Caught an interesting blog post today from someone who found they were losing interest with reality until they discovered some interesting "chemical experiments"

These days my chemical experiments rely on two compounds and all of the rest have been eliminated from my practices. Those compounds are Ketamine and Ayahuasca. I can say with a great deal of confidence that these compounds prove to be remarkably efficacious in my efforts toward a better understanding of myself and the world in which I temporarily reside.

Under no circumstances do I recommend these things to anyone else. None of us are the same person, even if we do share the same underlying self. I find that I have shamanistic tendencies, tantric tendencies, personal propensities that are part and parcel of the person that I am. I am comfortable with my decision to engage in certain practices and I am confident that when my work is done with these compounds that there will be no new ones to replace them, unless some mysterious stranger places the universal medicine in my hands.

Each person’s journey is unique. I believe it is what we pursue that determines the good and bad in the things that we do. There is an old phrase; I cannot remember its origin. That phrase is, “He who loves much is forgiven much.” I’ve found that to be true.

There seems to be something shady going on with the law enforcement in Prince Georges county. Either that or the mayor is involved in some sort of drug trafficking. The latter being highly unlikely.

Members of a Prince George's County Sheriff's Office SWAT team shot the dogs Tuesday while bursting into the home of Mayor Cheye Calvo. The raid, conducted jointly with county police narcotics officers, took place after officers saw Calvo bring a package containing more than 30 pounds of marijuana from his front porch into his house. They had been tracking the package since police dogs sniffed out the presence of drugs at a shipping facility in Arizona.

The package was addressed to Trinity Tomsic, Calvo's wife. But law enforcement sources said last week that they are now investigating the possibility that the mayor and his wife were unwitting recipients and that a deliveryman might have intended to intercept the package as part of a drug smuggling scheme.

Of course, when the Mayor's two dogs (neighborhood sweethearts, as far as anyone can tell) tried to warn the police of their mistake and told them to back off, the police shot both dogs dead.

Our good friend Sheldon Drake shared his latest image with us. Organic, weird, oozy? He says he's going to animate it, egads! I already see too much twisted stuff in there, and I'm stone sober.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CNN) -- President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner repeated her call this week to decriminalize personal drug use and crack down on traffickers and dealers.

"I don't like it when people easily condemn someone who has an addiction as if he were a criminal, as if he were a person who should be persecuted," she told a meeting of the National Investigation into the Consumption of Alcohol, Tobacco, Psychopharmaceuticals and Illegal Drugs.

"Decriminalization of the consumer should include what are called second-generation human rights, but at the same time there should be a strong policy of prevention, so that no one falls in the situation of consuming any substance," said Anibal Fernandez, the minister of security and justice.

Scott Burns, drug czar of America, has done the fair people of Arcata the pleasure of granting them a visit. As usual, Mr. Burns is in fine form, and even takes time out for an interview with the Arcata Eye... In which he proceeds to insult and criminilize the entire county:

Eye: Is it realistic to keep marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, in with cocaine and heroin?

Burns: Yes it is, and I’ll tell you why. … You can’t talk to a counselor in this country, Republican or a Democrat or an independent or a Marxist, and they will tell you, political beliefs aside, everyone that is addicted to drugs in this United States, started with either alcohol and/or marijuana, and they started when they were 13, 12 or 11. That doesn’t mean everyone that used those substances goes on to be a heroin addict, but you don’t have to have an IQ over 120 to figure out that if you can keep young people off marijuana, you can keep them from being addicted for life.

The last thing I’ll say is, we were talking about Nora Volkov, the head of NIDA, National Institute of Drug Abuse, who before said there is no correlation between smoking pot and rewiring and damaging the developing brain of young people, who now will tell you unequivocally that there is. Because of the higher potency, it is the same as cocaine and methamphetamine and heroin. They see it from the MRIs, the PET scans. They also are seeing psychosis and other mental problems from young people smoking this higher potency, which frankly should be called marijuana 2.0, drug. So yeah, it should remain a schedule 1.

Yep, you heard it here first - weed: it's the same as meth and crack.

I think the title speaks for itself. Check out the article from Cracked. Seems like it should be satire, but it's not.

Thanks Gene!

I recently gave an interview on Salvia divinorum with a focus on its current legal situation. In the event the report is negatively skewed, I posted my notes to my blog and would like to share them here for your review to be certain my version is available. I welcome your feedback.

I did my interview today and am pretty pleased with how it went. At first it seemed the interviewer's primary interest was my perspective as the proprietor of Gaian Botanicals. I tried not to focus too much on that and steered the focus more on the plant and the issues around it.

I asked the journalist if he had tried Salvia divinorum? Unfortunately he replied with a no. I recommended that any professional investigator preparing a national story on an ineffable experience should at least invest 15 minutes and try the herb already. It's like someone reporting on a religion and the person being interviewed said, "Do you want to meet god?" And the interviewer says, "No." Why wouldn't you? It’s safe and legal. I don't believe anyone could possibly comprehend the Salvia experience without direct experience with it. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. That’s his personal and private choice, but I hope he does.

He had all the scientific literature so there was really no point in repeating what he already knew.

I made it clear the Salvia divinorum is NOT like any other psychedelic.

This includes Marijuana, LSD, Magic Mushrooms or any other of the known psychedelics. This analogy is all too commonly used by the media and is more inaccurate then claiming all food tastes the same and has the same nutritional properties or that all medicine is the same. These analogies are absurd.

I continued with the question, why make Salvia divinorum illegal? It is likely that globally at least a million of people have tried it in some form. No one has died, became ill, addicted, mentally deranged or suffered any other from of disability due to Salvia. This is even with production of extracts and cultivation being somewhat underground. Not regulated like what's offered at your corner store and still no ill effects with Salvia; the stuff sold by pharmacy is probably more toxic.

The government technically does not have the authority to declare something Schedule 1 unless it’s a hazard to public safety, is proven to be addictive, and has NO medical use. Salvia divinorum is not a threat, it is not addictive and has demonstrated significant potential medical use in the treatment of depression and addiction, among other possibilities. The medical field will not be able to adequately determine what the best use for this plant is until they have had an opportunity to do a thorough investigation.

While this is certainly not my favorite type of story to report on, there is an interesting development in a rape/murder trial where the defendant says he cannot remember anything about the night of the attack because he was way too high on alcohol and ketamine. This may all be bunk to avoid a death sentence, but it does bring up an interesting legal point. Here's some of the deliberation from an recent news article:

Court heard Huppie had several drinks, plus an unknown quantity of marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine the night the woman was attacked.

Dryden said it would be possible under the effects of a low dose of ketamine to perform complex physical functions, carry on basic conversation, but not have a memory of it, because the drug shuts down the memory processing centre of the brain.

“This is not true amnesia, forgetfulness of events, but rather a failure of memory to form, and is consistent with the lack of memory claimed by Mr. Huppie over the events of the latter part of the evening and night in question,” he said.

A “recreational dose” of ketamine is about 200 mg. Huppie has testified he and three others shared two grams of ketamine. Higher doses of ketamine, such as into the 750 mg range, would have put Huppie into a coma.

“It’s used as an anaesthetic,” he said. “They feel no pain, they retain a degree of consciousness.”

Under cross-examination, Dryden said if Huppie was peaking on ketamine, he would have been physically numb – a point the Crown cross-examined him on given the evidence he had forced sex with the victim.

“Touch is one of the first senses to go,” he said of a ketamine trip.

He added if someone is having intercourse and realizing they have had it, the effects of ketamine are likely gone or wearing off.

Now I'm not a fancy big city lawyer, but I do know a thing or two about Ketamine and sex. It is possible, you just don't feel it. Also, rational inhibition is wiped out, so things tend to get a little primal. If the defendant did take a large dose of K I believe he may have no memory of the event, but the same can be said with high doses of alcohol or low doses of ether where the rational forebrain is knocked out while the primal body keeps looking for action. This brings up an interesting legal point when trying to assess motivation for crimes committed in this state. I'm not saying drug blackouts excuse horrible acts like rape and murder, but it does demonstrate the horror and senselessness of self-induced psychotic episodes gone bad. If you leave your body, who's in charge?

An interesting story forwarded to us by reader Gene:

President Bush's drug warriors must really, really want to protect their ability to throw non-violent marijuana users in jail.

The White House sent at least three party crashers to a press conference Wednesday with Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), who has introduced a pot-decriminalization bill.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy's "chief scientist" and two aides who were dispatched to provide instant rebuttal to Frank and the bill's cosponsors, all of whom acknowledged that marijuana was likely to remain very much illegal in the foreseeable future.

Given the bill's essentially non-existent chances of passage, ONDCP's Dr. David Murray's impassioned arguments that seemed more appropriate in Reefer Madness were greeted with plenty of puzzled glances.

Why did the White House feel it necessary to send at least three staffers to Capitol Hill to place in every reporter's hand a copy of its 20-page, color-copied "2008 Marijuana Sourcebook?" RAW STORY posed this question to Murray.

"It is our responsibility to be aware of policy developments," said Murray, who clarified that he had a PhD and was not a medical doctor. He explained that Frank's attempt to modify the controlled substances act was very much of interest to the Bush administration's pot prohibitionists.

Oil that propaganda machine boys, the wheels are coming off...

Finally!

Scientists are moving closer to developing a pill which could deliver some of the benefits of exercise - even for those who do not move a muscle.

The journal Cell reports US researchers now have two possible pills which appear able to build muscle, increase stamina and even burn fat.

In tests, mice were able to run 44% further - suggesting humans may be able to do the same without prior training.