The Vancouver Sun reports, with no small amount of indignation, on a plea bargain that Marc Emery, the "Prince of Pot," has accepted in order to keep two of his associates out of jail, and keep himself from being extradited to the U.S. He'll be in a Canadian prison for five years, as opposed to the 20 year sentence he could have faced in America. As the Sun points out:

Whatever else you may think of Emery -- and he grates on many people, what is happening here is a travesty of justice. Emery's case mocks our independence as a country.

Prosecutors in Canada have not enforced the law against selling pot seeds and all you need do is walk along Hastings Street between Homer and Cambie for proof. There are numerous stores selling seeds and products for producing cannabis. Around the corner, you'll find more seed stores. You'll find the same shops in Toronto and in other major Canadian cities....

Canadian police grew so frustrated that neither prosecutors nor the courts would lock up Emery and throw away the key, they urged their U.S. counterparts to do the dirty work. And that's what's wrong. Emery is being handed over to a foreign government for an activity we are loath to prosecute because we don't think it's a major problem.

Via Entheogenic Reformation.

A drug which we associate with a quite different context was actually available and marketed. Here's a 1959 advertisement for Thorazine.

I don't typically blog pop music stuff, but I have to admit that I am addicted to top-forty dance music, particularly obscure filtered remixes of other bland top-forty hits. In Seattle we have a local radio station called C89.5 that plays all the bubble-gum hits, and they also stream online commercial-free 24 hours a day. They have a very small song rotation and many of their tracks bug me, but there are others I just can't get out of my head.

Recently I have been getting into Fedde Le Grand, the Dutch answer to Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, a super-producer with the pop-house golden touch. Since I like his current hits I will post them and one other Hall and Oates remix from Uniting Nations, which is old but is still germane for the presence of fresh remixes of tired songs and plenty of scantily-clad hotties, a theme which runs throughout. May not be suitable for work viewing. Enjoy!

Ida Corr vs Fedde Le Grand - Let Me Think About It (Extended)

Camille Jones Vs Fedde Le Grand - The Creeps

Uniting Nations - Out of Touch

Here's a quirky little short story about what might happen when we can control our own dopamine and serotonin levels by way of brain implants. It's a concise little tour of one possible outcome, in which consciousness takes an unexpected evolutionary turn:

“All eight implants also regulate baseline or so called ‘tonic’ electrical activity in their target cells. For dopamine we call this program Focus. People perform best when their dopamine concentrations are at an optimum level for the task at hand and most of us experience daily problems maintaining sufficient dopamine levels; maintaining concentration. Focus works similarly to the stimulants children are prescribed for ADHD, but it’s cleaner and more flexible and can be turned off, which means fewer side effects. The analogous program for serotonin we call AntiDep because it works like SSRI antidepressants. If you’re depressed or chronically anxious, chances are you were born with an underdeveloped serotonin system or its growth was stunted by stress (Jans et al, 2007). Like antidepressants, AntiDep prevents some of the more vicious long-term effects of not having enough serotonin, like overproduction of stress hormones, inhibited growth in the hippocampus, and, at least for some people, social isolation and despair (Dranovsky & Hen, 2006).”....

Ike was addressing the press conference. Dark shirt, two deep blue wires runinng down the back of his head towards a console strapped to his chest. Two days ago he snapped Lucy’s right index finger in three places when she tried to disconnect his dopaminergic nuclei. She’s having problems not blaming him.

One of the reasons I enjoy reading Slate is their regularly cynical commentary on media coverage of the drug war. They seem to miss no opportunity to pick apart how the media is regularly suckered into a narrative that is not to be trusted. Case in point: the recent story about the DEADLY! combination of meth and ecstasy that is supposedly flooding our borders. As Slate points out in the most recent edition of "Stupidest Drug Story of the Week":

Back on Oct. 26, 2002, the National Post reported from Vancouver, B.C., that most ecstasy pills are "tainted" with other drugs. Citing a University of British Columbia and Royal Canadian Mounted Police study of confiscated pills purported to be ecstasy, the paper reported that "[l]ess than one-third of the tablets examined contained only one substance." One common additive was methamphetamine.

Another study of tablets seized at rave parties, this one by the RCMP and Health Canada and reported in the Nov. 18, 2004, Montreal Gazette, found methamphetamine in 23 percent of the 357 tablets tested. On Dec. 15, 2005, the National Post returned with another story datelined Vancouver that found methamphetamine in 95 of 125 tablets that also contained MDMA.

Thank god the drug czar is just now getting around to letting the rest of the world know about this menace!

At first glance, this sounds like an idea too clever for its own good: a riff on the Supersize Me movie, in which comedian Doug Benson decides to stay sober for 30 straight days, then spend the next 30 days "smoking, eating and vaporizing medicinal marijuana non-stop," to compare the experiences on video. It's called Super High Me, get it? As it turns out, however, the trailer seems to hold a bit of promise:

My first thought after watching this trailer was "Holy God, how on Earth could this guy possibly get away with this?" The Wikipedia article about the movie notes: "Everything Doug Benson did in the film is legal in California." Benson seems to confirm that assertion in a Gothamist interview:

I was working as a standup comedian. I started doing standup when I was twenty-two and was fairly clean living. Some drinking, but no drugs to speak of. I started performing in the Bay Area at clubs around San Francisco, working with some of the comics up there who smoked almost after every show. I started doing it with them. For the first few years that I smoked pot, I was kind of a pot mooch. I just smoked basically when I was working with other comedians who smoked pot and then eventually I realized that I had to strike out, buy some on my own, and now I'm a card carrying medical marijuana patient.

Clearly there's some missing detail here, and I suppose it's okay to withhold information from the press about some pre-existing condition that qualifies Benson to get a prescription. But still, there's something inherently flagrant about the project that weirds me out just a touch. Don't get me wrong - I think it's ballsy and I hope it lives up to its promise. The film's editor noted:

Our "b-stories" include the activists, dispensary owners, politicians and patients who comprise the medical marijuana movement. The situation in California is basically anarchy and chaos. Every jurisdiction is handling the "legality" of Prop. 215 in a different way. Some prosecute. Most ignore. Los Angeles has over 200 dispensaries now.

And this comment from Benson is particularly noteworthy:

This is pretty old, but I just got a chance to look at it tonight, and I have to say, even though Bill Maher is preaching to the choir at the 2006 NORML conference, and not only is his commentary just as relevant today as it was TWO! WHOLE! YEARS! ago, but he has very incisive angles on how the NORML crowd and its supporters ought to engage. His talk is a mixture of well-timed humor and clearly articulated strategy suggestions - he notes that one of the main problems with marijuana use is complacency, and he's encouraging the community to get angry, and intolerant of what's happening. It's a hard-edged take on the situation, but as he keeps pointing out, this is a "drug that kills nobody."

Via MilkandCookies.

In what may come as a shock to approximately no one, researchers in a recent study were apparently able to "get fairly accurate predictors of lifestyle choices based solely on musical factors," where lifestyle choices includes propensity for drug use. OK, maybe there are one or two surprises - for instance, if you've got some mistaken impression of classical music lovers as being too stuffy to get high, think again, as "more than a quarter of classical music fans have tried cannabis."

A blogger for the Minneapolis / St. Paul City Pages helps summarize the research, adding these details:

• People who liked musicals took the least amount of drugs and committed the fewest criminal acts. Also, they drink less and are near the top in charity work performed. Note to self: listen to more showtunes to embrace the better angels of one's nature.
• Fans of hip hop and dance music are likely to have had multiple sex partners and were top-ranked in terms of drugs taken. Or bottom-ranked, depending on one's perspective. Point being: "It comes out in the study that, in these types of music, fans score worse in various behaviours, such as criminality, sexual promiscuity and drug use," said Dr. North.

All I will say is that I have listened to my fair share of show tunes in my day, and that didn't seem to have any impact on anything other than my ability to attract friends.

Of course, the City Pages blogger goes a little off the track toward the end of his post:

If they had only broken down more specifically what kind of drugs were taken by fans of what music genre, we might have had some interesting results. Pure speculation: metal = meth. Techno? Ecstacy. Radiohead? Nyquil and ketamine.

I can see the ketamine / Radiohead connection, but please, can we not sully that combination with even the implication that Nyquil would be welcome to that party? In the meantime, any show tunes lovers out there feeling the pain of being singled out as "the most mild-mannered group, with the lowest level of drug-taking and criminal acts"?

An unexpected side effect of the war on drugs: smugglers on the Mexican border are making it increasingly difficult for certain researchers to complete their work. Unless, of course, they're willing to risk being robbed at gunpoint.

"I use night-vision goggles, and you could see them very clearly," Krebbs said of the caravans of men with guns and huge backpacks full of drugs, trudging through the desert. After taking refuge in bushes or behind rocks on 10 or so occasions, Krebbs abandoned her research. "I'm just not willing to risk my neck anymore," she said.

Along the U.S.-Mexican border, scientists like Krebbs say their work is under growing threat from drug traffickers and other criminals who have been pushed into remote areas by tighter U.S. border security.

Richard Felger, a botanist, said he stays away from remote mountains in the Mexican border state of Sonora after being robbed and threatened on research trips.

"I got kind of allergic to pistols being held to my forehead," Felger said.

Of course, it's hard to imagine most government officials feeling concerned that collection of data about a "mysterious species of Mexican trout in Chihuahua state" has been interrupted by this whole nasty "war on drugs" thing. Nevertheless, it's worth noting: there's always something new and rotten to learn about the drug war.

All this talk about how PCP is making a comeback obscures the fact that some drugs, like DXM, remain as popular as ever:

About 3.1 million Americans ages 12-25 (5 percent) used cough and cold medicines to get high last year, according to a federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report released Wednesday.

That's about the same number of young people who used LSD and many more than the number who used methamphetamine, said the agency's 2006 report on drug abuse and health.

And why would 3.1 million young Americans get busy with cough and cold medicines (aside from, duh, the fact that they are considerably more legal than meth and easier to find than LSD)?

More than 140 over-the-counter cough and cold medicines contain the cough suppressant DXM that, when taken in large amounts, can cause disorientation, slurred speech, blurred vision and vomiting, the Associated Press reported.

Now that's my idea of a party - rawk!