Ethan Nadelmann, president of the Drug Policy Alliance, was recently invited to chat with the L.A. Times about the war on drugs. Nadelmann always presents an intelligent, nuanced approach to the concept of legalization - in fact, he does this so well that I often don't link to his appearances here because it starts to feel like "common sense" to me. Except, of course, that it isn't. For instance, I loved his critique of media coverage of meth use:

There's an inherent bias about the way you cover some of this stuff. If a reporter is told to do a story on methamphetamine, and he says, "Do me a story on methamphetamine use in America," and he goes out, where's he going to go? Where are you going to find methamphetamine users easily? Jails. Treatment programs … You're going to look specifically at places where people who have a problem with methamphetamine are found. The people who are using methamphetamine without getting caught up in it or controlling their use or starting and stopping and what-have-you – they're not showing up in those two places. They also don't want to talk to you.

So what we don't know is among the world of methamphetamine users, what percent are the problem ones you find in the treatment programs and the jails, and what percent is the rest. Eventually what happens is after the craze passes – the media craze passes in a way – ethnographic studies appear five or 10 years later pointing out that the majority of people who have smoked crack did not have a problem with it, the majority of people who used heroin were in fact chippers, people who never became addicted, et cetera, et cetera. But that gets lost in the initial craziness.

It makes total sense, but it's definitely not common sense, not yet.

Music For Maniacs ("The Web's longest-running strange-music blog!") just posted its tribute to Albert Hofmann: a small collection of curios such as an old school lounge version of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," excerpts from bizarre educational filmstrips, comedy on the topic from Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, "and more!" I haven't screened these yet, but in the interest of timeliness, I'm passing along the link, yo.

Here's an interesting tidbit: some paramedics in Auckland are now using ketamine in the field to treat severe injury instead of using morphine:

Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust medical director Dr John Orton said ketamine superseded morphine in many situations.

"Certain pains are fairly easily manageable with morphine-type drugs, but the excruciating acute pain of acute injury is extremely hard to get on top of with morphine.

"We're talking about 10-tonne tractors rolled on top of people ... or typical quad bike idiots ... they flip it and they've got two broken legs below the knee pointing at right angles but otherwise they're uninjured.

"You've got to straighten these limbs out and splint them. If you try to do that without this sort of agent, it's horrible -- you cause excruciating discomfort. So to be able to do this in the field is a major bonus."

That's right, "quad bike idiots," ketamine could someday be coming to your rescue. The whole article popped up under the headline "Date rape drug used as painkiller," but I suspect this is because most copy editors are instructed to replace the first appearance of "ketamine" and "GHB" in an article with "date rape drug" - heck, it's probably built into the software they use to send the paper off to the presses.

Recent research confirms the notion that overuse of certain painkillers used to treat migraines may actual induce additional migraines:

Overuse of opiate and barbiturate painkillers may make migraine more likely to become a frequent event, researchers affirmed.

Both commonly used drug classes doubled risk that episodic migraine would increase to chronic migraine with a frequency of 15 days a month or more, Marcelo E. Bigal, M.D., Ph.D., of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., and colleagues found in a population-based study.

But triptans, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and other over-the-counter medications did not increase the risk, they reported here at the American Academy of Neurology meeting.

Their findings suggest use of opiates and barbiturates should be monitored and support clinical experience "that medication overuse induces migraine transformation and that detoxification improves outcomes," Dr. Bigal said.

So the whole pot movement is catching onto the smoking herb in herds as a show of solidarity or social tolerance or something like that? Anyway, imagine all the fun of a jam-band festival combined with the glowing pride of being high and politically active at the same time. Yeah, it's that glorious:

Queen's Park may have been soggy from yesterday's rain, but sparks were flying as thousands spent the day smoking pot just north of the Legislature.

It was part of the Toronto Freedom Festival and the 10th Global Marijuana March, with the intent of pushing to legalize marijuana.

"Hey, this is what Woodstock must have been like," said one youth as he walked by smoking a joint the size of a small cigar. "But I bet you the music won't be as good."

Bongs and pipes of all sizes and large bags of marijuana were carried around openly as police presence was limited and kept to the periphery.

Paul Wemple, 17, of Toronto, said he's been at the festival a few times and loves it.

"You can smell it before you can see it," he said. "It's that wonderful sickly sweet aroma that we all seem to love."

These herb-fests and smoke-outs are becoming more and more popular, or so I hear, with the cops rarely interfering unless the anarchists show up and start breaking stuff. Seems like maybe a small step in the direction towards de facto decriminalization. It's the "whaddaya gonna do about it?" method of social justice.

How do you make a human soldier more lethal? Give him some speed, designer meds, and steroids, and then let him loose with millions of dollars of killing hardware! An interesting article making the rounds this week:

Amphetamines and the military first met somewhere in the fog of WWII, when axis and allied forces alike were issued speed tablets to head off fatigue on the battlefield.

More than 60 years later, the U.S. Air Force still doles out dextro-amphetamine to pilots whose duties do not afford them the luxury of sleep.

Through it all, it seems, the human body and its fleshy weaknesses keep getting in the way of warfare. Just as in the health clinics of the nation, the first waypoint in the military effort to redress these foibles is a pharmaceutical one. The catch is, we're really not that great at it. In the case of speed, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency itself notes a few unwanted snags like addiction, anxiety, aggression, paranoia and hallucinations. For side-effects like insomnia, the Air Force issues "no-go" pills like temazepam alongside its "go" pills. Psychosis, though, is a wee bit trickier.

In recent years, the U.S., the UK and France - among others - have reportedly been funding investigations into a new line-up of military performance enhancers. The bulk of these drugs are already familiar to us from the lists of substances banned by international sporting bodies, including the stimulant ephedrine, non-stimulant "wakefulness promoting agents" like modafinil (aka Provigil) and erythropoietin, used to improve endurance by boosting the production of red blood cells.

Smokeless cigs anyone? Progress or bad idea?

Benicia residents Susan Bowles and Annette Saitz say a newly developed, healthier cigarette alternative will change lives, and make a lot of money in the process.

The Revelle electronic nicotine delivery system looks like a cigarette, but contains no tar, tobacco or carcinogens. It's a battery-operated device with a red-glowing tip, from which smokers draw in synthetic nicotine and exhale steam. There's no tobacco smell, no second-hand smoke.

"The filters, which contain the nicotine, come in levels from high to none," said Bowles, a 43-year-old mother of two. "So it can also be used to help people quit smoking."

The Onion rounds up some of its fictional readers for comments on Albert Hofmann's death.

ALTOONA, PA. — Police say a straight-A business student at Penn State-Altoona told them he has been selling cocaine to finance his college education... Police say [he] told them he sold drugs because his mother's poor credit rating kept him from getting student loans.

Oh the things people will do for a college education...

KALI & AVALOKITESHVARA

And thus begins my short series of a few all-vinyl live mixes that I produced back in the short time that I spun vinyl.

Mixed live by Waldemar (as DJ Lp3)

Download Now

6.11.01

Dedicated to Robin, Kiersty & Bongo Shermerhorn (Memphis, TN)

1. God Jam Hot
2. A Guy Called Gerald - 'Humanity'
3. Silent Poets - 'Talk Is Toy' (More Rockers remix)
4. Statik Sound System - 'Revolutionary Pilot' (Rob Smith mix)
5. Medium - 'Celsius' (rebuilt by Autechre)
6. Woodenspoon (Mark Clifford) - 'Dig Deep Bin'
7. Squarepusher - 'Male Pill 5'
8. The Golden Palominos - No Skin - 'Aural Circumcision'
(remix by Terre Thaemlitz)
9. Gescom - 'Go Sheep'
10. Mu-Ziq - 'Mu-Ziq Theme'
11. The Thunderground - 'Illegal Rush'
12. Bandulu - 'Phaze In-Version'
13. The Golden Palominos - No Skin - 'Tempting Fate'
(Bandulu remix)
14. Slowely - 'Rites Of Spring' (Tribal Drift mix)
15. John Hassell / Brian Eno - "Rising Thermal 14 16' N; 32 28' E"