For Immediate Release

On Thursday, while Democratic Party leaders gathered for their New York State Nominating Convention, climate advocates from the Gas Free NY Coalition rallied outside the venue urging Governor Hochul to speed up the timeline for implementing a nation-leading statewide ban on gas hookups in new construction.

Upon taking office, Governor Hochul won initial praise for her Department of Environmental Conservation’s opposition to new gas infrastructure, stopping both the Danskammer and Astoria NRG fracked gas plants from expanding. Of late, Governor Hochul has come under criticism for her weak statewide gas ban proposal, which entails delaying ban on gas hookups in new construction until 2027, as well as creating an unnecessary rule-making process under the purview of an obscure state board dominated by the real estate industry. Advocates are pushing for a ban to begin in 2023.

Advocates representing Food & Water Watch, New York Communities for Change, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, 350Brooklyn, and Sane Energy Project assert that her timeline is too slow and are urging Governor Hochul to support an immediate ban on gas hookups in new construction via the state budget, which is due April 1. The coalition is backing the All Electric Building Act (S6843A/A8431), sponsored by Senator Brian Kavanagh and Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, and urging that it be incorporated into the budget. Food & Water Watch Senior New York Organizer Eric Weltman said:

“New York can lead the way, with Governor Hochul at the helm, as the first state in the nation with a ban on fossil fuels in new construction. But we have to do so now. Politicians may want to delay, but the climate crisis rolls on — we have the solutions we need right in front of us to make a serious dent in the emissions driving this catastrophe. Governor Hochul must waste no time supporting an immediate gas ban on fossil fuels in new construction through the New York state budget.”

“New York State must continue to lead on climate by becoming the first in the nation to end fossil fuel infrastructure in new construction,” said Annie Carforo, Climate Justice Organizer at WE ACT for Environmental Justice. “Burning gas in our homes and buildings not only contributes to climate change but also produces harmful indoor air pollution. We urge Governor Hochul to immediately pass the All Electric Buildings Act and begin New York’s transition off of fossil fuels. With studies showing that this air pollution leads to nearly 2,000 premature deaths annually in New York State, we cannot afford to wait.”

“Governor Hochul needs to stop the garbage climate policies that put PR over people. We need better policies that will help our planet and we need it done sooner than later,” said Rachel Rivera, a Sandy Survivor and member of New York Communities for Change. “We have an incredible opportunity to lead this nation’s clean energy revolution but first we need a policy that shows urgency. Governor Hochul must implement the state gas ban by 2024.”

Photos and a video of the event are available here.

Contact: Phoebe Galt, [email protected]

[ad_2]

Originally Appeared Here

Tasha Nelson’s 10-year-old son held back tears when he heard the news. The two were in the car when the announcement came through the radio: Virginia’s freshly sworn-in governor had signed an order attempting to ban mask mandates in schools.

“My son looked up at me and he had tears in his eyes because he knew what it meant. He said, ‘Mom, does that mean I can’t go to school anymore?'” Nelson said. “He said, ‘Can’t we let the governor know about kids like me? I want to go to school too.'”

Jack, a fourth grader, has cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic disease that causes persistent, damaging lung infections, making it harder to breathe over time. Like other immunocompromised, disabled and chronically ill Americans, Jack was taking measures, like masking, to dodge infections before the pandemic too. But with Covid-19 still rampant, it’s not as easy. Even though he’s vaccinated, the virus poses a serious, potentially deadly, risk to Jack. His 2-year-old brother, who is not yet eligible for the shots, is another concern.

Nelson is among a group of parents who sued Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin over that order, claiming it puts students who are immunocompromised or have disabilities at risk and violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. CNN has reached out to Youngkin’s office for comment on the lawsuit.

Roughly two weeks after that lawsuit was filed, the governor signed a bill into law allowing parents to opt their children out of school mask mandates.

Nelson is keeping her son at home again because of it.

“This whole pandemic, our culture, media (and) government has made it very clear to high-risk and disabled people that we are an acceptable loss,” Nelson said. “We’re doing everything we can to survive this pandemic too.”

Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are declining nationwide, but transmission — how much virus is circulating in a community — remains high in more than 90% of the United States, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC still recommends everyone to mask indoors in areas of substantial or high transmission.

But public health experts are split on whether it’s time to lift mitigation measures. Some say dropping protections at a time when Covid-19 numbers are so high is a political move rather than a public health one. Others say the downward trends justify those moves and note Omicron is milder than earlier variants for most healthy people.

As local and state leaders nationwide remove mask and vaccination rules, those at high risk for severe disease say doing away with protections now leaves them more vulnerable, especially as they, or family members, return to in-person work or school. And for some, Covid-19 vaccines are not as effective in staving off a severe bout with the virus, prompting the CDC to recommend a fourth shot for immunocompromised people 12 years and older in October.

Roughly seven million American adults are immunocompromised, the CDC estimates. While not all have conditions that leave them severely immunocompromised and vulnerable to severe Covid-19, about 61 million adults — roughly one in four in the US — have some type of disability, according to the agency. More than three million children had a disability in 2019, according to the US Census Bureau.

“Everyone knows someone who had cancer, everyone knows somebody who had a kidney transplant for one reason or another, or someone who’s got Alzheimer’s or someone who has a heart condition or someone who was born with a rare immunodeficiency,” said Sara Willette, who has been in isolation with her husband in Iowa since the state reported its first case of the virus, some 700 days ago.

“The more protections that we remove, the less accessible the rest of the world becomes to people who are high-risk,” Willette said.

Even though Willette is triple vaccinated and preparing for her fourth shot, catching the virus could be deadly. She has Common Variable Immunodeficiency Disorder (CVID), meaning her body does not produce protective antibodies to defend itself against pathogens like bacteria or viruses.

The couple considered leaving their home in Ames and moving to southern California, where stricter masking protocols could have helped protect her. But they ruled out the idea after California’s governor lifted the indoor mask mandate for vaccinated people this month, citing a drop in infections.

Iowa’s lawmakers are going even further — a bill looking to effectively ban vaccine and mask mandates is making its way through the legislature. “We have to make a choice between staying alive and having a life,” Willette said.

The high-risk people CNN spoke to said as the country eagerly looks to move on from the pandemic, they feel forgotten — and worse, like they don’t matter to the rest of the American public. Some say they feel like they’ve been left to adapt to a more dangerous reality, while others are now mapping out a permanently isolated lifestyle.

Families faced with impossible choices

In Wilmington, Massachusetts, Karen Yurek’s family is navigating a tough balancing act. Yurek and her husband are both high-risk and on immunosuppressant medications. She has rheumatoid arthritis and he has multiple sclerosis. Both have received four Covid-19 shots and work remotely.

Their family was almost entirely isolated until last week, when their 6-year-old son, Billy, returned to school. Billy is vaccinated, and Yurek and her husband felt he could stay safe with the help of a universal masking requirement that was in place.

Then, state officials announced they were lifting the mandate at the end of February. Yurek wrote to the Wilmington School Committee, urging them to keep masks mandatory to “protect the members of our community who don’t have the luxury of ‘normal’ anymore.”

The committee voted Wednesday to lift its mask mandate, posing a difficult dilemma for Yurek’s family: pull their child out of in-person class or risk serious illness.

“It’s really demoralizing,” Yurek said. “It just feels like everyone’s so focused on getting back to normal that … they’re forgetting about all of the really at-risk people. And if they’re not forgetting about them, that they’re just saying, ‘Well, you’re on your own.'”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s John Berman on Thursday that lifting school mask mandates given the current transmission levels could push cases back up. “We’ve been to this show before,” he said. “Where things came down, you pull back a little, and it bounces back.”

When asked this month about immunocompromised Americans who feel left behind, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the agency is working to update its mask guidance so it is “relevant for the public, but also for the public who is immunocompromised and disabled,” but offered no further details.

To help keep more people safe, mask requirements should depend on how much virus is circulating in a community, said Raymund Razonable, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and vice chair of the division of public health, infectious diseases and occupational medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. Shedding masks at a time the virus is still rampant and the threat of more variants — including an Omicron subvariant — loom is a risk, Razonable told CNN.

All but one of the remaining states that still had mask mandates in place — Hawaii — have announced plans to remove them.

Other local leaders have announced the end of vaccine measures too. The country’s capital put an end to its indoor business vaccine requirement Tuesday. In the following days, Philadelphia and Boston also announced they were dropping vaccine requirements. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams told employers to end work-from-home policies, saying in a news conference, “We need people back to work.”

“Unfortunately, for the most part, we’re seeing a lot of disregard for the immunocompromised and the disabled community,” said April Moreno, a public health expert and founder of the Autoimmune Community Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization. “We’re hurting.”

Kris Giere, a 42-year-old who has Type 1 diabetes and lives in Indiana, a state that ended its mask mandate last April, echoed the same.

“I’m tired of having to worry about how many disease vectors I’m in contact with,” Giere said. “I’m on edge every day, because I don’t get to go back to normal. There is no going back to normal for me.”

‘We don’t have the luxury of pretending the pandemic is over’

When the CDC updated its isolation guidelines in December to say people can leave isolation five days after testing positive if their symptoms are gone or getting better, and to wear a well-fitted mask for 10 days, the agency also urged them to “avoid people who are immunocompromised or at high risk for severe disease,” for at least 10 days.

But it can be hard to know when someone — a coworker, a friend or a passerby — is immunocompromised or high-risk, Moreno pointed out. It’s why many conditions are known as “invisible illnesses.”

“No one … has given me a giant foam hat with an arrow saying ‘immunocompromised’ on it,” said Matthew Cortland, who works on disability and health policy at Data for Progress, a left-leaning think tank. “The lengths we have to go to in order to mitigate, to some extent, the risk that society at large is just offloading onto us is absurd.”

Cortland permanently works from home. But many friends who are also chronically ill and disabled don’t have the same option. That’s why public health measures remain critical, Cortland said, including global vaccination campaigns, widespread availability and use of high-quality masks, research into more adaptive personal protective equipment, improvements to indoor air quality, better testing procedures and sufficient treatments.

The US has increased its order for one of the key preventive therapies for the immunocompromised, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced last week. But even with that boost, the country will only have enough of that monoclonal antibody treatment for less than a quarter of its immunocompromised population. And while there are other Covid-19 therapeutics that can help people including the severely immunocompromised, they are still also in short supply in many parts of the US and won’t be more widely available until spring, the US Food and Drug Administration has said.

“There’s not enough for the millions of immunocompromised patients,” said Razonable. In his hospital, he said there is a “sufficient” supply to cover only “the highest risk group” of people.

Two years in, high-risk Americans are feeling traumatized and exhausted from the daily risk assessments and new hurdles that life in a Covid-era America comes with.

As Cortland puts it: “No one wants to actually be done with the pandemic more than disabled, chronically ill, and immunocompromised Americans. We just don’t have the luxury of pretending the pandemic is over when it isn’t. And it clearly is not.”

The-CNN-Wire

™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

[ad_2]

Originally Appeared Here

DENVER (AP) — On a picturesque autumn evening in early November, the sunset belied a briskness to the Denver breeze. But inside a nondescript brick building downtown, anticipation was heating up the air.

A group of 25 people sat in a circle on the floor, each with a ramen spoon full of a brownish paste. Among them was Rabbi Ben Gorelick, a fast-talking 42-year-old with a multi-colored mohawk. On that night, Gorelick’s tempo was a couple beats slower than usual as he calmly instructed those in the room to consume what was on the spoon — a customized mixture of psychedelic mushroom extract — and find a spot to lay on the floor as they prepared to “drop in” during a guided breathing exercise.

The people in the room were part of a spiritual group called The Sacred Tribe, which Gorelick founded in 2018 and which since has grown to more than 270 members. About once a month, Gorelick hosts a weekend-long retreat that creates space for people to explore “the relationship to self, community and God” using psilocybin mushrooms that his team grows in Denver.

“This is not what a normal conservative or reform synagogue looks like,” said Gorelick, adding that his approach falls in line with Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. “The goal is not to blast people to the moon. It’s to give people just enough of a threshold dose that they have that openness to connecting.”

Scenes like this have become more commonplace in the American underground, as shrooms and other psychedelics have experienced increased exposure and a recent renaissance in the research of their potential medical benefits. Denver, which became the first city to decriminalize personal possession and consumption of psilocybin in 2019, has been a leader in this movement and helped inspire a wave of similar initiatives from Oakland, California, to Washington, D.C.

Denver’s leaders are considering further liberalization and Colorado voters could even be asked this fall to legalize mushrooms statewide. But Gorelick’s Sacred Tribe, which pushes the boundaries of what’s legal as it explores the intersection of Judaism and psychedelics, is spotlighting the gap between city, state and federal law on psychedelics — and illustrates a key missing piece of the 2019 vote to decriminalize.

“We’re not trying to get the dealership pipeline going here,” Denver City Councilman Chris Hinds said. “But if it is decriminalized to possess it, well, how do you get it?”

On Jan. 10, police raided The Sacred Tribe’s cultivation facility in north Denver, where the group grew more than 35 strains of mushrooms for use at its events. Police arrested one employee and seized mushrooms and documents. Denver police also recently arrested Gorelick on suspicion of possession with intent to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance, a first-degree felony, according to his arrest warrant affidavit.

Gorelick isn’t worried about legal consequences, saying he never sold or distributed mushrooms beyond the scope of The Sacred Tribe’s retreats, and that, furthermore, he believes the group is protected by a religious exemption.

“I don’t sell elsewhere, I don’t wholesale elsewhere. I have really, really rigid tracking systems for everything from spore to extract,” he said.

Under the parameters of decriminalization, it remains a crime to buy or sell psilocybin, and to grow it beyond a “personal” amount. Still, mushroom-related arrests are rare these days, according to a recent city report that found just five arrests for psilocybin-only since Denver made enforcement of laws against possession police’s lowest priority. (Psilocybin was listed in other arrests that included additional drugs, the report said.)

Simultaneously, activists have filed several ballot initiatives to legalize entheogenic plants such as psychedelic mushrooms for use in therapeutic settings statewide, meaning Colorado voters could also be asked to weigh in on the subject as soon as November.

As psilocybin and other psychedelics have achieved greater cultural acceptance, their use has proliferated in some medical circles to treat ailments such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The movement is rippling through religious and spiritual circles, too, as individuals seek deeper connections to their communities and a higher power.

A lack of oversight, however, has led to bad actors in the space, including doctors who have been accused of sexual misconduct while treating individuals under the influence. Because much of this work is done underground, nefarious behavior often goes undocumented or unreported, said Joey Gallagher, the Denver-based executive director of the nonprofit Psychedelic Club, which aims to create community around and educate the public about psychedelics. Advocates said they’re concerned instances of emotional and sexual abuse of people existing in a vulnerable psychedelic state could overshadow the benefits of psychedelics such as psilocybin.

“It’s actually been a worrying thing,” Gallagher said. “The psychedelic community 100% needs to step up more on calling out inappropriate behavior.”

— “Institutional religion is a dying creature”

Rabbi Gorelick, who was ordained by the Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute in 2019, refers to The Sacred Tribe as a synagogue, but members do not need to be Jewish to join. In fact, many who attended the November event claimed no religious affiliation.

Amy Bliss was raised Catholic but rejected organized religion as a young adult. John and Lena Swedell grew up as Jehovah’s Witnesses but left the church many years ago. What these folks — and others who came to Denver for the weekend — share in common are a curiosity about psychedelics, a desire to learn more about themselves and a willingness to connect with like-minded individuals.

“The level of acceptance is radical acceptance,” Bliss said. “Bring who you are. And all of your faults and your, you know, impurities and ugliness and all of it. Bring it all. It’s all welcome.”

Since its inception, The Sacred Tribe has been growing primarily by word of mouth and through other events, such as breathing workshops, that are open to guests because they do not involve mushrooms. The group is funded through donations, Gorelick said, which go toward paying his staff and buying food for events.

To be able to join a retreat, prospective members must fill out an application, complete a medical questionnaire and some undergo an interview to ensure their goals align with the community, said Gorelick, who also co-owns a lifestyle brand called So Epic that promotes raves and electronic music concerts.

“I deny roughly 15% of applications into the community typically because people are looking for access to mushrooms as opposed to an exploration of connection,” he said, adding that psychedelics are just one part of The Sacred Tribe experience.

The retreat in November started with a substance-free dinner and interactive workshop on Friday night. Those taking mushrooms on Saturday returned to find the previous night’s tables replaced with brightly colored cushions covering the floor and the lighting dimmed. A sculpture covered with mosaicked pieces of colored mirror spun under a spotlight, sending fractured light dancing across the wall.

After circling up on the floor for introductions and intention-setting, Gorelick invited everyone to change into “comfy clothes” and approach him individually to receive “sacrament.” Once everyone had been served, The Sacred Tribe members synchronously consumed their spoon of extract and laid down on the floor for a guided breathing exercise. Gorelick put on a playlist curated by participants earlier in the evening and two songs in, the vibe in the room started to shift.

People began writhing between deep breaths. Moans of agony and ecstasy filled the room. Things escalated with the intensity of the music, leading to screaming and sobbing. One person did cartwheels across the room, as others gravitated towards the edges of the group and looked on with wide eyes.

Just when the scene appeared to be bordering on madness, the tempo of the music slowed down, casting a calmness throughout the space. Movements became softer and more fluid. Breathing became more natural.

After breathwork, as these sessions are called, the remainder of the night was free for members’ exploration — whether it be in a quiet space downstairs, in a room with music and visuals projected on the ceiling, or outside by the fire pit. Everyone who consumed mushrooms was required to stay the night and given the option of a second dose a few hours later. Sober members were on hand to facilitate should someone experience uncomfortable or negative emotions.

On Sunday morning, everyone was back seated on the floor for a discussion about their experiences and the takeaways they could apply to daily life.

Gallagher at the Psychedelic Club estimates the number of spiritual groups experimenting with psychedelics in this way is “immense,” but Gorelick is also tapping into a wider movement in the Jewish community.

Madison Margolin, co-founder and editor of psychedelics-focused publication DoubleBlind, helped create the Jewish Psychedelic Summit as a platform to talk about the intersection of religion and psychedelics. The inaugural two-day symposium, which was held virtually last May, brought together dozens of panelists from Jewish backgrounds and welcomed more than 1,100 attendees.

Discussions covered topics such as Jewish trauma and the potential of psychedelic healing, the history of psychedelics in ancient Jewish practice, and why ending the war on drugs is a Jewish imperative.

Though still niche, this approach is becoming more widespread and continually attracting folks from a variety of Jewish sects, Margolin said, in part because “institutional religion as we know it, from a reform or secular perspective, is a dying creature.”

“For many people, their psychedelic experiences are bringing them back to a different relationship with Judaism,” she said. These experiences also offer the opportunity to reflect and implement the soulful, mental and somatic effects of a trip to one’s life, a practice known as integration.

“I really think psychedelics are the future of Judaism in a way that there’s this common ground among people from all sorts of Jewish backgrounds and psychedelic consciousness becomes a meeting place for these people,” Margolin said. “Judaism as a religion can be a container for psychedelic states and also offers set and setting with which to have a psychedelic experience.”

— Intentional use of psychedelics is growing

“Set” and “setting” are two words that come up frequently in discussions about spirituality and psychedelic use. According to Matt Lowe, research director at Denver nonprofit Unlimited Sciences, “set” refers to the mindset a person has when they ingest psychedelics and “setting” refers to the environment in which they do it — two things that differentiate intention-driven use from recreational.

In 2020, Unlimited Sciences began collaborating with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research to conduct an observational study of psilocybin users to learn more about the context in which people consume the substance. The study has so far enrolled 6,800 people, who either used psilocybin in the six months prior to self-reporting survey data or planned to use it in the six months following their enrollment, and more than 900 have completed an initial survey, said Albert Garcia-Romeu, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral science.

Among respondents, the largest share (40%) reported “self-exploration” as the primary reason for doing so, followed by those seeking to use psilocybin for their mental health (30%) and for therapy (10%).

“We’re definitely tapping into a number of people who are not only using it for guiding sessions or self-exploration for topics they find difficult, or to overcome grief, or to understand unity,” Lowe said. “We’re seeing people use it also to guide their religious experiences, or mystical experiences or spirituality.”

There’s evidence of indigenous cultures in Mesoamerica using hallucinogenic cactus, plants and fungi in healing rituals and religious ceremonies. And prior to the 1970s, researchers had been adamantly studying substances such as LSD and psilocybin in mystical and medical contexts, Lowe said. After President Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act in 1971, however, research and clinical trials came to a grinding halt.

Much like cannabis, it’s taken decades to reverse the stigma around psychedelics and investigate their benefits. Recent studies have yielded promising results in using psilocybin to treat depression, PTSD, anxiety among the terminally ill and even nicotine addiction. Modern research has also explored psychedelics as catalysts to religious experiences, Lowe said.

In Denver, Gorelick is preparing to administer a study in partnership with Canadian company Divergence Neuro that aims to collect biometric data about how psychedelic mushrooms affect the human body and brain, leveraging fungi grown by The Sacred Tribe.

Using a proprietary method, Gorelick’s team extracts and isolates psilocybin and 14 other alkaloids that can be administered to members based on their intentions for a journey — whether it be to make an internal connection, open their heart space or tackle challenges head-on, he said. Some like aeruginascin are linked to states of euphoria, Gorelick said, while others like baeocystin offer feelings of connectedness.

These assessments are, so far, based on anecdotal evidence from a group of “experienced psychonauts” who Gorelick has been surveying. Once a month, he provides participants with 1.5 grams and asks them to rate the effects on factors such as creativity, clarity, mind, body, spirit, visuals and more.

“Most of the time, I get all the results back and there’s at least enough correlation between the 29 people that shows these particular strains lend themselves to more heart connection, more somatic experience, or a more visual experience, or whatever,” Gorelick said.

The upcoming study aims to pair data to that anecdotal evidence by monitoring brain wave patterns, heart rate variability, respiration, gut flora response and other factors, Gorelick said. It’s expected to start later this year.

What makes his study unique is that the compounds are extracted from the fungi itself. Most medical research currently relies on synthetic psilocybin for consistent dosing, he said.

“We are, as far as I know, the only people in the world who have come up with a particular process that allows us to have a consistent dosing, but based on full mushroom extract. So I can say, not only is it 20 milligrams of psilocybin, it’s also 3 milligrams of psilocin, 12 milligrams of baeocystin, etc.,” Gorelick said. “So I can give that consistently every time, too.”

— Murky legal landscape remains

On the morning of Jan. 10, The Sacred Tribe’s warehouse underwent a routine fire inspection to secure operating permits. At 4:45 p.m. that afternoon, Denver police executed a search warrant regarding a complaint from the fire department about an active mushroom and psilocybin lab, according to the probable cause affidavit.

“Officers discovered grow tents inside, scales and multiple small white freezers with suspected mushroom bags sealed and stacked filling them to the top,” the affidavit stated. Police confiscated suspected mushrooms, both frozen and growing, as well as paperwork, notebooks and a digital scale, according to Gorelick’s arrest affidavit.

Police arrested a chemist who was contracted to design and work in the mushroom extraction lab, according to Gorelick. The Denver District Attorney’s Office charged the individual with possession with intent to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance, a first-degree felony.

On Feb. 8, police arrested Gorelick after he turned himself in at the Denver Police Department. According to his arrest affidavit, police linked Gorelick to the raided warehouse after finding mail and two cars registered to him at the grow facility during their investigation. Gorelick’s name also was on the fire permit application, the affidavit stated.

The relationship between religion and drug use has been legally contentious for decades and became even more nuanced when Congress adopted the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, or RFRA, in 1993.

The act was passed in response to a Supreme Court ruling in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, a case involving two Native American men who were fired from their jobs and subsequently denied unemployment benefits for using peyote, even though it was part of their religious practice. The court decided the state’s law prohibiting peyote use was a law of general applicability, meaning it applied to everyone equally and would not be overturned because it interfered with religious practice in just a few instances.

According to Griffen Thorne, an attorney with the Harris Bricken law firm in Los Angeles, the ruling spawned widespread backlash and even conservative religious groups were critical of implications under the First Amendment. That led Congress to pass RFRA as a test that judges use to evaluate whether a law or government action infringes on religious liberties protected by the First Amendment.

RFRA has been applied in various contexts over the years, Thorne said, including in a 2006 case involving ayahuasca that set precedent for groups to be able to import and use controlled substances in a religious context. That essentially “left the door open” for other groups as well, Thorne said.

Organizations can also apply for a religious exemption with the Drug Enforcement Administration, but due to stipulations in the agency’s guidelines “the chances of that happening are like winning the Super Bowl,” Thorne said.

“A lot of people probably have legitimate religious practices that would be protected by the First Amendment, but you have a federal agency that’s extremely over-aggressive in how it regulates things and laws that actually prohibit things,” Thorne said, “so unless those people go to court and win, they’re probably still violating the law.”

Despite this ambiguity, federal law is explicit in prohibiting the cultivation of illegal substances, including psychedelic mushrooms, Thorne said. The only protections an organization might have would be at the state or local level.

A panel created to evaluate the effects of psilocybin decriminalization in Denver suggested loosening local laws further after concluding it “has not since presented any significant public health or safety risk in the city.” The panel recommended, among other things, that the City Council make both the communal use and the gifting of psilocybin among the lowest law enforcement priority.

Additionally, activists have filed several ballot initiatives to legalize entheogenic plants and fungi, including psilocybin, mescaline and dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, statewide, and create a regulated system for their use in therapeutic settings. Should they collect enough signatures, voters could see the measures on the November ballot.

Until then, tension between being able to legally use psilocybin and the illegality of buying or selling it creates more grey area. Councilman Hinds found the report on decriminalizing’s effects promising, especially given how many law enforcement representatives, including Denver District Attorney Beth McCann, contributed to the recommendations. When Mile High City voters adopted decriminalization via Initiative 301, the measure notably did not address how locals could or should obtain psilocybin. Hinds sees gifting as a step toward resolving this Catch-22.

“The committee met for more than a year and I don’t know if it was fully on board with exactly how people obtain psilocybin,” he said. “But if the City Council agrees with the report, then at least gifting personal amounts could become decriminalized here in the near future.”

But growing 35 strains appears “beyond the definition of personal use, in my opinion,” he added.

Still, clarity has been hard to come by even with substances that are legal, as Steve Berke, co-founder of the International Church of Cannabis in Denver, found out in 2017 when police charged him with public consumption of marijuana and a violation of the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act.

The Church of Cannabis does not need a license for on-premise consumption because of its status as a religious nonprofit, Berke said, which enables its congregants, known as Elevationists, to smoke marijuana during private, members-only services. Despite the fact cannabis was legalized statewide several years prior to the church’s grand opening on April 20, 2017, police still came knocking. Berke went to court and was ultimately fined $50 for the two misdemeanors. (A Denver judge found another co-founder, Lee Molloy, not guilty on the same charges.)

The Church of Cannabis doesn’t grow its namesake plant or sell paraphernalia, so as not to be misconstrued as a marijuana business, Berke said. (Elevationists bring their own to consume.) Still, he cautioned that any religious organization using substances needs to ensure they’re in compliance with local, state and federal law.

“Religion doesn’t allow you to murder people on the street or sacrifice humans, so there are still boundaries you cannot cross,” Berke said. “If you’re doing anything with a Schedule 1 narcotic you need to be worried about the federal government. But in 2017, we knew the feds weren’t going after cannabis.”

While The Sacred Tribe’s mushroom growing operation remains on hold, the group is reconvening. Gorelick postponed retreats scheduled for January following the raid but is resuming them in February — sans sacrament. Still, Gorelick expects cultivation will begin again soon.

The rabbi isn’t worried about legal consequences — even after being detained — saying the group’s practices are protected by an inherent religious exemption. (The Sacred Tribe has not received a formal exemption from the DEA.) None of the mushrooms The Sacred Tribe grew were ever sold or used outside the context of its events, he said.

“The Sacred Tribe stands by our religious exemption and we believe in our religious exemption,” Gorelick said. “I am absolutely fully confident that at the conclusion of vetting of our processes that life will go back to normal.”

[ad_2]

Originally Appeared Here

“My son looked up at me and he had tears in his eyes because he knew what it meant. He said, ‘Mom, does that mean I can’t go to school anymore?'” Nelson said. “He said, ‘Can’t we let the governor know about kids like me? I want to go to school too.'”

Jack, a fourth grader, has cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic disease that causes persistent, damaging lung infections, making it harder to breathe over time. Like other immunocompromised, disabled and chronically ill Americans, Jack was taking measures, like masking, to dodge infections before the pandemic too. But with Covid-19 still rampant, it’s not as easy. Even though he’s vaccinated, the virus poses a serious, potentially deadly, risk to Jack. His 2-year-old brother, who is not yet eligible for the shots, is another concern.

Nelson is keeping her son at home again because of it.

“This whole pandemic, our culture, media (and) government has made it very clear to high-risk and disabled people that we are an acceptable loss,” Nelson said. “We’re doing everything we can to survive this pandemic too.”

Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are declining nationwide, but transmission — how much virus is circulating in a community — remains high in more than 90% of the United States, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC still recommends everyone to mask indoors in areas of substantial or high transmission. But public health experts are split on whether it’s time to lift mitigation measures. Some say dropping protections at a time when Covid-19 numbers are so high is a political move rather than a public health one. Others say the downward trends justify those moves and note Omicron is milder than earlier variants for most healthy people.As local and state leaders nationwide remove mask and vaccination rules, those at high risk for severe disease say doing away with protections now leaves them more vulnerable, especially as they, or family members, return to in-person work or school. And for some, Covid-19 vaccines are not as effective in staving off a severe bout with the virus, prompting the CDC to recommend a fourth shot for immunocompromised people 12 years and older in October. Roughly seven million American adults are immunocompromised, the CDC estimates. While not all have conditions that leave them severely immunocompromised and vulnerable to severe Covid-19, about 61 million adults — roughly one in four in the US — have some type of disability, according to the agency. More than three million children had a disability in 2019, according to the US Census Bureau.

“Everyone knows someone who had cancer, everyone knows somebody who had a kidney transplant for one reason or another, or someone who’s got Alzheimer’s or someone who has a heart condition or someone who was born with a rare immunodeficiency,” said Sara Willette, who has been in isolation with her husband in Iowa since the state reported its first case of the virus, some 700 days ago.

“The more protections that we remove, the less accessible the rest of the world becomes to people who are high-risk,” Willette said.

Even though Willette is triple vaccinated and preparing for her fourth shot, catching the virus could be deadly. She has Common Variable Immunodeficiency Disorder (CVID), meaning her body does not produce protective antibodies to defend itself against pathogens like bacteria or viruses. The couple considered leaving their home in Ames and moving to southern California, where stricter masking protocols could have helped protect her. But they ruled out the idea after California’s governor lifted the indoor mask mandate for vaccinated people this month, citing a drop in infections. Iowa’s lawmakers are going even further — a bill looking to effectively ban vaccine and mask mandates is making its way through the legislature. “We have to make a choice between staying alive and having a life,” Willette said. The high-risk people CNN spoke to said as the country eagerly looks to move on from the pandemic, they feel forgotten — and worse, like they don’t matter to the rest of the American public. Some say they feel like they’ve been left to adapt to a more dangerous reality, while others are now mapping out a permanently isolated lifestyle.

Families faced with impossible choices

In Wilmington, Massachusetts, Karen Yurek’s family is navigating a tough balancing act. Yurek and her husband are both high-risk and on immunosuppressant medications. She has rheumatoid arthritis and he has multiple sclerosis. Both have received four Covid-19 shots and work remotely.

Their family was almost entirely isolated until last week, when their 6-year-old son, Billy, returned to school. Billy is vaccinated, and Yurek and her husband felt he could stay safe with the help of a universal masking requirement that was in place.

Then, state officials announced they were lifting the mandate at the end of February. Yurek wrote to the Wilmington School Committee, urging them to keep masks mandatory to “protect the members of our community who don’t have the luxury of ‘normal’ anymore.”

The committee voted Wednesday to lift its mask mandate, posing a difficult dilemma for Yurek’s family: pull their child out of in-person class or risk serious illness.

“It’s really demoralizing,” Yurek said. “It just feels like everyone’s so focused on getting back to normal that … they’re forgetting about all of the really at-risk people. And if they’re not forgetting about them, that they’re just saying, ‘Well, you’re on your own.'”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s John Berman on Thursday that lifting school mask mandates given the current transmission levels could push cases back up. “We’ve been to this show before,” he said. “Where things came down, you pull back a little, and it bounces back.”

When asked this month about immunocompromised Americans who feel left behind, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the agency is working to update its mask guidance so it is “relevant for the public, but also for the public who is immunocompromised and disabled,” but offered no further details. To help keep more people safe, mask requirements should depend on how much virus is circulating in a community, said Raymund Razonable, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and vice chair of the division of public health, infectious diseases and occupational medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. Shedding masks at a time the virus is still rampant and the threat of more variants — including an Omicron subvariant — loom is a risk, Razonable told CNN. All but one of the remaining states that still had mask mandates in place — Hawaii — have announced plans to remove them.Other local leaders have announced the end of vaccine measures too. The country’s capital put an end to its indoor business vaccine requirement Tuesday. In the following days, Philadelphia and Boston also announced they were dropping vaccine requirements. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams told employers to end work-from-home policies, saying in a news conference, “We need people back to work.” “Unfortunately, for the most part, we’re seeing a lot of disregard for the immunocompromised and the disabled community,” said April Moreno, a public health expert and founder of the Autoimmune Community Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization. “We’re hurting.” Kris Giere, a 42-year-old who has Type 1 diabetes and lives in Indiana, a state that ended its mask mandate last April, echoed the same.”I’m tired of having to worry about how many disease vectors I’m in contact with,” Giere said. “I’m on edge every day, because I don’t get to go back to normal. There is no going back to normal for me.”

‘We don’t have the luxury of pretending the pandemic is over’

When the CDC updated its isolation guidelines in December to say people can leave isolation five days after testing positive if their symptoms are gone or getting better, and to wear a well-fitted mask for 10 days, the agency also urged them to “avoid people who are immunocompromised or at high risk for severe disease,” for at least 10 days. But it can be hard to know when someone — a coworker, a friend or a passerby — is immunocompromised or high-risk, Moreno pointed out. It’s why many conditions are known as “invisible illnesses.”

“No one … has given me a giant foam hat with an arrow saying ‘immunocompromised’ on it,” said Matthew Cortland, who works on disability and health policy at Data for Progress, a left-leaning think tank. “The lengths we have to go to in order to mitigate, to some extent, the risk that society at large is just offloading onto us is absurd.”

Cortland permanently works from home. But many friends who are also chronically ill and disabled don’t have the same option. That’s why public health measures remain critical, Cortland said, including global vaccination campaigns, widespread availability and use of high-quality masks, research into more adaptive personal protective equipment, improvements to indoor air quality, better testing procedures and sufficient treatments. The US has increased its order for one of the key preventive therapies for the immunocompromised, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced last week. But even with that boost, the country will only have enough of that monoclonal antibody treatment for less than a quarter of its immunocompromised population. And while there are other Covid-19 therapeutics that can help people including the severely immunocompromised, they are still also in short supply in many parts of the US and won’t be more widely available until spring, the US Food and Drug Administration has said.

“There’s not enough for the millions of immunocompromised patients,” said Razonable. In his hospital, he said there is a “sufficient” supply to cover only “the highest risk group” of people.

Two years in, high-risk Americans are feeling traumatized and exhausted from the daily risk assessments and new hurdles that life in a Covid-era America comes with.

As Cortland puts it: “No one wants to actually be done with the pandemic more than disabled, chronically ill, and immunocompromised Americans. We just don’t have the luxury of pretending the pandemic is over when it isn’t. And it clearly is not.”

[ad_2]

Originally Appeared Here

Forty per cent of COVID-19 deaths in Ontario have taken place in long-term care homes. Chronic and in some cases devastating outbreaks have also been reported in shelters, detention centres and group homes for adults with disabilities. Residents and workers have died, and thousands more have been infected.

In these group facilities, termed “congregate settings” in Ontario, people eat together, and bedrooms and bathrooms are often shared. Because of this, they are very high-risk for acquiring airborne diseases.

It is imperative that congregate settings receive the best, most rigorous guidance available from Public Health Ontario (PHO). But that is not what is happening. A key aspect of infection prevention and control — indoor air quality — has been omitted from PHO’s public, written COVID-19 guidance specifically designed for these types of facilities.

Sub-standard guidance for congregate settings

Our team, which includes researchers with expertise in indoor air quality, engineering, epidemiology, public health and knowledge translation, conducted a detailed study of the public, written guidance PHO has produced specifically for institutions such as long-term care homes, shelters, group homes and correctional facilities. (The study is shared here as a pre-print, and has been submitted to a journal for peer review.)

We found no references to ventilation, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems, portable air filters, bathroom exhaust fans or even opening windows. This includes PHO’s COVID-19 checklists for long-term care homes and congregate settings, which target those who are responsible for facility health and safety.

While our formal study concluded at the end of October 2021, we’ve continued to explore guidance on PHO’s website. Even as outbreaks continue in facilities such as long-term care homes and shelters, nothing much has changed, almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic.

The precautionary principle

Crosses displayed outside a long-term care facility in Mississauga, Ont. marking the deaths residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

The 2003 SARS outbreak killed 44 people in Ontario. In his 2006 report for the SARS Commission, Judge Archie Campbell emphasized one central point: Ontario’s public health and health-care systems should respond to disease outbreaks using the precautionary principle.

The precautionary principle means erring on the side of caution. If you’re not sure a safety measure is necessary, take it anyway, especially if it could save lives. In particular, Campbell pleaded with decision-makers to apply the precautionary principle in the face of potential airborne transmission of a novel respiratory disease.

In 2008, PHO (then called the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion) was established, in part to ensure that Ontario would be prepared for future pandemics. PHO is mandated by provincial legislation to provide scientific and technical advice in the face of infectious disease outbreaks. It is also tasked with “evaluating the modes of transmission of febrile respiratory illnesses.”

In other words, PHO is responsible for figuring out how respiratory viruses spread, and helping the province address transmission. The legislation that created PHO also specifically tasks it with contributing “to efforts to reduce health inequities.”

Airborne transmission

Indoor air quality is a important factor in preventing airborne transmission of communicable diseases.
(Shutterstock)

Fast forward almost 15 years to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since mid-2020, physicians, scientists and engineers have been urging public health decision-makers to address airborne transmission of COVID-19. In July 2020, 239 scientists published a commentary in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, “advocating for the use of preventive measures to mitigate this route of airborne transmission.”

In November 2020, physicians and engineers wrote an open letter to PHO and the government of Ontario, urging them to, “update the province’s COVID-19 guidelines, regulations and public communication to reflect the importance of ventilation…”

Meanwhile, peer-reviewed evidence of airborne transmission piled up. Studies documented airborne transmission in restaurants, hospitals, hotels and churches and demonstrated that people release fine, virus-laden aerosols when they talk, sing, or simply breathe.

At the same time, scientists and engineers shared extensive information about measures with the potential to mitigate airborne transmission such as respirator-grade masks, ventilation, filtration, bathroom exhaust fans and upper-room ultraviolet disinfection.

Accountability and change

Measures with the potential to mitigate airborne transmission include respirator-grade masks, ventilation, filtration, bathroom exhaust fans and upper-room ultraviolet disinfection.
(Shutterstock)

As with responses to earlier health crises, there will likely be an inquiry into the way public health and health-care authorities in Ontario approached airborne transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its recommendations may be similar to those made by the SARS Commission 15 years ago.

The difference this time? First, the scale of death. Over 12,000 people have died in Ontario, many of whom live or work in the very same congregate settings getting incomplete infection prevention and control advice from PHO.

Second, the hope that another retroactive inquiry can generate meaningful change. While we don’t discourage an inquiry, as the evidence generated by the SARS Commission is invaluable, it will not ensure accountability.

Instead, it’s time to focus on broadcasting the right information far and wide. Luckily, there are many reliable sources of guidance, including the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers and the Clean Air Crew.

It’s also time to explore regulatory and legal mechanisms with the capacity to hold PHO accountable to its legislated mandate.

Finally, and while we attempt to mitigate the damage unfolding in real time, it’s time to seed the beginnings of a new system: one that embraces the precautionary principle, values the health and well-being of people living and working in congregate settings, and treats every single preventable death as a catastrophic failure.

This article was also co-authored by Amy Katz, a knowledge translation specialist working in the health-care system.

[ad_2]

Originally Appeared Here