslaught against anything it associated with drug use, from sex work to graffiti.

“My Administration supports an array of public health strategies, from dispensing naloxone and Narcan and Fentanyl test strips to administering care, providing access to treatment and counseling, and other services,” Parker stated in prepared remarks. “I will not allow us to be put in a box suggesting we do not care. We care—deeply—about every person in addiction.”

Days before Savage Sisters met with Lozado, Parker issued an executive order declaring “current levels of crimes” a Public Safety Emergency. It tasked local law enforcement with finding a way to “permanently shut down all pervasive open-air drug markets, including but not limited to the open-air drug markets in the Kensington neighborhood.”

Parker’s new policing strategy will take effect in April. She’s also been promising an ominous move toward police-run “triage centers,” the first of which Laurel thinks will likely open in an abandoned strip club recently purchased with the opioid settlement funds that SSP were cut off from. 

“The [city council] said the way that it’s going to work is, you’re gonna get arrested and you’re gonna get two choices: jail or treatment,” Laurel said. “Creating a police-run triage center without communicating with harm reduction organizations seems a bit irresponsible. And unethical.”

Anything “directly used in the consumption of illegal drugs” would not be eligible for opioid settlement grant money. 

Laurel said that this is the first time the City Council, the Mayor’s office, and judicial system have collaborated this way, and no one working in harm reduction had a seat at the table. Local harm reductionists are bracing for attacks on anyone who provides direct services, especially wound care. Several other organizations have already had their zoning permits pulled.

Savage Sisters doesn’t receive any city funding, so Laurel was hoping for additional grant money from opioid settlement payouts. She serves on a participatory grantmaking committee that makes recommendations for how the payouts should be allocated. But on March 4, she got an email from the Scattergood Foundation, the nonprofit partnering with the city to disburse the funding. It informed her that while the money could go toward supplies like naloxone and fentanyl test strips, anything “directly used in the consumption of illegal drugs” would not be eligible. 

Savage Sister will try to relocate their drop-in center. They’ve also renovated two RVs for mobile outreach, equipped with fully functional showers. 

Savage Sisters has formally requested that Parker and the City Council pledge to not interrupt harm reduction services, but Laurel isn’t optimistic about the way things stand currently. She described the other members of the grantmaking committee making derogatory comments about SSP and other services for people who use drugs; in a recent meeting one member referred to methadone as “jungle juice.” 

“None of them even know what harm reduction is.” 

Update, March 15: This article has been updated to include the Savage Sisters recovery houses located in Delaware County.

Top photograph via Savage Sisters. Inset photograph via Sarah Laurel.

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The SOC is similar to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in that it’s a tool that facilitates, but often gatekeeps, access to care. SOC recommendations are used to demonstrate to insurance companies that a patient’s gender-affirming care is medically necessary and therefore qualifies for coverage. SOC does not, however, carry any legal weight with providers, who can withhold care if they’re inclined to and not face any particular consequence.

Rectifying a failure of all previous editions to recognize nonbinary as a gender, SOC8 includes a new chapter on care for nonbinary patients. People navigating the landscape of gender-affirming health care are often forced to do so on extremely binary terms, which the new guidance should help to alleviate. SOC8 also supports providers discussing certain nonsurgical treatments with any patients who have reached puberty, rather than recommending a minimum age of 14.

But these are hardly sufficient improvements. SOC8 has in many ways only deepened the distrust with which many activists and community members have long regarded WPATH.

“Most of these recent researchers are still talking about the same issues we talked about in the ’80s.”

Rather than removing the barrier to care of getting providers to write a letter of medical necessity, the updated guidance simply advised that patients only need to obtain one such letter rather than two. Letters of medical necessity take agency away from the patients themselves and leave providers with the power to judge someone’s psychological wellbeing and ability to consent to care.

“Most of these recent researchers are still talking about the same issues we talked about in the ’80s,” Judith Lefebvre, a member of the trans activist collective TRAPS, told Filter. “‘Is it okay to give hormones to people? Does it better their life?’”

After they received a standing ovation, the WPATH staff called the police on transfeminine people for peacefully reading a text calling for greater availability to trans care and support.

— Florence Ashley (@ButNotTheCity) September 17, 2022

On September 17, TRAPS activists protested at the conference where SOC8 was being unveiled. Before being removed by security, they demanded that WPATH collaborate appropriately with the people its clinical guidance applied to—specifically people of color, and those idenfitying as Two-Spirit—and deliver an SOC predicated in bodily autonomy and informed consent.

Lefebvre said one particularly harmful concept perpetuated by WPATH is that the “success” of a medical transition can be determined by the stability of the patient’s gender identity.

“In adolescent care, this kind of consideration is weird to me because [people can] live through a kind of fluidity,” Lefebvre said. WPATH “pathologizes trans identities and is detrimental to the diversity of needs of our community, [and to the] very specific needs for people living at the intersection of various systems of oppression.”

Photograph via United States House of Representatives

The post Leading Trans Health Care Guidance Updated—and Still Stuck in the Past appeared first on Filter.

Monkeypox (MPX) is transmitted through close skin-to-skin contact and anyone, regardless of their identity, can contract the virus. While it’s not a sexually transmitted infection, skin-to-skin during sexual intimacy means that people engaged in street-based sex work are particurly at risk.

Solana Sparks, a  full-service sex worker based both in Seattle, Washington and San Juan, Puetro Rico, acknowledged that while cases are fairly low in Washington state, she tours outside of the area and the United States for her job. At the time of the interview, she was planning to travel to New York City, which had 3,339 active MPX cases as of September 9 per city data.

“A lot of us are just really scared and trying to do our best to take care of ourselves.”

“Many of us are not only concerned about our health and not wanting to be what a lot of people see us as—vectors of disease—many of us [financially] support whole family systems and friends,” Sparks told Filter. “If we are to get sick and can’t work for a month, or over a month, we would destabilize our whole ecosystem, [and] ourselves. Also, if we have scars and things, we’re really screwed. A lot of us are just really scared and trying to do our best to take care of ourselves, our communities, and our clients.”

She added, however, that New York’s sex worker-inclusive vaccine rollout made her feel “more relaxed” about her planned travel. “I am pleased to see one of the cities with the highest rates expand access to additional high risk populations,” she said. “I hope other cities will see this response … and include sex workers in priority vaccination population categories before a breakout. I just got vaxxed so have to wait, but am excited to know that I can get access in NYC in a way that has been difficult in Seattle.”

While vaccines have been successfully rolled out in major cities, not everyone has the same access because eligibility criteria vary by jurisdiction. Initially, many health departments reserve eligibily for those who’ve been exposed and/or fall under the designation of “MSM,” an abbreviation for men who have sex with other men.

Fourtunately, for Sparks and other sex workers, New York City has more expansive eligibility criteria; additionally, second doses are now available to those who’ve received the first dose at least 10 weeks previously. However, vaccine access still isn’t equal, as racial disparities show.

Despite the misconception that sex workers are overwhelmingly women, there are many sex workers of varying gender and sexual identities with clientele of varying indentities. Many within this community face stigma, discrimination, and overall lack of access to quality health services, even those as obviously critical as STI testing. Of course, men who have sex with other men can be sex workers. But many sex workers who don’t identify as MSM are still at great risk, particularly when we know that men who have sex with men also have sex with other genders.

Pittsburgh-based full-service sex worker and writer Jessie Sage attempted to receive an MPX vaccine in late July. Just like wearing condoms, taking PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) and getting regularly STI tested, she sees the vaccine as a protective harm reduction measure for her health, accepting she can’t guarantee to know the status of her clients. However, she was turned away because the state of Pennsylvania only scheduled appointments for men who have sex with other men, along with transgender, nonbinary and gender nonconforming people.

“I feel I shouldn’t have had to explain why I needed [the vaccine] and I shouldn’t have to out myself in order to get it.”

“All of the health care providers were very aware that it makes sense to give [the vaccine] to sex workers and they really wanted to help us, but felt hands tied behind their back,” Sage told Filter. “I didn’t feel like they were blowing me off.”

Days after she published a piece about the incident, though, she was finally able to receive a vaccine. She was scheduled for her second during the first week of September.

“Us—massage therapists, daycare workers, anyone who has close physical contact with other people, including naked physical contact with other people—should be prioritized,” she said. “I feel I shouldn’t have had to explain why I needed [the vaccine] and I shouldn’t have to out myself in order to get it. We should be able to self-identify [as high risk] without having to disclose. What I think should’ve happened from the beginning is that [health agencies] should have taken anyone who feels like they are at high risk for this seriously and given the vaccine to [those] who opted into it.”

Image of colorized transmission electron micrograph of monkeypox particles (teal) found within an infected cell (brown), cultured in the laboratory, by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

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“One officer said, ‘It smells like you’ve been having a party in here. Is that right?’” Fransisco, a white nonbinary person in their 30s, told Filter. “He said, ‘Well, if you haven’t been having a party, you won’t mind if we check your car.’”

“One yelled, ‘Show me your track marks, you fucking junkie! We found your needles and drugs.”

Moving quickly, the officers violently handcuffed Fransisco, took their keys and called animal control to confiscate their dog. Then they searched the car.

“One yelled, ‘Show me your track marks, you fucking junkie! We found your needles and drugs,’” Fransisco said. The cop held up their prescription bottle of testosterone. “I said, ‘Those aren’t drugs, that’s my medication. I’m trans.’”

“The second it went out of my mouth, I think ‘Oh, fuck’ … I’m sitting there in a sundress and they see male hormones after they’ve been waiting to get me alone because they think I’m a girl.”

Fransisco was jailed overnight, with two cisgender women who’d also been detained for drug use, but was fortunate enough to have friends and family able to help release them the next day on a $2,500 bond.

Fransisco does not inject drugs, nor do they use any psychoactive substances besides weed. But their experience—of someone outside the gender binary being harassed by police and accused of drug use because they inject hormones—is a common one.

It is also why syringe service programs (SSP) often keep 21 to 25-gauge needles in stock even though they’re too large for almost anyone injecting drugs to request—they’re for gender variant participants who need them for hormone injection. Whether or not these participants also use drugs, SSP are often the safest way for them to access syringes—a marker of how, in police harassment and disenfranchisement from lifesaving, humanizing medical care, gender variant people and drug users often share a common struggle. 

 Testosterone and Transgender Health Care

Testosterone is an anabolic-androgenic steroid, meaning it’s composed of synthetic variations of the sex hormone testosterone. “Anabolic” refers to muscle building; “androgenic” to increased male sex characteristics.

Transmasculine and gender variant people have used synthetic testosterone for nearly a century. The first documented prescription to a trans man was obtained by Michael Dillion in 1939. In the mid-20th century, it started becoming popular among certain professional athletes, like weightlifters. By the 1980s, it was being used by young cisgender men looking to bulk up.

In 1990, the Anabolic Steroids Control Act classified testosterone as a federally controlled Schedule III substance. This puts it in the same category as buprenorphine and ketamine. Lawmakers intended for this to curb steroid “abuse” among young cisgender men. But its deeper impact has been to criminalize health care for trans men, intersex people, nonbinary people and other gender variant people on testosterone replacement therapy, in a cisheteronormative society that already disenfranchises them from care. (Estrogen is not a federally scheduled substance, but people on estrogen replacement therapy still face health care barriers due to transmisogyny.)

The contemporary US approach to transgender health care is two-fold. Originally, the only route available to people seeking transgender care was what’s colloquially referred to as the “gatekeep model”—a mental health evaluation or referral required on the basis that trans people are mentally ill or “confused.” This model still applies to anyone under 18.

In the 2000s, an alternative began gaining traction: the informed consent model, which permits access to gender-affirming care, including surgeries and hormone treatments, without a mental health professional’s authorization. Those under 18 years old require consent of a parent or guardian. While still flawed, this model facilitates greater patient autonomy.

Many gender variant people, including myself, have experienced discrimination and hostility at the hands of pharmacists.

But “unless you go to Planned Parenthood, it’s difficult to access a provider who does informed consent-based prescriptions, especially without insurance,” ​​TJ Burton, a transmasculine health care clinic coordinator in Kansas City, told Filter. “Even after I went to PP and got prescribed on informed consent, it’s still a time consuming and costly process.” Often that process involves lab fees—which aren’t always covered by insurance even for those who have coverage—and inflexible time windows in which people can refill their prescriptions.

Pharmacies, like all other health care settings, typically aren’t well versed in serving LGBTQ people. Many gender variant people, including myself, have experienced discrimination and hostility at the hands of pharmacists.

“Criminalization has made it easy for pharmacists to deny my [testosterone] prescription, which has happened to me many times,” Artemis McGettigan, a trans student in Dearborn, Michigan, told Filter. “[Pharmacists] have told me in the past that ‘It’s corporate policy, they’re not allowed to fill that type of prescription … but I knew that was false because other CVS locations, for example, were able to fill it.” A CVS media representative told Filter that its policies “do not prohibit our pharmacies from filling testosterone prescriptions.”

Surveillance and Control

Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP) are electronic databases through which medical professionals and law enforcement can track someone’s prescription history. Initially designed to combat “diversion” of controlled substances with potential for addiction, they are often used to monitor testosterone prescriptions and the people who receive them. Many in the trans and gender variant community, especially those who aren’t fully public about their gender identity, fear being listed on PDMP—they could be outed by anyone with access to the database.

L. Lanzillotta, a Virginia-based trans man and Filter contributor, recalled meeting with a psychiatrist who didn’t know he was trans and to whom he had no plans to out himself. But that decision was made for him as soon as the psychiatrist pulled up what he strongly suspects was the state’s PDMP.

“She knew I was on testosterone after checking something on her computer, even though I hadn’t said anything,” Lanzillotta told Filter. “Naturally, she quickly deduced why.”

While not everyone on testosterone is transgender, it’s certainly a clue, especially for those who still have a female gender marker on legal documents. Such surveillance costs gender variant autonomy, outing people without their consent.

“It’s nothing to do with monitoring safe T levels.”

In July, Phillip Cooper*, a trans man from Santa Fe, New Mexico, was required to sign a patient agreement form regarding controlled substances. “[I] was told it’s a clinic policy for all controlled substances,” he told Filter. “I’ve been getting T from this clinic for almost two years now and this had never been asked of me before.”

Cooper does not use any state-banned drugs, so he was taken aback. “To be clear, the thing I found intrusive wasn’t having to sign the form. It was being required to undergo a drug screening [and] submit a urine sample as though using testosterone, which doesn’t get you high and isn’t addictive, and is only a controlled substance because of sports doping, made me more likely to be using illegal drugs!” He added, “It’s nothing to do with monitoring safe T levels, which has to be done via blood test.”

Gender variant people, along with those of any marginalized identities, experience disproportionate rates of substance use disorder. This isn’t a moral failure—of an individual or a community—but rather a systemic one. It’s a symptom of the trauma associated with living in an ostracizing, capitalist society rooted in (among other things) the gender binary, patriarchy and colonial gender roles.

“It was humiliating and infuriating,” Cooper said of being presumed to use illicit drugs on the basis of his gender identity. “I don’t think either the clinic or my provider was being deliberately transphobic—rather, T being a controlled substance, and the policy being inflexible, led to a transphobic result.”

Ending This Injustice

There are a few ways testosterone criminalization could be abolished. It could be federally rescheduled to IV or V category. It could be descheduled from the CSA entirely, though it would still be subject to some type of government regulation.

If rescheduled, T could be accessed similarly to other over-the-counter medications—like birth control, which is also a fundamental human right. Descheduling would allow trans and gender variant people greater access and agency, but would likely be perceived as too “radical” by much of our transphobic society, which already micromanages our everyday lives even down to the bathrooms we’re permitted to use.

And while descheduling would mean gender variant people are less likely to be criminalized for accessing T, it still wouldn’t solve the larger problem: that we do not receive equitable health care.

The use of testosterone without medical supervision, including regular blood level monitoring, can potentially lead to health complications (such as high blood pressure or overproduction of red blood cells) that are otherwise easily avoided—and among people already unlikely to have access to decent care. Transgender care in the US is gatekept even for gender variant people who have societal privileges like whiteness or wealth.

Gender variant people should be more than acknowledged in drug policy reform; we should be prioritized. 

Descheduling wouldn’t fix health care, but it would remove barriers for gender variant people already receiving care, and theoretically protect them from experiences like what Fransisco endured in 2019. And criminalizing testosterone isn’t any more effective at curbing recreational use by cis men than criminalizing psychoactive drugs is at reducing their use, either.

“In my opinion, any medication you’re put on should be monitored by a doctor, but that gets into how crappy our healthcare is in the US,” Burton said. “I would imagine there are bigger fish to fry [since] testosterone doesn’t get you high. It doesn’t have any immediate gratification effects. It just seems silly, for lack of a better term, to classify this the way we do. It’s an unnecessary, gate-keepy thing to do, especially when the majority of patients I see scheduling HRT are elderly and need it or are trans and need it.”

Any non-cisgender person faces discrimination and overall antagonism from the medical industrial complex. We are frequently mistreated by providers, experiencing verbal harassment; misgendering; denial of hormone therapy; denial of treatment unrelated to gender; and having to educate providers about our identity and needs. People of additional marginalized identities and experiences—like race, disability, mental illness, higher weight or drug use—face compounding barriers to care.

Gender variant people should be more than acknowledged in drug policy reform; we should be prioritized. 

Photograph by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

*Name changed at source’s request.

The post How the Criminalization of Testosterone Attacks Gender Variant People appeared first on Filter.

The tests were purportedly intended to detect synthetic cannabinoids, which are popular in prisons (as well as among people on probation or parole) due to their frequent omission from toxicology screenings.

“Interactions with innocuous chemicals commonly found in paper frequently create false positives—almost 80 percent of the time, according to one DOC official’s estimate,” the lawsuit states.

As a result of the false positive test results, incarcerated people say they were given an ultimatum: Plead guilty and face punishment; or try to fight it and be further antagonized in any case, through solitary confinement and loss of privileges for months. If an incarcerated person demanded the results be verified through an additional lab test, they’d bear the burden of any additional expenses.

Defense attorneys were also falsely accused of sending drugs to their clients in prison, according to the lawsuit. These accusations caused prison mail to slow down even more, limiting communication between incarcerated people and their legal teams that was even more crucial during times of lockdown, with limited in-person visits due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“It is unconstitutional and inhumane to force a person to risk false accusations of drug possession, solitary confinement, and loss of contact with family to be able to communicate with his lawyer.”

The tests—part of the NARK II product line—were distributed to the MDOC by Sirchie Acquisition Company, LLC, which is headquartered in North Carolina. According to its website, Sirchie specializes in manufacturing “high-quality criminal investigation, tactical, surveillance, and other police-related solutions including customized special purpose vehicles.”

Other states, including New York, have stopped using these tests since they’ve yielded inaccurate results. Sirchie did not respond to Filter’s request for comment by publication time.

“What makes the situation in Massachusetts especially dire is that the prison is using this test almost exclusively on legal mail—with devastating consequences,” Ellen Leonida, a partner at BraunHagey & Borden, told Filter. (The firm filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs along with attorneys from Justice Catalyst Law.) “It is unconstitutional and inhumane to force a person in custody to risk false accusations of drug possession, solitary confinement, and loss of contact with family members in order to be able to communicate with his lawyer. And all based on a test the DOC and the manufacturer know is completely unreliable.”

Unfortunately, unreliable security measures like the NARK II tests are being used all over the country. Back in 2018, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections issued a statewide lockdown after 28 different incidents of 57 DOC staff falling ill after allegedly being exposed to synthetic cannabinoids. According to Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Samantha Melamed, the DOC implemented new security measures—including ”high-tech body-scanners for visitors, drone-detection equipment, and the digital delivery of all mail, which will be scanned and forwarded via a Florida-based contractor”—that cost taxpayers $15 million.

Whether these measures actually deter future incidents of drug exposure is debatable. The Florida-based contractor Smart Communications has since come under fire for surveying people who correspond with incarcerated people in Pennsylvania state prisons, Vice reports.

“[The] DOC should never impose punishment on the people in its care based on a test less reliable than the flip of a coin,” Leonida added.

Photograph by Brendan C via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Prisoners Sue After Drug Testing of Their Legal Mail Gave False Positives appeared first on Filter.

The most significant highlights include the removal of cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and transfer of oversight from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

This legislation follows the Marijuana Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives last December. (More recently, Amazon has lobbied in favor of that bill, likely eying becoming a cannabis retailer.)

Booker often refers to the War on Drugs as a “war on people,” linking drug laws and mass incarceration. As anticipated, the draft discussion includes a section dedicated to “Restorative Justice and Opportunity Programs,” which outlines three new grant programs dedicated to those harmed by the drug war. However, similar to problematic measures proposed in the MORE Act, advocates say this plan isn’t nearly enough.

“It still does not accomplish what we want to ultimately see: The federal government guarantees each person’s right … regardless of your zip code.”

“Descheduling—explicitly removing cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act entirely—brings a host of positive changes like ending federal criminalization,” Eric Goepel, co-founder of Veteran Cannabis Coalition and an Iraq War Army veteran, told Filter. “It does not, however, make cannabis legal in all 50 states outside of the laws already on the books in each state. So it still does not accomplish what we want to ultimately see: The federal government guarantees each person’s right for personal access and use of cannabis, including homegrow, regardless of your zip code.”

Goepel also criticized CAOA’s proposed federal track-and-trace system for cannabis, which “places a huge and unique burden on the legal cannabis industry, does not in any way impact diversion or undermine the health the of illicit market, and creates big costs that get passed down to patients and consumers,” he explained.

States with legal cannabis markets already impose high tax rates on products. Costly and inefficient tracking systems—designed to appeal to lawmakers rather than consumers—increase the financial burden, pricing out many low-income and otherwise marginalized cannabis consumers.

The restorative justice section of CAOA also addresses proposals for criminal record expungement and resentencing guidelines for those convicted on cannabis-related charges. Although the plan orders federal judges to expunge records, it’s not automatic; anyone with a non-violent federal cannabis conviction still has to file a motion for expungement in court. The same applies to resentencing, where some incarcerated people would be entitled to sentencing review hearings, but would have to apply for themselves.

CAOA, Cesal stressed, has little-to-no impact on his case.

“By saying ‘non-violent marijuana offense’ [in federal reform], it really limits who gets relief,” Craig Cesal, who is currently on supervised release for a cannabis-related conviction, told Filter. “All marijuna offenses are non-violent. The reason they put the ‘violent’ word in is because it gives the district court sentencing judge the discretion to somehow believe [that] either the offender or offense is somehow violent.”

Cesal spent 19 years behind bars for conspiring to distribute marijuana. In January 2021, President Trump commuted his life imprisonment sentence to time served. CAOA, Cesal stressed, has little-to-no impact on his case, given the state’s classification of cannabis distribution charges as “violent.”

During our conversation, he described overhearing a 60 Minutes special on legal cannabis grow operations while in his cell. “Think of how that made me feel,” he said. “Now imagine all these people, should this law pass, who will not get relief. Imagine how they will feel sitting and serving up to a life sentence for something that’s no longer a crime.”

Photograph of Sen. Booker in 2019 by Gage Skidmore via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Senate Marijuana Legalization Bill Falls Short in Key Areas, Advocates Say appeared first on Filter.

The bill authorizes minors to possess up to 5 ounces of cannabis, or a total of six products containing up to 7.5 grams of concentrate or 750 mg of THC (such as in vapes or edibles).

Connecticut youth still face some penalties for possession. A first offense will result in a written warning and potential referral to social services. A second offense requires that referral to be made if it wasn’t already. Drug courts will not be involved.

The system mimics New Jersey’s newly adopted policy for youth cannabis possession. Though law enforcement still plays a role, this model is widely considered the most progressive among states with legalization policies in place, because it diverts young people from involvement with the carceral system at large.

The bill also legalized at-home cultivation by adults 21 and over, which indirectly helps families by preventing the state from criminalizing parents and guardians for homegrowing cannabis. Of the 15 states with adult-use legalization, 12 permit homegrow.

“Activists that came before me changed laws that made it possible for me to go to college.”

Students are key beneficiaries of the bill. Jason Ortiz, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), has been advocating for legalization in Connecticut since his arrest there for marijuana possession at age 16. He was able to attend and graduate college after the Souder amendment was changed in 2006, ending the exclusion of people who incurred drug charges as minors from eligibility for federal financial aid.

“People who come after me won’t have to suffer the same thing, and that affirms how important policy change is,” Ortiz told Filter. “Activists that came before me changed laws that made it possible for me to go to college. I went to college, learned amazing things and used that knowledge to free others.”

Under the new legislation, Connecticut students will no longer face penalties for the detection of cannabis in drug tests, and possession of under 4 ounces will not impact their financial aid. They will also be protected from discrimination against use of medical cannabis. Additionally, schools must rewrite their policies on cannabis penalties to be equivalent to their policies on alcohol by January 2022.

“[This law] tells all the educational institutions in the state to re-evaluate their policies,” Ortiz said. “This creates a giant community conversation of what schooling and safe communities look like in 2021, now that we are transitioning out of the War on Drugs.”

A decade ago, critical decarceration actions like expungement and resentencing were left out of initial cannabis legislation in Connecticut. Over the years, groups including SSDP, CURE CT, United Food and Commercial Workers and Working Families Party have all fought for social equity in the state’s cannabis reforms. SB1201 reflects that larger movement.

Photograph via Pixabay

The post Connecticut’s Adult-Use Marijuana Legalization Protects Youth, Students appeared first on Filter.

The law legalizes two kinds of cannabis consumption spaces: “retail cannabis lounges” run by dispensaries and “independent cannabis consumption lounges” run by any other type of business. In both spaces, single-use or ready-to-consume cannabis products are permitted for use by anyone 21 years and older.

Though this law has been championed to boost Las Vegas tourism, hotels won’t be considered for stand-alone consumption lounges due to federal law, and this is unlikely to change for now. (The Las Vegas Sun reports that the Nevada Gaming Control Board forbade gaming licensees from participating in the cannabis industry starting in 2018.) However, tourists of course aren’t the only ones who could benefit.

“It’s important to give people who may feel wary or tentative a cannabis space where they can consume intentionally.”

“Consumption lounges are important because they help protect people from prejudicial law enforcement or being fined or sanctioned in a way that causes real harm, that perpetuates the War on Drugs,” cannabis and social equity advocate Noel Gordon told Filter. Gordon lives in Las Vegas, in addition to serving as director of development outside of the state for Minnesota Campaign for Full Legalization.

JamalEdeen Barghouti, an advocate based in Reno, stressed the value of having public consumption spaces for new cannabis users. “It’s important to give people who may feel wary or tentative about approaching a cannabis space where they can consume intentionally,” they told Filter. In addition to serving on the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee of the National Cannabis Industry Association, Barghouti works as director of Blackbird, a software and operations company servicing the cannabis industry.

Historically, cannabis has been purchased in an underground market. It’s been consumed in a variety of social and solitary spaces, which have all been criminalized, unless you’re a medical marijuana patient. Many of us newcomers relied on those around us for guidance on consumption methods and practices. (My first bowl was made out of aluminum foil, which is a health hazard.) With the emerging legal market, more and more people are coming into contact with cannabis in legal ways, complete with brochures curated and distributed by dispensaries and other brands. There is a real opportunity to promote harm reduction within the industry.

Gordon has mixed feelings about how the lounges will be implemented. “I’m not all that optimistic we will still deliver on the social equity pieces,” he explained. “We still live in a prohibition lite version of legalization here in Nevada whereby you can purchase and consume cannabis in your home, but short of that, if you were to consume it on the sidewalk, in a hotel room, at a friend’s place, you will still be subject to some kind of criminal penalty or sanction.”

State law only permits legally purchased cannabis to be consumed on private property “as long as the property owner has not prohibited it.” (Renters can easily be out of luck.) Though cannabis tourism can add yet another attraction to the Strip, this technicality prevents tourists from legally consuming cannabis. It also leaves street-based drug users just as vulnerable.

Plus, racial disparity among cannabis businesses casts severe doubt on any presumptions that the new law will foster economic diversity. In a 2019 lawsuit, the Nevada Department of Taxation (Marijuana Enforcement Division) was accused of corrupt and unfair distribution of cannabis business licenses. As a result, some licenses were adjusted, according to the Nevada Independent, but this hasn’t closed the racial gap of business ownership. Gordon noted that only one Nevada cannabis business—the Las Vegas-based Nevada Wellness Center owned by former NFL player Frank Dawkins—is Black-owned. He added that unlike states such as New Jersey and New York, Nevada didn’t prioritize social equity provisions in its legalization laws.

“I believe Nevada is wholly unaware of the level of work that goes into creating [social equity] programs.”

In response to overwhelming inequity, A341 provides reduced license application fees by up to 75 percent for qualifying social equity applicants—that’s anyone “who has been adversely affected by provisions of previous laws which criminalized activity relating to cannabis, including, without limitation, adverse effects on an owner, officer or board member of the applicant or on the geographic area in which the applicant will operate” according to the legislation. Though the discount is notable, the price to apply for a license can reach up to $30,000; $7,500 remains a heavy price tag for a marginalized person impacted in some way by the drug war.

Barghouti, who has worked on social equity programs in Oakland, California and Massachusetts, expressed mixed feelings. “It’s exciting that Nevada is bringing social equity,” they explained. “A lot of established markets are starting to do the same [in Colorado and Oregon]. I also believe Nevada is wholly unaware of the level of work that goes into creating those programs and I’m nervous there isn’t going to be enough resources needed.”

Though it wasn’t passed, an additional bill under consideration would’ve allowed cannabis consumption lounge “micro licenses” for small business owners, which wouldn’t have required nearly as much investment. “One of the types of micro-licensed businesses could be a cannabis event planner, whereby someone could apply for a license and work with dispensaries to consume products at an event,” Gordon elaborated.

Alaska and Colorado have passed similar measures. Additionally, New York’s new legalization policy permits and regulates on-site consumption in cannabis facilities.

Whether the consumption lounges will actually live up to their ideals, Nevadans and their visitors will have to wait until next year before setting foot in one, even though the law goes into effect on October 1. The Cannabis Compliance Board is now tasked with distributing licenses for existing dispensaries and independent businesses.

“The Cannabis Compliance Board is continuing to review the bill and its requirements in establishing consumption lounge licenses in Nevada,” Tiana Bohner, public information officer of the Nevada Cannabis Compliance Board, told Filter. “The Board will aim to promulgate regulations and begin issuing licenses by early 2022.”

Correction, June 22: This article was edited to reflect that the Nevada Department of Taxation was the subject of the 2019 lawsuit, not the Cannabis Compliance Board as previously stated. We apologize for this error.

Photograph by Schwingi via Pixabay

The post Cannabis Lounges Coming to Nevada—What Does This Mean for Social Equity? appeared first on Filter.

The Salvation Army has a troubling history of denying treatment at its rehabilitation centers to anyone taking medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD). “This is an access case,” Lucy Bansal, counsel at Justice Catalyst Law, told Filter. “People with opioid use disorder who receive [MOUD] shouldn’t have fewer options available to them for rehabilitation than people who don’t.”

In addition to urging the Salvation Army to reverse its exclusionary policy, the lawsuit also asks the organization to compensate Tassinari and thousands others who have been denied a spot at its rehab facilities for taking MOUD, or denied their medication while they were there, the Boston Globe reported. According to state data, opioid-involved overdose fatalities increased by 5 percent in Massachusetts last year.

“Because of the Salvation Army’s close relationship with the prison and probation system, a simple policy change could potentially save thousands of lives.”

The Salvation Army serves thousands of formerly incarcerated people in its Adult Rehabilitation Centers and Programs each year. For many of them, it’s their only option—in some regions, Salvation Army ARCs might be the only rehabs available. 

“Because of the Salvation Army’s close relationship with the prison and probation system, a simple policy change—ending [MOUD] discrimination—could potentially save thousands of lives and make a significant, lasting impact on re-entry outcomes,” Bansal said.

The exclusionary practice makes it even more difficult for LGBTQ drug users to access services. The Salvation Army has a documented history of discrimination against queer and trans people—its affiliated drug clinic has blatantly refused trans people as patients or tenants. Even longtime corporate cheerleader Chick-fil-A has been pressured into pulling its donations to the organization. 

“I remember being locked up and we would all joke about the Salvation Army,” Michael Cox, executive director of Black and Pink Massachusetts, told Filter.

Cox said that the organization can be a last resort for those in dire need of support for housing or medical care, even if they’re LGBTQ. “We’re looking at disproportionate rates of homelessness, substance use and incarceration [in our community] that is usually coupled with release [from prison] at some point,” he explained. “All of these pathways lead to needing services that the Salvation Army provides.”

Multiple community-based organizations do serve LGBTQ populations in some parts of the state, including people impacted by incarceration and addiction. Whose Corner Is It Anyway is a western Massachusetts mutual aid and harm reduction group led by low-income sex workers who use criminalized drugs, led by the same current and former sex workers who also run the DecrimMA coalition alongside Black and Pink Massachusetts. Other prominent organizations serving people impacted by the state’s carceral system include Justice 4 Housing, Families for Justice as Healing and Massachusetts Bail Fund.

Recently, the Salvation Army has been attempting to redeem itself by claiming to “love and serve everyone.” But how inclusive can it really be if it rejects people for accessing evidence-based medical treatments like MOUD?

“[The Salvation Army] has the capacity to offer services and volume that a lot of [community organizations] don’t offer,” Cox added. “They have the potential to polish what could be a diamond in the community, but instead, they just fall back on this antiquated thinking that causes more harm.”

Photograph via Salvation Army

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