This in from the Cato blog:

This just in… A federal court in Argentina has decriminalized the personal consumption of drugs in that country. According to the court’s ruling, punishing drug users only “creates an avalanche of cases targeting consumers without climbing up in the ladder of [drug] trafficking.”

Last month at a UN meeting in Vienna, Argentina’s Minister of Justice, Aníbal Fernández, said that the policy of punishing drug consumers was a “total failure.”

Finally one piece of good news from Argentina.

Do I smell an international trend brewing? Probably not.

Unbelievably obvious from a marketing point of view: spring water with caffeine, nothing else. Equivalent to a can of soda or a cup of coffee. Available in the Midwest and Southeast US, but probably not a lot of other areas, although I'm surprised it's not more popular!
I haven't tasted it yet but supposedly it just tastes like water, the caffeine is subtle. I just heard about this from the guy sitting behind me in my statistics class, and I'm posting this from class... :)

Faltering British efforts to tackle Afghanistan's poppy crop have found an unlikely ally – in the weather.

Freak weather linked to global warming is expected to reduce parts of the country's opium harvest drastically. Scientists believe freezing winter temperatures followed by late rains and a possible drought may cut this year's yields, with some farmers losing half of their crop.

I was at a seminar a few weeks ago and someone sitting next to me was reading a 1999 article in Biological Psychiatry titled "Yohimbine Use in a Natural Setting: Effects on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder". He saw me reading over his shoulder and gave me an extra copy he just happened to have. It consists of four case reports and a brief discussion. Here's part of one report:

Six years after Vietnam, RC again tried yohimbine expecting to recreate his earlier pleasant experience with the drug. Four friends, one a combat veteran, joined him. RC's three non-veteran friends reported an energized and sensual feeling. RC and his combat veteran friend both experienced a panic attack and flashback. "I felt like I was going crazy. I was sweating and shaking and my heart seemed like it was pounding outside of my chest. It seemed like I was losing my mind. At first I thought we had been poisoned, but I could see that three of my friends were fine. The whole thing was terrifying and seemed like it lasted for a long time. I kept thinking that my combat buddy was wounded. I kept thinking that I was a medic and that I had to save him. He was having a terrible time too."

It's fairly widely accepted at this point that the noradrenergic system plays a crucial role in PTSD. Some recent research (which I'm too lazy to look up right now) suggested that administering adrenergic antagonists immediately after traumatic experiences could prevent the development of PTSD. Yohimbine is, perhaps among other things, a strong agonist and so it makes sense that it could have this effect.

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should get careful cardiac evaluation and monitoring – including an electrocardiogram (ECG) – before treatment with stimulant drugs, a new American Heart Association statement recommends.

We can only hope that these recommendations are adopted by the FDA and that the manufacturers are compelled to add "black box" warnings regarding the risk of sudden death when using these medications; that, combined with the tests themselves, should do much to reduce the perception that the use of these medications is risk-free, and prompt more serious consideration on the part of children and parents regarding their use.

The statement writing committee said its recommendations are not intended to limit the appropriate use of stimulants in children with ADHD.

I cannot help thinking that this statement is a none-too-subtle acknowledgement by the AHA that the vast majority of this prescribing is in fact far from appropriate; we can expect the pharmaceutical giants to fight these proposals tooth-and-nail, precisely because the widespread use of these medications depends on the public perceiving them as 'safe.' Won't SOMEONE think of the children?

GAIAN MIND

January, 2008

Dedicated to Robin Schermerhorn, Memphis, TN

Earthy, indiginous, tribal, organic, natural, organismic, psychedelic, ethnic, entheogenic...

Before there was psy trance, there was music like this. Though most of these tunes are from the early-to-mid 90s, you can most certainly hear the kinship with psychedelic trance within.
Enjoy... :-)

320kbps:

Download Now

1. Future Sound of London - 'Lifeforms (path 5)'
2. Future Sound of London - 'Lifeforms (path 2)'
3. Evolve Now - 'Extract'
4. Qubism - 'Repurcussions'
5. Qubism - 'Teotihuacan'
6. Stevie Be Zet - 'The Closed Eye View'
7. Eat Static - 'Gulf Breeze'
8. Freaky Chakra - 'Halucifuge (Blind Dive)'
9. Banco De Gaia - 'Kuos'
10. Young American Primitive - 'Monolith Part 2'
11. Amorphous Androgynous - 'Liquid Insects'
12. Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia - 'Obsidian' (Deconstructure edit)
13. Orbital - 'Semi-Detached'
14. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook - 'Sweet Pain' (Joi remix)
15. Banco De Gaia - 'Harvey & The Old Ones' (single mix)
Bill Hicks - 'Psilocybin Revelation'

Sure to get the drug warriors' panties in a bunch, Edible is offering Salvia lollipops. How long do you think before someone screams that this is drug pushers marketing to children?

Here's a quick news item from Tom Angell, Government Relations Director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy:

Yesterday Rep. Henry Waxman's House oversight committee released records showing the Pentagon has been allowing more people with drug and other convictions to join the military to make up for recruitment shortfalls.

At the same time, the Bush administration and some in Congress support a policy that automatically strips college financial aid from students with drug convictions (including marijuana possession).

Why do these politicians think that young people with drug convictions aren't college material but are perfectly fit to go fight Bush's war in Iraq?

Our student group has put together a 2 1/2 minute video that exposes this "Drug War Draft."

I was forwarded an article from the NY Times on language and perception, and how language shapes the way we think about things. Although this debate is all but dead in modern thinking, this article does a good job explaining how language, naming, and the classifying of objects into name-labeled categories (as opposed to attribute-driven categories) creates inherent biases and preferences in the way we perceive things.

Seems sort of obvious now, but really, this is a big deal. What this article does not talk about (much) is the actual physical nature of speech and internal language and how it connects to thought. The way we can connect words in our head and send them to our mouths, memory, or fingertips is a very fine trick made possible by the storage of letters and phonemes (mouth-shape sounds) as shaped-based neural arrays. Say "pull" in you head and you can actually feel the roundness of the "p" and the slow hanging ledge of the "l" at the end. These are physical neural events, events which stall or misfire in the case of stuttering or that inability to recall a certain word.