CNN just published a large article on a teen from Cypress, Texas, who overdosed on KLIMAX potpourri, a form of synthetic cannabinoid purchased from a gas station. Synthetic marijuana has been sold as K2 or Spice, and usually contains cannabicyclohexanol, JWH-018, JWH-073, or HU-210, but could also be one of about a dozen lesser known analogues of JWH, or something else entirely. It is common for mainstream news to run stories like this before identifying the chemical responsible. If anyone knows what is actually in Klimax potpourri, let us know.

According to CNN, the girl who smoked Klimax potpourri suffered a near stroke due to vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels. According to the doctor that treated the girl, the vessels going into her brain were constricting, limiting blood and oxygen flow. The symptoms started as migraine and delirium then lead to an intense psychotic state, hallucinations, slurred speech, and violent outbursts. She was rushed to the hospital, treated and eventually lived, but here is the meat of the story:

The pressure on Emily's brain skyrocketed... Doctors asked to drill a hole in Emily's skull and insert a tube to relieve pressure and drain excess fluid. The family signed off on an emergency surgery.

The doctors operated, but not before the intense pressure in the skull turned Emily into a near vegetable. She was in the hospital for weeks and is still recovering and slowly regaining brain function and body control.

There are a few sites selling Klimax potpourri online. This story should put some heat on the brand to disappear. What name will it be next month?

Martha Mendoza of Huffington Post provides a brief laundry list of US drug war military action taking place in Latin America.

In the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War, the U.S. has militarized the battle against the traffickers, spending more than $20 billion in the past decade. U.S. Army troops, Air Force pilots and Navy ships outfitted with Coast Guard counternarcotics teams are routinely deployed to chase, track and capture drug smugglers...

At any given moment, 4,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Latin America and as many as four U.S. Navy ships are plying the Caribbean and Pacific coastlines of Central America. U.S. pilots clocked more than 46,400 hours in 2011 flying anti-drug missions, and U.S. agents from at least 10 law enforcement agencies spread across the continent.

The U.S. trains thousands of Latin American troops, and employs its multibillion dollar radar equipment to gather intelligence to intercept traffickers and arrest cartel members.

Billions of dollars spent on radar, jets, helicopters, ships, submarines, pirates, smugglers, big guns, and all kinds of military toys just to keep people from getting psychoactive powders from someplace other than your local pharmacy. This is not a sustainable business model.

In a broader New York Times article examining police perjury across a range of criminal cases, we find this nugget specifically about narcotics officers:

Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm: "Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America."

The New York City Police Department is not exempt from this critique. In 2011, hundreds of drug cases were dismissed after several police officers were accused of mishandling evidence. That year, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn condemned a widespread culture of lying and corruption in the department's drug enforcement units. "I thought I was not naive," he said when announcing a guilty verdict involving a police detective who had planted crack cocaine on a pair of suspects. "But even this court was shocked, not only by the seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed."

Everybody knows about Silk Road, it's not a secret. But since the secret has been out it has remained up and running, creating a global marketplace of illicit drugs sold over the internet though anonymous encrypted channels. Silk Road is secure, but it is not bulletproof. Witness the stupidity.

The trouble is brewing in Australia, where a guy named Paul Leslie Howard is facing as many as five years in prison for selling drugs on Silk Road. We're not talking millions of dollars worth of drugs, but we are talking about thousands of dollars worth. And just as Silk Road natives had feared, Howard was one of those Silk Road n00bs who read a newspaper article about the site and decided to try it out for himself.

Despite the many layers of anonymity and firewalls involved in the Silk Road experience -- encrypted transfers of the anonymous currency Bitcoin, for instance -- Howard got caught last summer from the simplest mistake. He had a shitload of drugs sent to his house. Though it's unclear what tipped them off -- drug dogs? snitches? some sophisticated cyber crime task force? -- police intercepted a number of packages bound for Howard's home, opened them up, and ended up finding a total of 46.9 grams of pure MDMA and 14.5 grams of cocaine.

Oops. Don't be that guy. The DEA and law enforcement agencies are well onto the Silk Road trail, and are tracking suspected orders to find hits like this bust in Australia. Is this the beginning of the end? Read all about the evolution of this story at Vice Motherboard.

It is mentioned in music lyrics and it just may KILL your children. It may be MDMA, but it has a different name and high-school kids are talking about it on Facebook, so we're scared...

In North Texas and across the country there is a dangerous designer drug. It's not really new, but it's gaining popularity and is being laced through the lyrics of hip-hop music.

When Jay-Z and other rappers reference Molly in their music they mean more than the girl next door.

"It's a very dangerous drug that I'm afraid people can die of and have died in the past," said Dr. Stephen Garrison from Caron Treatment Centers.

The street name for the drug is Molly. It has a long chemical name that's usually shortened to MDMA. Sometimes it's snorted or taken in capsule form. Other times the powder is wrapped in tissue and swallowed.

Gawker has a snarky article detailing how "Dallas Police Very Close to Figuring Out What ‘Molly’ Is". Heh. It's just E. And they forgot to mention that it releases oxytocin too, which is the best part.

File under: Do your kids know more about drugs than you do?

Federal agents are sure young people know about these drug use web sites like this here. They want parents to check them out so they use the information to arm themselves to protect their children.

Type in the words drug use and experience on Google and one of the first web sites to pop up is Erowid.

It gives people information: on how to use drugs and reactions to different illegal substances, for example is it better to snort Ecstasy or use it orally. Needless to say the drug experience web sites are upsetting to parents.

Folks at the D.E.A. want parents concerned about their kids to check out these web sites.

And maybe you might learn something...

[Thanks Jake!]

Out of curiosity, Ozzy Osbourne submits himself to genetic testing, and the results are perhaps not surprising:

The musician has several gene variants that "we've never seen before," said geneticist Nathaniel Pearson, who sequenced the rocker's genome, including variants that could impact how Osbourne's body absorbs methamphetamines and other recreational drugs....

"He had a change on the regulatory region of the ADH4 gene, a gene associated with alcoholism, that we've never seen before," Conde told ABCnews.com. "He has an increased predisposition for alcohol dependence of something like six times higher. He also had a slight increased risk for cocaine addiction, but he dismissed that. He said that if anyone has done as much cocaine he had, they would have been hooked."

The Prince of Darkness also a 2.6-times increased chance for hallucinations associated with marijuana, though Osbourne said he wouldn't know if that were true because he so rarely smoked marijuana without other drugs also in his system.

In other news, sky is blue, grass is green, etc.

Krystle Cole from Neurosoup sits in for a fun discussion on entheogens, spirituality, religion, and psychedelic culture. Topics include Lysergic, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, research chemicals, legal and safety issues, Neurosoup haters, cultural views of psychedelics, Unitarians, and the possibility of incorporating entheogens into organized religion.

Be sure to check out Neurosoup.com and Krystle Cole on Amazon.com.

Ninja Tune artist Bonobo is back, with a soon-to-be-released new album The North Borders coming out on April 1. To celebrate, he's released a mind-bendingly gorgeous video for the first single, entitled "Cirrus." Can't wait for this one!

Also - hello, people of DoseNation!

In an interview at the Sundance Film Festival, Michael Cera described how the cast of "Crystal Fairy" boiled a cactus and drank the brew to research a mescaline trip for the film, but nothing happened.

"We cooked the cactus for the movie and drank it, but it didn't work," Cera said in an interview Friday alongside "Crystal Fairy" writer-director Sebastian Silva. "We had this plan to do it and not film because that was going to be overwhelming for everyone. We ended up drinking it and shooting that day, and everyone was fine and nobody felt anything.

"Maybe it was because we were working or something. We were all in work mode... Maybe we got the wrong cactus. Is that possible?"

"Crystal Fairy" is about a road trip through the Chilean desert in search of the San Pedro cactus, which you can find just about anywhere these days, and doesn't really have much mescaline in it unless it is older and you take the time to extract it correctly. And you should probably not take mescaline at work.

But what did Cera learn from his experience with San Pedro?

"It's a very kind of acrid, earthy, terrible taste," Cera said... "It shouldn't be eaten. Nature didn't want you to eat it."

[Thanks Scotto!]