There’s ‘No Evidence’ Of Widespread Fentanyl-Laced Marijuana, Federally Funded Study Finds As JD Vance Again Sounds Alarm To The Issue

Marijuana Moment
Tue, Oct 22
Key Points
  • A federally funded study found no evidence of widespread fentanyl lacing in illicit marijuana, but GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance continues to peddle this claim.
  • The study analyzed nearly 12 million drug samples and concluded that marijuana was the least likely to contain fentanyl among the drugs reviewed.
  • Vance has been recounting a story about fentanyl-laced THC candy as part of his anti-drug rhetoric on the campaign trail, blaming the Biden-Harris administration for failing to secure the border.
  • While Vance has expressed support for states' rights in cannabis policy, he continues to oppose cannabis legalization and has made controversial comments about marijuana and drug policy.

There’s “no evidence” to support the idea that there’s a widespread trend of illicit marijuana being laced with fentanyl, a new federally funded study concludes. But Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), the GOP vice presidential nominee, is continuing to peddle that claim.

The study, published in the journal The Lancet Regional Health–America, analyzed nearly 12 million samples of nine types of illicit drugs, including cannabis, from 2013-2023 in an effort to identify trends in fentanyl co-occurrence.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School, Brown University and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that while approximately half of heroin samples contained fentanyl, and there’s been a more recent uptick in fentanyl being found in stimulants such as methamphetamine, marijuana is a different story.

“Our results show no evidence of widespread fentanyl co-occurrence with cannabis,” the team said. Of the nine drugs that were reviewed, marijuana was the least likely to contain the opioid.

“This study’s failure to identify cannabis as a significant risk factor for inadvertent fentanyl exposure is reassuring. That said, concerns that marijuana sold on the unregulated market may be of variable quality and purity are valid,” Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, said. “However, the best way to address these concerns is by taking cannabis products off street corners and placing them behind the counters of licensed businesses, where they are lab tested and labeled accordingly.”

Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, is offering a less nuanced assessment of the issue.

During campaign speeches in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania this past week, he again talked about visiting a Georgia sheriff’s department and being shown “library shelves” full of “bags” of marijuana that officers have seized, as well as “more refined THC,” including some in the form of candy containing fentanyl.

“I asked the sheriffs, I said, ‘Well, there’s something here that’s just out of place. It’s a box of candy—like a Nerds candy, Sour Patch candy’—and I’m like, ‘What? What is that? That doesn’t belong here?'” he recalled at an event in Waukesha, Wisconsin on Sunday. “And the sheriff told me that this is actually THC and fentanyl that had been manufactured to look like children’s candy candy, so the cartels would make it easier to get into our country in the first place.”

“I think all of us know what’s going to happen is that an innocent American child is going to pick up a packet of candy on a playground, and they’re going to pay for it with their life because Kamala Harris refuses to do her job,” Vance said, attempting to place the blame on the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies.

The senator told the same story several times in recent days, including during a Pennsylvania campaign stop in Williamsport, Pennsylvania last week.

He also shared the same anecdote during an event in Atlanta earlier this month, reiterating his argument that it’s an example of how the Biden-Harris administration has failed to effectively manage the U.S.-Mexico border.

While Vance has expressed support for a states’ rights approach to cannabis policy and indicated he’s opposed to criminalizing people over marijuana possession, he’s more recently leaned into anti-drug rhetoric, including during an earlier campaign event with the Milwaukee Police Association in Wisconsin in August.

At the time, he similarly claimed “marijuana bags” are being laced with fentanyl, and he said the Biden administration’s border policies were also making it so that youth, including his own kids, can’t experiment with cannabis or other drugs without risking fatal overdoses.

Advocates would argue that’s a key reason to enact a regulatory framework for marijuana or other drugs that includes testing requirements and other safeguards to mitigate the risk of dangerous contaminants, but the GOP candidate did not draw that connection and continues to maintain an opposition to cannabis legalization.

Vance, who was elected to the Senate in 2022, doesn’t have an extensive cannabis policy record. However, he’s voted against bipartisan banking legislation that passed in committee and has argued that states that have enacted legalization should increase enforcement activities, complained about the smell of cannabis multiple times and suggested that its use can lead to violence.

A 271-page leaked memo with vetting material on Vance included his cannabis legalization opposition under a list of “notable vulnerabilities” with moderate voters, alongside his past comments on slashing Social Security and Medicare, opposition to student loan forgiveness, support for abortion restrictions and his views on race relations, among others.

Trump, for his part, evidently doesn’t see a major liability in embracing certain cannabis reform policies, as he’s recently backed federal marijuana rescheduling and allowing industry access to banking services, as well as a Florida legalization ballot initiative he’ll get to vote as a resident this November.

Harris, meanwhile, recently made her first comments backing federal legalization since accepting the party’s 2024 nomination, weighing in on the reform in a podcast interview that was released last month. That followed weeks of protracted silence on the issue, despite her prior advocacy for legalization and sponsorship of a Senate bill to end federal prohibition.

She also said last week that part of the reason for the delay in the administration’s marijuana rescheduling effort is federal bureaucracy that “slows things down,” including at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Last month Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), Harris’s running mate, said he thinks marijuana legalization is an issue that should be left to individual states, adding that electing more Democrats to Congress could also make it easier to pass federal reforms like cannabis banking protections.

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