There is also news that Senator Amy Klobuchar from MN might revise the Senate bill to include 2C-E and other quasi-legal 2C compounds in the wake of the recent 2C-E overdose by a group of inexperienced users in that state. You can read the full text of each bill to see which compounds made the list.

[Thanks Jonathan!]

From Reason.TV, via BoingBoing.

This time top dishonors go to the Drug Warrior-in-Chief Barack Obama (with DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart grabbing a dishonorable mention), whose DEA banned fake pot, thwarted a scientist's decade-long campaign to study marijuana, and raided dispensaries in Montana and California--all in one month!

Seems like only yesterday when Obama promised he wouldn't waste Justice Department resources raiding medical marijuana dispensaries.

[Thanks Cosmic Mike!]

Directed by Will Sweeney, the man behind Birdy Nam Nam's "The Parachute Ending" music video.

According to reader InConcertWithMonsters, "Wonderful & psychedelic synthesis of music and visual art!" Agreed!

GPs in a city say they are seeing an increase in teenagers with health problems linked to shisha pipe smoking...

Qasim Chowdary, a PCT smoking cessation adviser, said the increase in pipe use, which involves burning fruit flavoured tobacco, was among 15 to 24-year-olds.

He said shisha pipe smoking was now incredibly popular among youngsters of all cultures and ethnicity whereas the practice had been non-existent among the age group a few years ago.

Shisha is an Egyptian word for water pipe or, hookah. Fruit flavoured tobacco is burnt on top of lit charcoal and the smoke is then sucked through the pipe.

Mr Chowdary said: "There is a massive misconception that shisha smoking isn't as harmful as cigarette smoking. In fact research by the World Health Organization has shown an average pipe smoking session of around an hour is equivalent to smoking up to 200 cigarettes."

[Thanks Sangoma!]

The $1.7 billion medical marijuana industry made its lobbying debut in Washington on Wednesday with its official trade association launching an effort for changes in federal tax law that would put medicinal purveyors on equal footing with fully legitimate businesses.

From an underground movement to a legal business in California, 14 other states and Washington, D.C., medical marijuana is emerging as a full-fledged commercial sector with sales that might soon rival those of Viagra, advocates said.

"We simply feel that our industry should be treated like any other legitimate industry," said Aaron Smith, director of the National Cannabis Industry Association. He spoke at a news conference kicking off the association's first day of lobbying, which included meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

[Thanks Luke!]

From Psychopathic records, the outfit behind the Insane Clown Posse, this ode to coke blends the Cheers theme song with every cliche from West Coast rap since 1992. Everyone wants to flow like Tupac, I understand. But hey, I can roll with the entire set eventually getting coated in white powder. Tasty.

Explicit lyrics, not entirely safe for work. Eep.

Originally published in 2009 'Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey' by Rak Razam is a fine addition to the burgeoning genre of ayahuasca literature. Rak Razam is a journalist and editor of 'The Journeybook: Travels on the Frontiers of Consciousness'. This book charts the author's own journey in South America and the Amazon, as he has a series of intense encounters with ayahuasca, against the backdrop of a rapidly changing cultural landscape.

The book opens with Razam, a self-styled Gonzo journalist, waiting for a connection at Lima airport, Peru. He is on his way to Iquitos, in order to attend the second Amazonian Shaman Conference, to write an article for Australian Playboy. An experienced tripper, he has nevertheless had three failed ayahuasca sessions (with an analogue known as "pharmauasca") in his native home of Australia. Therefore, on arrival, the brew, along with the new surroundings of South America, are a mystery to him. The book is his revelation of culture and experience, an unfolding of many interconnected threads that make up the booming industry of ayahuasca tourism; the text is enriched by the sights, sounds and smells of the brew and, of course, the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon. The result is an engaging textual playing field for ideas and beliefs.

Are psychedelics and entheogens medicines and/or spiritual tools for consciousness expansion? Can they be culture jammed by Big Pharma into commodified weapons of mass control, a soma for the masses? Find out the answers as experiential journalist Rak Razam moderates a panel discussion at Entheogenesis Australis, Melbourne, Dec 2010, starring MAPS President Rick Doblin (Medical Association of Psychedelic Studies), Steven Bright, Australian psychologist and addictions researcher, Jasen, a practitioner using Ibogaine to break addiction and Dr. Anna Kokavec, a psychologist from La Trobe University. As Western culture is increasingly over-medicated, will psychedelics simply get commodified as they are absorbed? Will there be an arms race for psychedelics as they are patented and become part of medical "fashion"? How will the financial underpinnings of the medical industry affect medical psychedelics and the business they are entering? As John Halpern's Entheogen Corporation has shown with its exclusive global patent for Bromo-LSD, a non-psychedelic with "broad growth opportunities", corporations are now intending to make money for investors through the patenting of psychedelics. Is this the Brave New World that Aldous Huxley predicted -- Soma from the corporations? Can the free market regulate the mind? Find out in this provoking discussion on the market dynamics of medical psychedelics...

Sweet democracy on a stick. As of yesterday evening, every member of Seattle legislative delegation to Olympia -- all ten representatives and all five senators from the 34th, 36th, 37th, 43rd, and 46th Districts -- had gone on the record to say that they support taxing, regulating, and legalizing marijuana. They join every elected official at City Hall (the mayor, the city attorney, and all nine members of the city council) and King County Executive Dow Constantine.

The final holdout was 46th District Representative David Frockt (who had been opposed to legalization a couple weeks ago). However, after a little goading and he heard testimonies from former US attorney John McKay and a former Whatcom County judge on a bill to tax and regulate pot, Frockt called last night to say that he had come around. He wouldn't commit to any specific bill, but said, "I am okay with legalization, I am okay with regulation, and I am fine with taxation." Good job, Rep. Frockt.

Has any other major US city shown such widespread support among its elected leaders for legalizing marijuana? I don't know. I just called an office at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where a staffer told me that uniform support for legalization "is not the case in San Francisco," adding that his employer, Sean R. Elsbernd, "would have some concerns."

Pacific Northwest represent.

Crazy hyper-violence animated trance track set to two different McKenna lectures mashed together on left and right stereo tracks. Is this an evolution of language, or just psychotic? By TransAlchemy.

[Thanks Sam!]