There's a very large article in the Boston Phoenix today about the history and future of psychedelic research at Harvard U., retracing the steps of Tim Leary and highlighting the current work by John Halpern. No mind-blowing revelations to be found, but the depth of this article shows that psychedelic research is indeed slipping back into the mainstream.

Summer festival season has officially started, and here in the Northwest we have the Sasquatch festival which draws music fans, heads, and undercover cops.

More than 13 pounds of chocolate laced with psychedelic mushrooms were seized in a camp site raid near the Gorge Amphitheatre that led to five arrests during the Sasquatch! Music Festival.

The Grant County Sheriff's Office says also seized on Sunday were about 1.2 pounds of marijuana, about 3.7 pounds of psychedelic mushrooms, more than 25 grams of hash oil and four grams of methamphetamine.

The sheriff's office says an undercover detective bought drugs from the suspects. In the raid at the Gorge campground...

This bust marks the first in what could be a string of high-profile take-downs this summer. Please be careful out there people, don't give your shroom-laced candy to strangers.

I gotta hand it to 'em, they've definitely got style. Look at how happy that kid is! EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL.

The boy looked to be about 12 or 13 years old. Chubby, he struggled a bit with his bicycle as he rode to where we stood. He had a slight smirk as he played a tape that blared music from speakers tied to his bike.

The tune was an ode to Edgar Guzman, the son of a local drug kingpin who was killed by a rival drug gang in a shootout May 10.

It was a message from the cartel to the cops, said Gen. Jose Antonio Guzman, the Mexican police commander heading up a raid on a house this day.

The drug lords had sent the boy to let everyone know they were watching.

According to this article, there's a link between risky teen behavior and the use of energy drinks.

The risky behavior includes aggressive behaviors, substance abuse, and unprotected sex.

Yeah. Like, wow.

Couldn't resist the name. The video is nicely animated swirly colors and faces. Too bad it is so compressed. I blame the internet.

Marketing energy drinks with a real-drug theme, whether implicitly ("Party like a" Rockstar, Go Fast) or very explicitly (Cocaine, featuring "Help pay your way through school with Cocaine" on the web site) is so obviously good business sense that the occasional ensuing controversy is a perfect satire of our culture's schizophrenia about drugs and capitalism.

I was reminded of this because somehow I only just discovered NOS energy drink, even though it's been around for a few years. NOS, of course, stands for Nitrous Oxide Systems, the company (actually, a division of Holley Performance Products, for what it's worth) that came up with the also-brilliant business model of using the automotive performance-enhancing properties of nitrous oxide as an excuse to sell it in bulk to anyone who wants it. The NOS blue cylinder is practically synonymous (if images can be synonyms with drug experiences) with waaaahhh-waaaahhh-waaaahhh for many of us, but there's no word on whether the namesake energy drink is actually designed to provide that particular disorienting, dissociating, asphyxiating high.

I'm thinking it's probably just caffeine.

Now what I really want to see is an energy drink called 2TC-special-G. Anyone know anyone who works at a beverage company? I think this could really be a hit!

Articles like Discover's "Could an Acid Trip Cure Your OCD?" are becoming more common.

Charles Grob is more hopeful. “Sure, it’s been Sisyphean because of the cultural stigmas, and it has taken years to go even little baby steps,” he says. “But people are making dramatic progress working with the hardest cases. We’re on the threshold of opening up an exciting new field.”

"No Officer, I swear, these aren't my drugs..."

Cannabis blunder at Tokyo airport
The cannabis was hidden to test Narita airport's sniffer dogs

An unwitting passenger arriving at Japan's Narita airport has received 142g of cannabis after a customs test went awry, officials say.

A customs officer hid a package of the banned substance in a side pocket of a randomly chosen suitcase in order to test airport security.

Sniffer dogs failed to detect the cannabis and the officer could not remember which bag he had put it in.

Anyone finding the package has been asked to contact customs officials.

"This case was extremely regrettable. I would like to deeply apologise," said Narita International Airport's customs head Manpei Tanaka.

Strict laws

The customs officer conducted the test on a passenger's bag against regulations. Normally a training suitcase is used.

"I knew that using passengers' bags is prohibited, but I did it because I wanted to improve the sniffer dog's ability," the officer was quoted as saying.

"The dogs have always been able to find it before... I became overconfident that it would work," he said.

Japan has strict laws against drugs and possession of small amounts of cannabis can lead to a prison sentence.

Michael Pollan, famous for propelling the post-organic foodie revolution via his books _The Omnivores Dilemma_, _The Botany of Desire_, and _In Defense of Food_, delivers this lecture at UC Berkeley. It's about how cannabis has evolved with the aid of humans to better suit us, based on his chapter on cannabis from _Botany of Desire_.

via Metafilter via SeriousEats