Daily Archives: January 21, 2022

I wasnt running around making zines or anything like that, says Granduciel, who graduated in 1997 from the Roxbury Latin School and then headed off to Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. I was basically maybe some kind of social introvert. I had friends from school, obviously, but my life outside of that wasnt very big.

Its gotten a lot bigger since then. I Dont Live Here Anymore is the bands fifth full-length album since the War on Drugs formed in Philadelphia in 2005. (Kurt Vile was an early member of the group, but left after their first album, 2008s Wagonwheel Blues, to focus on his solo career.) Along the way, the band has grown, moving from the independent label Secretly Canadian to the venerable Atlantic Records, while album sales and concert crowds have expanded.

Even as the group has become bigger and more successful, Granduciel still seems content to hide himself away and work on songs, most recently in a warehouse space in Burbank, Calif., and before that in what he describes as a tiny room under his house in Los Angeles. He pays close attention to detail as a songwriter, and he can talk with great specificity about why he changed the key of a certain song, or how he wrote and rewrote a particular section of a song until he felt he had nailed it.

I Dont Live Here Anymore took shape gradually. Granduciel started writing songs for the album fairly soon after the band released 2017s A Deeper Understanding, which won a Grammy for best rock album. The singer spent several years honing the new material, often in conjunction with bassist David Hartley and multi-instrumentalist Anthony LaMarca.

I really trust their musical opinion, Granduciel says. If youre around people long enough, your trust and your friendship grows, and so where we were collaboratively in 2016 and 17, we were significantly past that a couple years later.

The groups albums have become grander and more spacious over the years. I Dont Live Here Anymore has a big, warm sound that straddles the line between indie cool and arena-ready heartland rock, full of guitars, keyboard textures, and hooky melodies, augmented on the title track by vocals from Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius.

They create such amazing sonic landscapes, says Wolfe, who recalls first meeting the War on Drugs in 2014 when both bands were playing a music festival in Vermont. I just remember sitting on the side of the stage and watching in awe.

Even at the time, Granduciel had a distinctive lyrical sensibility that has since become more defined. The narrators in his songs are often on a quest for meaning or belonging as they wrestle with uncertainty. Though the pandemic has probably amplified a general sense of restlessness, Granduciel says, those feelings didnt originate in March 2020.

Everyone feels a little lost, right? I mean, no one really knows what theyre doing, he says.

He traces those themes in his lyrics back to his own nomadic existence when Granduciel was in his 20s and his music career was just starting to take shape.

You try to write from this place that makes a lot of sense to you, he says. The period when he first got serious about music coincided with a time where I was without roots, you know what I mean? I was living in California. I was traveling around all the time. I wasnt homeless or anything, but I was kind of just moving around. I had no real sense of purpose or direction, which was fine with me at the time.

Granduciel has become more settled in recent years. He lives in Los Angeles full time now, and he became a father in 2019. Yet that sense of looking toward the horizon hasnt fully dissipated.

No one is 100 percent confident in every choice theyve made, he says. I wouldnt consider myself fully confident in any sort of adulthood. I think Im still writing from a kind of displacement.

THE WAR ON DRUGS

At House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St. Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 at 8 p.m. Tickets $46-$66. 888-693-2583, http://www.houseofblues.com/boston

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For the War on Drugs Adam Granduciel, a return to a place he once called home - The Boston Globe

The War on Drugs, led by frontman and founder Adam Granducial, has built their reputation on recorded music and live shows which incorporate an intense level of attention to musical detail. Soaring, rhythmic melodies and atmospheric instrumentals weave together 1980s synths with 1970s classic guitar licks, melding with lyrics to form whole musical cloth that makes you imagine at times being in a giant pile of floofy pillows, then raised to anthemic heights and floated gently down to a soft landing.

In late 2021, Granduciel completed a three-year effort to release a new album, I Dont Live Here Anymore, achieving critical acclaim and being heralded as one of the best of the year high praise for a band whose last effort nabbed the 2017 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album.

With COVID protocols firmly in place, The War on Drugs kicked off their I Dont Live Here Anymore tour on Wednesday (January 19th) with the first of two sold-out shows at ACL Live in Austin, Texas.

Many fans were curious as to how changes in Granduciels personal life might reflect in his music and performance and the outcome is that its all positive, with increased band collaboration and noticeable development in both lyrics and vocals. Granduciel was vocally stronger than hes ever been and seemed relaxed onstage, surrounded by a plethora of pedals in a literal ring of light.

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The War on Drugs Kick Off Their North American Tour in Austin: Photos and Recap - Consequence

If Californias government had set out to create the worst possible conditions for the legal-cannabis industry, it couldnt have done much betteror worse, reallythan it has done through a series of lurches and stumbles since voters legalized weed for adult use in 2016. The industry is overtaxed, overregulated and underserved by its government. It is under threat both from the illicit market that dwarfs it and, sometimes, by bands of criminal marauders who periodically rob, burgle and vandalize cannabis businesses in Oakland and elsewhere. Meanwhile, wholesale prices are plummeting, putting small growers at risk of losing their livelihoods.

Cannabis entrepreneurs have had enough. They say that if the state government doesnt deal seriously with the situation this year, the industry will collapse. The worry is that small and independent operators, already fleeing the industry, could vanish almost entirely, ultimately leaving the industry in the hands of a few big, rapacious companies.

Unless drastic action is taken, Fifty to 60% percent of us will not make it to the end of this year, said John Casali of Huckleberry Hill Farms, whose family has been growing cannabis in Humboldt County since the 1970s.

Casali issued his warning during a rally held last week outside the State Capitol in Sacramento. The rally was organized by Supernova Women, an Oakland-based group that represents businesses owned by Black and Brown women and those that participate in the states equity program, and by the Origins Council, a Ukiah-based group that represents the interests of small growers and what it calls legacy farmersthose who were growing pot when it was still illegal and who now want to be part of the legal market.

Rally participants made two main demands: that the state eliminate the 15% excise tax, at least temporarily, for equity-program participants and that the states cultivation tax be eliminated altogether.

The states cannabis policy is so hostile to the industry that it amounts to a continuation of the War on Drugs, said rally speaker Kika Keith, owner of Gorilla Rx, the first dispensary in Los Angeles to be owned by a Black woman. She singled out Gov. Gavin Newsom, who often cited social justice as a reason for his support of Prop. 64, which, when passed by voters in 2016, legalized cannabis for adult use in California. Gov. Newsom is why we stand here today, she said. His promotion of social justice in legal cannabis amounted to empty promises.

Its difficult to argue that the states cannabis policy has been anything other than an abysmal failure. Newsom last week declared that he is committed to reforming the states cannabis-tax regime, though he was short on specifics. It is my goal to look at tax policy to stabilize markets, he said.

Oddly, part of the reason for the states policy failures might also be part of the reason why the industry didnt implode two years ago, when there were massive layoffs and business failures: the Covid-19 pandemic. The state government appeared poised in the spring of 2020 to take on tax relief and some of the other problems plaguing the industry, but the pandemic put most of those proposals on hold. At the same time, however, after cannabis was declared an essential industry, sales spiked and many companies reorganized and slimmed down. Conditions didnt get much better, but it appeared that the industry was drawn back from the abyss just in time.But things are bad again, and in some ways much worse, thanks in no small part to plummeting wholesale prices and increased criminal assaults on pot businesses across the state but especially in Oakland, Berkeley and other Bay Area locales.

Prices at the farm gate have fallen over the past year by anywhere from 30% to more than 50%, depending on locale and variety.

Some of the reasons for the price plummet have to do with government policy, and some are just a function of supply and demand, but pretty much the whole industry, from small growers and equity companies to firms owned and managed by wheeler-dealer VC-bro types, agrees that the state government is making the situation much, much worse than it otherwise would be, via the cultivation tax.

No other agricultural crop in the United States is levied with a cultivation tax, Genine Coleman, executive director of the Origins Council, told rally-goers. Only cannabis.

The problem is not just that cannabis is taxed at the farm gate, its the way the tax is structured: based on weight, not on the sale price. So, when the wholesale price of pot falls, the effective tax rate climbs. But even that doesnt tell the whole story: cannabis is taxed by weighing whole plants, but as Casali noted, most of the plant doesnt even make it into products or onto store shelves. Twenty to 30% of the plant is all thats used, he said. But all of it is taxed.

Furthermore, the per-ounce tax rate has risen several times since legalization was passed. This month, it went up yet again, another 4.5%. The dry-weight tax is now $10.08 per ounce, or more than $160 a pound. In some cases, the tax represents about half the wholesale price of weed. For growers dealing with already-thin margins, thats not sustainable. They are losing money. The cultivation tax is extremely bad policy Coleman said.

The political will is there to eliminate the tax, Coleman said in an interview after the rally. One problem, she said, is that its baked into the states cannabis law, which was approved by voters, and its not a simple matter of the Legislature voting to remove it.

The tax does grave harm to small growers, and gives a huge advantage to large operators who can more easily absorb the coststhough, to be fair, the large operators also generally favor eliminating the tax. At the same time, though state law forbids a licensed grower from cultivating on more than one acre until the cap is lifted next year, large operators have simply acquired more small-operator licenses and stacked them to create major operations, Christopher Jones recently wrote in the trade magazine MG Retailer. Somehow, the state forgot to impose any limitation on the number of small licenses a single company could acquire. Oops.

Small farmers are forced to compete with large growers who are doing massive grows and doing them incorrectly, said rally speaker Chaney Turner, chairman of the Oakland Cannabis Regulatory Commission and founder of Beyond Equity, which advocates on behalf of equity-owned cannabis businesses. A concentrated pot industry would lead to less consumer choice and substandard products, she noted. Worse, by pursuing policies that benefit those big players and drive smaller, independent operators out of the market, the state is engaging in a second War on Drugs, she said. A lot of those small operators are people of color, who were promised that legalization would give them a leg up. She noted that, nationally, eighty percent of cannabis businesses are owned by white males. A recent Business Insider article found that, among the 14 biggest pot companiesseveral of which are located in Californiamore than 90% of top executives are white dudes. This isnt what equity was supposed to look like.

War On Drugs 2.0 was actually the title given for last weeks rally. Were here today because the craft cannabis industry and social-equity businesses in California are in crisis and on the brink of collapse, said Amber Senter, in opening the proceedings. Senter is a co-founder and executive director of Supernova Women, manager of the EquityHouse Incubator and CEO of the Oakland-based cannabis brand Maker House.

Senters own business was targeted by criminals during the crime spree on the weekend before Thanksgiving, during which dozens of pot companies in and around Oakland were hit, resulting in an estimated $5 million in losses.

For her, those crimes are part of the same problem as the governments woeful tax and regulation policies. Police response to crimes against cannabis operators is inadequate, she said, and the policies of both state and local governments leave many operators unable to adequately defend themselves or make up for the losses they suffer. In an earlier rally after the spree, she called on Oakland to, among other things, eliminate its cannabis sales tax and provide assistance to operators to improve security.

When we suffer losses like this, she said at last weeks rally, in addition to the increasing onerous taxes, we dont have the runway to recover. Our social equity retailers are in desperate need of relief.

When the cultivation tax, the 15% state excise tax, local cannabis taxes and regular sales taxes are added together, it yields an effective total tax rate on sales that can be greater than 50%. That explains why so many consumers are sticking with the illicit marketwhich often is represented by the guy down the street who grows weed in his garage, as opposed to some nefarious band of organized criminals, though those exist, too. Despite the fact that Californians overwhelmingly say they would prefer to buy pot from a licensed dispensary, some studies have shown that a price difference of just 10% is enough to convince them to stick to their illicit sources. Thanks to the tax rates, the price difference is far greater than 10%, which is why the illicit market still dwarfs the legal one. About three quarters of Californias weed consumers buy from the illicit market.

Eliminating the excise tax only for equity operators, as Senter and the other rally participants are demanding, might be a tough sell in Sacramento. Its also bound to draw blowback from some non-equity businesses and their political lobbyists. I dont think theyll be happy, Senter said in an interview. But given conditions, she said, equity businesses need an advantage in the market if they hope to compete.

The California Cannabis Business Association has members from across the industry, and, not surprisingly, has not taken an official stand on eliminating the excise tax for some businesses but not for others. However, the lobbyist group has called for a reduction in the excise tax for all businesses, and is fully onboard with eliminating the cultivation tax altogether, said Amy Jenkins, the CCIAs senior policy director. The current situation is affecting all operators, large and small, she said. The CCIA and operators are all in alignment that the elimination of the cultivation tax is absolutely critical to the legal cannabis industry.

Another big problem for Californias pot business is the fact that most local jurisdictions have opted not to allow cannabis businesses in their communities, leaving most California consumers without easy access to a dispensary. Thats thanks to Californias home rule policies, which cant easily be countered by state law or policy. The industry won a major victory when the state government last year legalized cannabis delivery throughout the state, regardless of local laws. But thats not nearly enough to solve the problem. Newsom has pledged to allocate money to fund grants to help local governments understand the benefits of allowing weed sales, and how to regulate them, a promise that Jenkins called very encouraging.

Its always impossible to guess what the state Legislature might do, but advocates say that if its going to address these problems, it will have to be this year, or the industry will implode, to be taken over by Big Weed. We were deemed essential early in this pandemic, Senter said. Wheres our essential relief and our essential aid? Our industry and our businesses are worth saving.

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The War on Drugs 2.0: A cannabis legalization rally highlights the states hostile attitude towards the industry - East Bay Express

THE MINISTER OF State for the national drugs strategy has told an Oireachtas committee that a war on drugs is not an effective response to usage.

The Joint Committee on Health met this morning to hear from Minister of State Frank Feighan for an update on the national drugs strategy.

Irelands national drugs strategy was released in 2017 and the government said policies are now aimed towards a more health-led approach to drug use.

Feighan told the committee that the strategy commits to this approach whereby drug use is treated as a public health issue and not primarily as a criminal justice matter.

And let me be clear: a war on drugs is not an effective response to drug use, he said.

He also reiterated the strategic priorities for 2021-2025 under the plan including a focus on protecting children and young people from drug use, enhancing the access and delivery of community drug and alcohol services and a focus on harm reduction and integrated care pathways for high-risk drug users.

Feighan said that these priorities are to be linked to outcome indicators to measure the impacts such as figures on cannabis use among young people, the number of people receiving treatment and the number of drug-related deaths.

He told the committee that drugs continue to be a major policy challenge in Ireland.

According to Feighan, 9% of the population used an illegal drug in the last year. 9,700 cases were treated for problem drug use in 2020, with another 5,800 cases treated for problem alcohol use.

He paid tribute to frontline drug and alcohol services for their work during the pandemic. The designation of drug services as essential services at the start of the pandemic was a significant acknowledgment by the government of the importance of this sector, he said.

Feighan was joined at the committee by Jim Walsh, the principal officer in the drugs policy and social inclusion unit at the Department of Health and Dr Eamon Keenan, the national clinical lead for addiction in the HSE.

Sinn Fins Thomas Gould asked the minister about the removal of a group of nurses specialising in addiction from the National Oversight Committee (OAC) on Drugs.

The Ireland Chapter of International Nurses Society on Addiction (IntNSA) served on the NOC until December when they were removed after Feighans decision to reconfigure the committee, resulting in their representative member being forced to step down.

Feighan said that he hopes to meet with the nurses in the next few days to resolve the issues that have been raised in this regard.

Gould also asked the minister if he could give a commitment that places on the NOC on Drugs will be retained for voluntary and community groups, as well as nurses, but Feighan did not give a commitment.

Citizens assembly

It wasreported earlier this monththat campaigners are increasingly confident that a citizens assembly on drug use could take place this year.

However, in response to a question from Social Democrats leader Risn Shortall about when the assembly will take place, Feighan said there is currently no proposed date for it to begin.

He said it had been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, but confirmed that the Department of Health is liaising with the Department of an Taoiseach and said he expects it will take place in the lifetime of this Government.

The three coalition parties, upon entering government in 2020, committed to holding a citizens assembly on drug use, which advocates say could be a major opportunity to rethink drug policy in Ireland.

Shortall also raised the issue of nurses being removed from the NOC on Drugs, and asked Feighan if it is his intention to appoint an addiction nurse representative to it.

I would certainly think yes, it is, Feighan responded.

Lynn Ruane

During the course of the meeting, Feighan said there is currently no desire at government level to decriminalise or legalise drugs, especially cannabis.

Fine Gael TD Bernard Durkan deemed cannabis a gateway drug during the meeting, stating that it is being given to children to create addiction and a market for drugs.

Following this, Independent Senator Lynn Ruane said the meeting had been one of the most excruciating things Ive ever had to listen to regarding drug use and criticised the language being used, such as the myth of gateway drugs and the moralisation of peoples drug use.

Minister, the war on drugs has happened right in front of your eyes today, she said.

The war on drugs costs lives, its discriminatory, its moralistic, its a breach of civil rights, it criminalises poverty. If you want to focus on drug use, you need to forget the type of drug thats being used and you need to look at poverty and marginalisation, everything that this government has got to say in to. Criminalise poverty, not people for their drug use.

She asked Feighan to define what he meant by the war on drugs not being an effective response to drug use and said the phrase is not about destigmatisation, but about criminalising those that use drugs.

She asked him if he thought drug users were criminals. He responded by saying that people who use drugs have human rights and reiterated that a health-led approach is needed instead of punishment.

Labour Senator Annie Hoey also said the minister needs to understand the difference between the decriminalisation and the legalisation of drug use.

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Crack cocaine

Fine Gaels Colm Burke raised the issue of the increase in crack cocaine use in the country. Feighan said he has announced 850,000 in recurring funding over the next three years for a HSE-led initiative to reduce health-related harms associated with the use of the drug.

On this point, Keenan said a student survey on drug use in higher education institutes will be released tomorrow that will show a substantial increase in cocaine use in this population.

Were going to be allocating about 50,000 of that for training so that across the country we can provide training for staff to deliver appropriate evidence based-interventions to people who are presenting with health problems associated with cocaine and crack cocaine, Keenan said.

Feighan was also asked about funding for community healthcare organisations (CHOs), including theTallaght Drugs and Alcohol Task Force,to support people in areas negatively affected by drugs.

A report published by the task force on the use of drugs in the Tallaght and Whitechurch areas of Dublin found that the number of people being treated for addiction issues in its projects has doubled in the last ten years, but it still believes it is only reaching 25% of the true need.

It said that community services in the areas are at breaking point and urgently need additional resources.

The task force report called for an additional 1 million in government funding each year to cover more staff, resources for alcohol support programmes, a detached youth work project, and expanding crack cocaine programmes.

However, Feighan said between 200,000 and 240,000 in funding will be allocated to the nine CHOs every year, who will then commission community-based drug and alcohol services based on an assessment of population needs.

With reporting from Jane Moore.

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'War on drugs' not an effective response to usage, minister tells committee - TheJournal.ie

(NewsNation Now) A few years ago the tobacco companies sold the world on e-cigarettes ability to help people quit smoking. Now, doctors are developing a cocaine e-cigarette to help people do the same for stimulant addictions.

Dr. Fabian Steinmetz, one of the scientists who invented the device, said alternative solutions are necessary because the war on drugs has not worked.

Its quite easy to regulate cannabis. But its more difficult how to deal with drugs like crack cocaine or heroin, Steinmetz said on On Balance with Leland Vittert.

For research, he looked at how several European countries handle drugs and the laws surrounding them. He noted some cities even give heroin to those already struggling with addiction.

We actually thought about how can we do something similar for crack cocaine which has a very short duration, and then we came up with this type of e-cigarette, he said.

Steinmetz believes part of the problem with U.S. drug laws stems from prohibition and often results in people trying more dangerous drugs.

If [people] dont get their pills, they go to the black market and then they poison themselves with illegal fentanyl formulations, he said.

Some U.S. cities have turned to safe sites for people to use narcotics to prevent overdoses.

The first officially authorized safe havens for people to use heroin and other narcotics have been cleared to open in New York City.

An estimated 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously reported there were about 93,000 overdose deaths in 2020.

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Could a cocaine vape pen help those struggling with addiction? - NewsNation Now

EPHRATA - The war on drugs was declared decades ago, but the arsenal to combat personal addiction was thin, until recently in Grant County.

Presiding judges in Grant County Superior Court are touting a new program as the regions best bet in turning the lives of those whove let drugs run roughshod in their lives.

On Tuesday, Grant County announced a $366,667 grant from the Department of Justice to implement an Adult Drug Court Program. The program will divert non-violent felony offenders with substance use and mental health issues from incarceration into a closely supervised program with treatment and rigorous standards of accountability. The program combines rehabilitation with incentives and sanctions, including mandatory and random drug testing that incorporates aftercare.

Drug addiction touches all races, genders, and income levels. It affects all ages, from the very old, to those who havent even been born yet. It is a problem we should all be concerned about, said Grant County Superior Court Presiding Judge Tyson Hill.

Grant County officials say Judge David Estudillo, now a federal district court judge, was pivotal in getting the grant for the program.

We have found most property crime in Grant County involves an underlying drug addiction. This program wont just help the addicted get back on their feet, it will also reduce crime said newly appointed Prosecutor Kevin McCrae.

A study by the Department of Justice found that nationally, 84 percent of drug court graduates had not been re-arrested and charged with a serious crime in the first year after graduation, and 72.5 percent had no arrests at the two-year mark. These special courts have been operating in the United States for 32 years. Their effectiveness is well-documented. There are now 3,454 treatment courts and have served.

Not everyone will succeed, but many will. For those who want to get themselves out of the cycle of addiction fueled crime and incarceration, we will soon have a system in place to help them, Hill said.

Grant County Superior Court will conduct interviews within the next few weeks to hire the Program Coordinator and Program Assistant positions and it is anticipated that the program will begin later this year.

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Judge: Grant County's new Drug Court to help citizens shed the shackles of drug addiction for good - iFIBER One News

The UK has waged a war on end-to-end encryption for years, with the government boomeranging between scaremongering tactics to manipulate public opinion on the divisive technology. Its latest attempt to convince the public that surrendering its basic human right to privacy is, actually, a good idea, however, fails to address the core issue its ignoring; that criminalisation almost never works.

Revelations published by Rolling Stone shows the government isnt backing down on encryption, despite a litany of more pressing fires it needs to put out. The Home Office has commissioned M&C Saatchi, a high-end advertising agency, to run an anti-encryption campaign centred on the role of encryption in child exploitation, including an insidious visual PR stunt involving a child and an adult. This aims to mobilise public opinion against Meta's decision to add encryption to Messenger, for instance, among other uses of the technology.

The events of recent weeks have shown the contempt the government holds towards its citizens, and the lengths it will go to hide self-servitude. It now believes using child exploitation as the main argument against encryption should be enough to turn the tide.

It should be under no illusion, however, that banning the technology will do little to curb the online abuse of children, although according to the former head of the NCSC Ciaran Martin, the government may not actually know what its talking about.

Banning encrypted messaging will remove the benefits and freedoms it affords the public, while ramping up the levels of already-hyperactive state-wide surveillance. The 1920s prohibition era serves as a historical example, as well as todays so-called war on drugs; its very much a losing battle.

Global security insights report 2021

Extended enterprise under threat

Has the lack of easy-access cannabis, like we can find in some states in the US, led to a drop in use? Well, cannabis is still the most misused illicit drug in the UK, ONS figures show, with usage rising since 2013. Cocaine use, too, was up 37% against 2013, and more people also misused ketamine now than a decade ago. The Childrens Society, meanwhile, says 90% of police forces in England have observed county lines activity, with violence escalating.

It suggests what we know to be true; that outlawing things of value will only push them into the hands of outlaws. In the case of encryption, only those intent on harm will gain access to encrypted messaging services through technologies like Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), deep underground with little chance of government tracking.

Take Messenger, WhatsApp, and Signal away from Joe Public and what are you left with? The vast majority of the population will be exposed to the government of the day, whether its Boris Johnson, or an untimely successor. Criminals, meanwhile, will have already burrowed themselves deeper into the dark web, using PGP-signed messages over which the government has no oversight. Nobody can ban cryptography.

Its here from which whiffs of incompetence emanate. Revoking end-to-end encryption will allow dark web communities to flourish, making life even more difficult for law enforcement. Weve seen how dark web marketplaces have thrived despite attempts to stop the illegal trade of guns, drugs, and other illicit goods. After all, it takes months to infiltrate a marketplace and shut it down, and minutes for an alternative to begin accepting patrons.

This campaign is yet another thinly-veiled attempt to achieve the governments ambition of scaling up the apparatus of the surveillance state, first through the Investigatory Powers Act, recently in its Online Safety Bill, alongside years of public gesticulations.

To complicate matters, though, the governments argument is somewhat valid, and one that even I, an avid proponent of end-to-end encryption, often struggle to internally justify. When you consider the lives lost through terrorist plots organised over encrypted messaging platforms, or the countless lives ruined through exploitation, its a difficult stance to hold.

When you see through the flagrant technical illiteracy and untruths running through this prospective campaign, however, you have to call into question the motives. This is especially true when you factor in attempts to undermine our rights and access to privacy, alongside the lengths to which government ministers go to hide their own activities from the public by using, you guessed it, WhatsApp.

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The government's anti-encryption campaign shows it's learned nothing from the war on drugs - IT PRO

Next month, the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protectionwill start accepting applications for certain adult-use cannabis businesses, kicking off the year sales are scheduled to begin in the state.

The application period is open for 90 days, according to an announcement from the state Department of Consumer Protection. The first licenses that will open up are for cultivators in areas disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs, which includes most of Norwich. That license will be available starting Feb. 3.

The other license types that will open in February include retailers, micro-cultivators, delivery services, and hybrid retailers.

Of those, only a limited number of licenses are available, half split between social equity and non social equity applicants, including 12 retail, four micro-cultivator, 10 delivery, and four hybrid-retailer.

More: Who will get money from Connecticut's budding cannabis industry?

Norwich Mayor Peter Nystrom said potential entrepreneurs for the new industry have expressed interest in the city.

Nystrom said people have been attracted by the city owning its own utilities, resulting in lower rates, along with special rates for new businesses. Many of the interested parties the city is working with attended a talk in the city in November for encouraging growth in the adult use marijuana industry. However, Nystrom said he felt that some of the parties the city spoke with were more serious and qualified than others.

More: Thinking of getting into Connecticut's marijuana industry? Norwich forum offers a preview.

With the coming application period, Nystrom said that youll know whos real and whos not then, as if you dont have a license, youre clearly not in the game.

However, Nystrom said it is an inconvenience that operations wanting to utilize the social equity component have to stay within disproportionately impacted areas, rather than being anywhere in the city, as Norwich is a distressed municipality.

That sets up limitations for every community, Nystrom said.

Benjamin Zacks, chief operating officer for the Fine Fettle Dispensary, which has locations in Connecticut and Massachusetts, said all his ducks are in a row to turn his Connecticut stores into hybrid stores.

That means he expects to sell to both medical and recreational clientele at his existing locations in Willimantic and Newington, and a third opening this month in Stamford.

More: 23 bridges in New London County rated in poor condition. What inspection data tells us.

Hes still unsure how long it will take between sending in the application and getting the final okay to start fully selling.

We are ready and raring to go, Zacks said.

Zacks is also looking to open other Fine Fettle locations in the areas where there is the highest need and the highest demand, but wouldnt exactly say where for competitive reasons.

The licensing process will be very competitive, he predicted, due to the lottery nature of the license granting.

More: For Norwich schools, the struggle to remain open while omicron surges is 'day-to-day'

Carl Tirella, the Connecticut General Manager for Acreage Holdings, which owns The Botanist in Uncasville among other locations in Connecticut and across the country, said the company is actively working with potential applicants for social equity ventures in the state.

Were meeting partners on the ground, and were still going through that process, he said.

Tirella said The Botanist is also exploring opportunities for cultivation, but said that since only a few licenses will be awarded, the retail side of the business will be the main focus.

More: Norwich Reid and Hughes building not forgotten: City works to find new developer

Zacks said there is the opportunity to create jobs and wealth working in social equity ventures, and said Connecticut is doing things in a smart way.

For smaller operations, the application period may be a tougher matter. One of the interested entrepreneurs that attended the citys talk in November is Phelan Sharkey, who along with his business partner Antonious Brown, wanted to start a dispensary in Norwich. While the two men were optimistic in November, Sharkey said theyre less so now, noting how legalization is going in Connecticut and in other parts of the country, including federally, along with the costs.

I see that theres a lot more to consider now, Sharkey said.

Sharkey said he and Brown were planning to raise the $1.5 million to avoid the lottery through creating two equity joint ventures.

The barrier to entry shouldnt be as great as it is, Sharkey said

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Adult-use marijuana sales will begin in CT this year. What does that look like in Norwich? - Norwich Bulletin