Marijuana rescheduling moves businesses into ‘uncharted territory’

 Marijuana business owners hoping to benefit from the Biden administration’s move to reschedule the drug may be in for disappointment, according to experts. 

The administration announced plans Thursday to move forward with a rule that would reschedule marijuana to Schedule III from Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). 

Under U.S. tax code, no business that deals with a Schedule I or Schedule II substance is permitted to make any deductions or add any credit to their annual federal taxes. That stands to change when marijuana becomes a Schedule III drug. 

Those in the marijuana space acknowledge that being able to deduct expenses from taxes will be helpful, with Washington, D.C., cannabis dispensary Green Theory calling the decision a “step in the right direction.” 

But experts like Robert Mikos, the LaRoche Family Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University, don’t expect a boon for marijuana entrepreneurs. 

“It will have some impact. I think the reason that the impact won’t be as great as many people might otherwise anticipate — it’s really twofold,” said Mikos. 

“One is that this drug is still going to be regulated under the Controlled Substances Act. And those regulations are going to be really hard for the companies now in the industry to satisfy,” he added. 

The other issue that Mikos sees is that marijuana is doubly regulated under the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, which bans all sales of unapproved drugs like marijuana, even when it is rescheduled to a less severe classification. 

“It won’t be approved by the [Food and Drug Administration] and that approval is still a long way off. So, everything these companies do right now, you know all the sales that they make, they’re going to remain unlawful. And for that reason, they’re still going to struggle, I think, to get banking services.” 

Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, has criticized the move to reschedule as not going far enough. But he said the question of how businesses will benefit is unclear as changing marijuana’s designation takes the country into “uncharted territory.” 

“The reality is that none of us know and, most likely, these policies and regulations are going to continue to evolve after the fact,” Armentano said. 

“We’ve never had a situation where a substance has been moved from schedule one to another schedule of the CSA prior to that substance going through a traditional FDA market approval process and having that substance be approved.” 

While the patchwork of state laws legalizing marijuana has allowed for a strong industry to grow, cannabis businesses face obstacles that others don’t. Armentano cited the inability to access credit as well as the exclusion of cannabis entrepreneurs from bankruptcy protections as “problematic” issues that still need to be addressed. 

“That’s obviously protection that is necessary, particularly when we’re talking about an industry as volatile as this one. There’s no access to small business loans right now,” he said. “I think the overarching theme would be, look, we want to see the marijuana industry, which currently employs over 425,000 full-time workers, simply be treated the way we treat other legal industries in this country.” 

A reduced tax burden could help cannabis businesses lower the cost of doing business and pass those savings onto their customers, which could in turn result in higher traffic. 

“We are happy about the potential of eliminating the 280E tax burden — the elimination of which we see as a way to create a more fair environment for small cannabis businesses to reinvest not only in their business, but also in the surrounding communities, without the financial limitations of this tax,” Green Theory said in a statement to The Hill. 

“We believe more still needs to be done in this space to continue to create fair opportunities to those negatively impacted by harsh drug laws and we hope to see continued work by the administration in the future.” 

Both Mikos and Armentano said that action beyond the White House’s move to reschedule will need to come from Congress. 

“This is all Congress’s fault,” Mikos said. “If anyone wants to point the finger at anyone for why we have kind of the weird federal marijuana policy we have today, it’s almost entirely the responsibility of Congress.” 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reintroduced legislation this month to remove marijuana from the CSA entirely. 

“Reclassifying cannabis is a necessary and long overdue step — but it is not at all the end of the story. It’s time for Congress to wake up to the times and do its part by passing the cannabis reform that most Americans have long called for. It’s past time for Congress to catch up with public opinion and to catch up with the science,” said Schumer. 

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4670906-marijuana-rescheduling-business-uncharted-territory/

Biden’s Morehouse speech exposes his 2024 political problems

 President Biden will set foot on a college campus Sunday for the first time since universities around the country became hotbeds for protests over the Israel-Hamas war.

Biden is delivering a commencement speech at Morehouse College, an historically Black college in Atlanta, a move that roiled students and faculty of the school and whose president said he would end the ceremony before letting police intervene to stop any potentially disruptive behavior.

The speech will see several issues plaguing Biden converge: The uproar over his unpopular foreign policy on Israel among Democrats coupled with his struggles to retain young and Black voters who will be key to his re-election. And all while in a battleground state he narrowly won in 2020.

“The president giving the commencement speech at Morehouse, before the preeminent Black male college in the country, is a nod to the fact that Black men and young voters are really looking at not voting this election – and he realizes, and the campaign realizes that he has to do something to try to bring them back, bring us back into the fold,” said Georgia-based Democratic strategist Fred Hicks. 

Some strategists are skeptical that the crowd at Morehouse might break out into protests on Sunday but Hicks said he wouldn’t be surprised if there were demonstrations or heckling around the graduation, if not during. 

“It’s fraught with risk,” Hicks said of Biden’s appearance, arguing that any protests would also open up the potential for the president’s positive messaging to be “drowned out.” 

Many Black Americans, though, have expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause as the conflict  in the Middle East rages on. A March survey from the Carnegie Endowment for Peace found nearly seven in 10 Black Americans would have liked the U.S. to call for an immediate ceasefire – and while 42 percent of Black respondents said they didn’t feel connected to either Israelis or Palestinians, 45 percent said they felt connected to Palestinians over Israelis. 

The Biden administration, while remaining confident that issues during the commencement speech may not arise, has attempted to get ahead of any potential problems.

Steve Benjamin, head of the administration’s Office of Public Engagement, met with students and faculty at Morehouse College earlier this month. Students during the meeting expressed concern that the president could overshadow the graduation, NBC News reported, and that his address could come off as a campaign speech amid the recent campus controversy across the country.

Benjamin told reporters on Thursday that he “talked about everything” with the Morehouse students, and that “the common thread was they wanted to make sure we were centering the young people.”  

“People have different thoughts about what they might want to hear,” Benjamin said. “We listened very closely. We received those messages and we shared those with the president and his speech writing team.” 

Benjamin said he’s not concerned about Biden’s address overshadowing the commencement. 

“I’m sure the president will have a chance to engage with faculty, staff and students while he’s there, and I know that he looks forward to it,” he said.

Morehouse President David Thomas, though, told CNN  that the school won’t allow “disruptive behavior that prevents the ceremony or services from proceeding in a manner that those in attendance can partake and enjoy” and said he’d halt ceremonies “on the spot” rather than let police intervene and take people out of the event “in zip ties.”

But Thomas also told the Associated Press that “in many ways, these are the moments Morehouse was born for.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden viewed his speech as a “pivotal moment” for graduates who entered college amid the coronavirus pandemic and are now graduating under the cloud of protests.

“We understand how deeply personal this moment is for many Americans across the country.  We’ve been very clear about that,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. 

In speaking at Morehouse, Biden will come face-to-face with a voting bloc he needs if he’s got a chance at winning the White House again.

A New York Times poll published earlier in the week found Biden leading Trump among Black voters, 63 percent to 23 percent, a significant decrease from the 87 percent of Black voters who voted for Biden in 2020. 

The poll also found Trump and Biden are only narrowly separated among voters aged 18-29, a group Biden won by double digits in 2020. The campaign has been making a concerted effort to reach both critical blocs.

And in Georgia, a state Biden flipped to blue in 2020 for the first time in decades, polling averages from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill indicate former President Trump is up there by 6 points, six months out from Election Day. 

Biden’s speech comes just as a range of college campuses – from Columbia University to the University of California – took centerstage this spring in demonstrating the conflict in Gaza, with some demanding their universities divest funds that support Israel’s military. Protests have also centered on the tens of thousands of Palestnians who have been killed in Gaza since October, when Israel launched its offensive after that month’s deadly terrorist attacks by Hamas that killed roughly 1,000 Israelis.

Biden has said demonstrators have a right to protest peacefully, but he has condemned more extreme aspects of the protests, speaking out against vandalism, taking over buildings and canceling commencement ceremonies, which was the case at Columbia University.

Strategists said Biden will have to find the right balance between striking a celebratory tone for the graduates and acknowledging the fraught political moment.

“He’s got to address the tone of the country in general, and that there’s an underlying frustration, an unfinished business,” Hopkins said, “when it comes to addressing civil rights in this country and frankly, around the world.” 

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4670366-biden-morehouse-speech-2024-political-problems/

New top spot for migrants to slip across US border

 San Diego is not only a popular tourist destination but has become a favorite spot for migrants to illegally slip across the US-Mexico border, new data shows.

An astounding 8,016 migrants were apprehended in the second week of May alone — that’s after a jaw-dropping 10,023 were caught two weeks prior, according to figures shared by the region’s Border Patrol.

The numbers show no signs of slowing down, with more than 35,490 arrests made in April, making it the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors along the southern border for the second month in a row — and for the first time since the 1990s.

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More than 8,000 migrants were apprehended in San Diego in the second week of May alone.AP

The sudden surge could be blamed on the other states suffering from migrant fatigue, like Texas, cracking down on their borders, forcing aliens and their smugglers to seek out easier paths to the US.

“Mexican authorities have put a lot of pressure on key migration routes to Texas, and that may be forcing people to try other routes further west,” Cris Ramón, senior advisor on immigration for the Latino civil rights organization UnidosUS, told the Los Angeles Times.

”Migration is a dynamic phenomenon, and people are going to adjust and find the circumstances where they have the best chance to reach the United States.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has led an intense anti-migrant campaign that involves stationing National Guard Troops along the border and bussing illegal aliens who succeed in entering to more progressive municipalities, like New York City.

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The surge in San Diego doesn’t reflect a change in overall arrests along the border, but just a switch in where they are entering.AP

California — a Sanctuary State — has proven more forgiving, especially in San Diego, which released a “minimum” of 125,000 migrants from detention onto the city streets “without proper vetting” in the six months since September 2023, officials told The Post this month.

The surge doesn’t reflect a change in overall arrests along the border, but just a switch in where they are entering.

San Diego saw a 69% rise in migrant arrests between Oct. 1 and March 31 while Texas sectors saw a 29% drop, the Times reported.

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A senior border patrol official told the Los Angeles Times that the US will be cracking down on the San Diego border.AP

A senior Customs and Border Protection official who spoke on condition of anonymity told the paper that the government would be dispatching additional agents to the San Diego border to quell the recent swells, which Mexican authorities will be mirroring on their side of the border.

“Just like we’ve done in the past, when the cartels shift, we adjust our operations,” the official said.

The effort might only have a bandaid effect, they warned, suggesting that it would only be a matter of time before new routes emerged elsewhere.

“The cartels,” the official said, “are constantly trying to find ways to exploit and circumvent enforcement.”

https://nypost.com/2024/05/18/us-news/san-diego-is-the-most-popular-spot-for-migrants-to-cross-border/

Biden Administration Considering China First Aviation Policy

 by Ned Ryun via RealClearPolicy,

Despite all the controversy surrounding the Biden Administration’s bad economic, immigration and domestic policy, they’re wanting to go next level on their not-so-great-terrible-policies. Biden wants to put the interests of Chinese airlines before the interests of American ones. 

The Biden Administration is reportedly considering using the discretion they have to increase flights by Chinese airliners in and out of the U.S. Reuters reported last month that “in February, the U.S. Transportation Department said Chinese passenger airlines could boost weekly round-trip U.S. flights to 50 starting on March 31, up from the current 35, about a third of pre-pandemic levels. U.S. carriers were authorized as well to fly 50 flights per week but are currently not using all those flights.” U.S. air carriers can’t increase flights because they don’t fly over Russian airspace for obvious reasons. This situation gives Chinese air carriers, and other foreign carriers, a big competitive advantage because they are continuing to fly over Russian air space.

The Chairman and Co-Chair of the bipartisan Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party objected to this Biden Administration idea. They sent a letter on April 10, 2024, “we write to urge caution in the approval of new flights between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) until such time that the PRC abides by its existing bilateral agreement, and passenger demand begins to recover.” They argued that “PRC carriers are continuing to operate air routes at an anti-competitive commercial advantage that must not be allowed to increase without reciprocal parity in the number of U.S. carrier operated routes to the PRC.” They want to make sure that passenger demand, not the demands of the Chinese government, should be a factor; what a shocking concept. They also worry about the security of American passengers flying in Russian air space. 

There are estimates that U.S. carriers have been hit with $2 billion in annual lost revenues from flights because they can’t fly in Russian airspace. Foreign airliners have been using their advantage to fly more direct routes with lower fuel costs. This situation has prompted American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, the Air Line Pilots Association, the Allied Pilots Association and Association of Flight Attendants to sign a letter asking for this increase in flights to be stopped “until U.S. workers and businesses are guaranteed equality of access in the marketplace, free from the existing harmful anti-competitive policies of the Chinese government.” Seems like a reasonable request.

Members of Congress and everyone in the U.S. air industry think giving China a competitive advantage is a terrible idea, especially when they have been guilty of stealing American intellectual property (IP) and flooding the international market with subsidized mass-produced goods. Apparently, one must be senile to think any of this makes political or economic sense. Implementing an America First policy is what the American people want right now, and it is one reason why the smart money is on former President Donald J. Trump to return to the White House next January.

Let’s not forget that after Covid-19 hit, China stopped air service agreements with the U.S. and shut off U.S. carriers. The Chinese government imposed new limits on access and other regulations that discriminated against U.S. carriers that remain today. A strong response to these anti-competitive actions does not include rewarding Chinese carriers with increased access to U.S. markets. The same is not done for U.S. carriers operating in China. 

Fairness has been tossed out the window by the Biden Administration with this idea. Although it makes sense to allow the former bilateral agreement between China and the U.S., we can’t ignore the fact that China has a competitive advantage that should not be rewarded by the Biden Administration. 

Biden's China First policy, in addition to attempting to force Americans to buy an expensive electric vehicle by 2032 (likely made in China), is sending independent voters right back over to the Trump column this fall. The good news is that ideas like this are opening the eyes of the American people to the America Last policies being pushed by the Biden administration; in fact, so much so that even members of his own party in Congress are resisting allowing China to grab a bigger part of the aviation flight market share.

Ned Ryun is the Founder and CEO of American Majority.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-administration-considering-china-first-aviation-policy

Trump urges members to vote after accepting NRA endorsement

 Former President Trump urged National Rifle Association (NRA) members to “be rebellious and vote” for him in the 2024 election, after accepting the endorsement from the gun rights advocacy group.

Trump pledged to thousands of attendees at NRA’s convention in Dallas that he will “stand strong for your rights and liberties,” claiming the Second Amendment is “under siege” while President Biden is in office.

The presumptive GOP nominee said that while gun owners may not usually vote, it was “important” they turn out in November. 

“We would swamp them at levels that nobody’s ever seen before,” he said Saturday, receiving laughs from those in the audience. “So, I think you’re a rebellious bunch, but let’s be rebellious and vote this time.”

“You’ve got to get all your friends and all the gun owners they have to go in they have to vote if they vote, there’s nobody that can beat us,” he added, before thanking NRA officials for their support.

Trump stated during his speech, his ninth address before the NRA, that the rights of gun owners are “definitely” on the ballot in 2024, arguing the administration would “come for your guns 100 percent,” if Biden is reelected. The former president has been criticized by Biden for his past remarks regarding school shootings. 

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) ran billboards near NRA’s venue ahead of the convention, hitting Trump for his rhetoric on gun violence and reform. The former president made similar comments to NRA members in Pennsylvania earlier this year, vowing stronger protections for gun owners if elected in November.

“I promise you this, with me at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, no one will lay a finger on your firearms — just as took place for four years when I was your president,” he said at the time.

After praising North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is running to become the state’s governor, Trump turned his ire to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate.

“He’s radical left,” Trump said. “Don’t think about it. Don’t waste your vote.”

“We need a conservative person with common sense, this guy is radical left who destroyed New York,” he added.Both candidates are set to appear at the upcoming Libertarian Party convention. Kennedy challenged Trump to a debate when both men appear at the convention in D.C.

“RFK Jr. calls you a terrorist group,” he said of Kennedy. “He calls you a terrorist group, can’t vote for him.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4672523-donald-trump-nra-endorsement-speech-dallas-convention/

Australian radiopharmaceutical biotech Telix Pharmaceuticals files for a $100 million US IPO

 Telix Pharmaceuticals, a commercial-stage Australian biotech developing therapeutic and diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals, filed on Friday with the SEC to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering. The company is currently listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under the symbol "TLX."

Telix Pharmaceuticals is focused on the development and commercialization of therapeutic and diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals, with a pipeline of candidates across urologic oncology (prostate and kidney), neuro-oncology (glioma), musculoskeletal oncology (sarcoma), and bone marrow conditioning. Its prostate cancer portfolio includes Illuccix, a commercially available gallium 68-labelled prostate-specific membrane antigen prostate cancer imaging agent. Illuccix was approved by Australia's TGA and the FDA in 2021, and Health Canada in 2022.

The North Melbourne, Australia-based company was founded in 2017 and booked $385 million in revenue for the 12 months ended March 31, 2024. It plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol TLX. Telix Pharmaceuticals filed confidentially on January 25, 2024. Jefferies, Morgan Stanley, Truist Securities, and William Blair are the joint bookrunners on the deal. No pricing terms were disclosed.

Relevant Profile: TLX

https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/104755/Australian-radiopharmaceutical-biotech-Telix-Pharmaceuticals-files-for-a-$1

Ex-CDC Director Says It's High Time To Admit 'Significant Side Effects' Of COVID-19 Vaccines

 by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Thursday that many officials who tried to warn the public about potential problems with COVID-19 vaccines were pressured into silence and that it’s high time to admit that there were “significant” side effects that made people sick.

Dr. Redfield made the remarks in a May 16 interview with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation, during which he lamented the loss of public confidence in public health agencies because of a lack of transparency around the vaccines, which he said “saved a lot of lives” but also made some people “quite ill.”

“Those of us that tried to suggest there may be significant side effects from vaccines ... we kind of got canceled because no one wanted to talk about the potential that there was a problem from the vaccines, because they were afraid that that would cause people not to want to get vaccinated,” Dr. Redfield said.

In his role as head of the CDC, Dr. Redfield was part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, a project to surge COVID-19 vaccine development at a time during the pandemic when little was known about the virus and rapid vaccine rollout was widely seen as key to getting the outbreak under control and lockdowns lifted.

In September 2020, a few months before the first COVID-19 vaccines were given in the United States, Dr. Redfield testified before the Senate that COVID-19 represented the “most significant public health challenge to face our nation in more than a century,” and that the prevailing view among scientists at the time was that the overall case fatality rate of the disease was somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6 percent in the United States.

“If you were to look right now, individuals under the age of 18, it’s about 0.01 percent, 19 to say 69, it’s more like 0.3 percent. And if you’re over the age of 70, it’s about 5 percent now,” he testified at the time.

While there’s lingering controversy about the severity of COVID-19, a recent study estimates that the global case fatality rate was 8.5 percent in February 2020 but had plunged to 0.27 percent in August 2022, meaning that the estimated relative risk reduction over that time was a whopping 96.8 percent.

In his interview on NewsNation, Dr. Redfield said that the vaccines that were developed as part of Operation Warp Speed were “important” and saved “a lot of lives.” However, despite their benefits, the drawbacks of the vaccines must be a matter of open discussion, he said.

“They’re important for the most vulnerable people, those over 60, 65 years of age. They really aren’t that critical for those that are under 50 or younger. But those vaccines saved a lot of lives, but they also—we have to be honest, some people got significant side effects from the vaccine,” he said.

“I have a number of people that are quite ill and they never had COVID, but they are ill from the vaccine,” he continued. “And we just have to acknowledge that.”

Vaccine Controversy

The severity of COVID-19 remains a matter of debate because it’s unclear whether deaths were overcounted or undercounted due to various factors, such as lack of clarity around the role of underlying medical conditions in fatalities in cases where COVID-19 was listed as the primary cause, or underreporting of asymptomatic infections. Aside from the issue of whether people died “from” COVID-19 or “with” a positive test for SARS-CoV-2, there have also been questions about the role of secondary pneumonia caused by mechanical ventilation.

Either way, a study from January 2023 indicates that the global case fatality rate from COVID-19 has dropped dramatically over the course of the pandemic. Global case fatalities ranged from 1.7 to 39.0 percent in February to March of 2020, according to the study—but fell to below 0.3 percent in July to August 2022.

The researchers estimate that the risk of death from COVID-19 has dropped by 96.8 percent over the course of the pandemic.

Along with a decline in COVID-19 fatalities, there have been growing concerns about vaccine side effects, given that a significant number of vaccinated people have reported various adverse reactions.

The most common COVID-19 vaccine adverse events are those that affect the body generally, with fever, fatigue, and overall discomfort being the top three, according to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). But there are others.

For instance, heart muscle inflammation (myocarditis) and inflammation of the lining outside the heart (pericarditis) have both officially been acknowledged by the CDC as a known side effect of Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Nervous system disorders have also been reported, with such disorders being the third most common in the Pfizer trials, coming after general and muscle-related adverse events.

There have also been papers linking spike-protein-based COVID-19 vaccines to skin problems, a dull ringing in the ears known as tinnitus, visual impairments, blood clotting, and even death. Recent reporting from EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders“ program indicates that the likelihood of death associated with COVID-19 vaccines (in close proximity to the shot rather than proven as caused by it) was over 100 times greater than for flu vaccines.

There are also concerns about a post-vaccination jump in excess deaths and disability.

The CDC still recommends that people of all ages receive a COVID-19 vaccine, saying that the potential side effects do not outweigh the potential harms of getting sick with COVID-19.

In a notice published in late April, the agency again called for adults aged 65 and older to get the latest version of the vaccines.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/ex-cdc-director-says-its-high-time-admit-significant-side-effects-covid-19-vaccines