Emmanuel College senior and psychology major MacKenzie Peltier finds that a new book, by anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios, is missing a key ingredient:
“The entire text discusses her findings of the curative nature of these spiritual drugs, but she has never once taken them.”
Peltier adds in her post that direct experience is as important to studying psychedelics as the primary research.
via The Tack.
Mankind's future. Photo: CC/Ben Piven
The theme at this year’s Burning Man Festival, for artists, is Evolution.
Organizers of this quasi-religious rave party for repressed hipsters claim to be creating culture for a human race that no longer weeds-out its less than ideal candidates for natural selection.
Read the muddleheaded copy, below, from the event’s official website (bonus: includes a kindergarten lesson in natural selection):
The process of trial and error that has made this possible is called Natural Selection. Genetically encoded traits that aid survival tend to spread throughout entire populations. Living entities that bear these genes endure and reproduce, but maladaptive traits are not passed on. This causes species to evolve to better fit the world in which they live. However, this rigorous weeding out of ‘unfit’ individuals has gradually ceased to occur within our species. Medicine and mutual aid assure that nearly anyone is able to survive and reproduce.
Now adrift in our own gene pool, we have encountered a new phase of evolution. We’ve become a conscious breed of culture-bearing animals. Black Rock City is a kind of Petri dish, and Burning Man is an experiment in generating culture. We’ve learned that culture’s a spontaneous phenomenon. It thrives as a result of numberless and unplanned interactions. All that’s really needed is a fitting social vessel to sustain it. This happens best within communities that harbor many different modes of self-expression. We’ve also learned that cultures effloresce when human beings feel free to offer up their gifts.
Photo: CC/lil'bear
A review of the longterm effects of ecstasy shows brain damage, but not too much…
Many times the argument has been made that Ecstasy’s long term effects on the brain aren’t well understood – but a recent UK review by a government advisory council has sifted through more than 20 years’ worth of evidence to come to the conclusion that yes, Ecstasy can be shown to cause cognitive impairment, memory loss and depression. But the effects are so slight that users still fall well within the normal ranges.
via Major UK study examines the long-term effects of Ecstasy use.
I’m not sure what we’re supposed to take-away from the U.S. government’s warning that Mexico is on the brink. But with border skirmishes, Mexican crime organizations growing reefer in the States, and corruption everywhere (all of these have been grossly under-reported), I expect we will see more military hardware at the borders.
The report is one in a serious focusing on Mexico’s internal security problems, mostly stemming from drug violence and drug corruption. In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security and former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey issued similar alerts about Mexico.
Despite such reports, El Pasoan Veronica Callaghan, a border business leader, said she keeps running into people in the region who “are in denial about what is happening in Mexico.”
Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon instructed his embassy and consular officials to promote a positive image of Mexico.
The U.S. military report, which also analyzed economic situations in other countries, also noted that China has increased its influence in places where oil fields are present.
via U.S. military report warns ‘sudden collapse’ of Mexico is possible – El Paso Times.
The Guardian’s moving story about Afghanistan’s heroin addicts.
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Ammonia-maker. The Volcano (pictured here) was one of the vaporizers British scientists tested. Photo: CC/Soraya
Your killer bud might really be killing you, even if you are vaporizing.
A little-noticed new study of cannabis vaporizers (and so-called “street” cannabis seized from someone, somewhere, by UK officials), found the devices released toxic levels of ammonia.
Some stoners use vaporizers, hoping they will reduce the toxins caused by lighting-up.
Interestingly, the control weed for the experiment, created in a U.K. government lab, was exceedingly low in ammonia. This suggests that either the street stuff was contaminated garbage, or (more likely) the high-grade stuff… a product of growers using heavy-duty nitrogen fertilizers.
Link to download the full report, at Erowid, here.
From the abstract:
Materials and methods: Samples of ‘street’ cannabis leaf, held under a UK Home Office licence, were prepared by finely chopping and mixing the material. The samples were then heated in commercially available devices. The air containing the released gaseous compounds was sampled into the SIFT-MS instrument for analysis. Smoke from standard 3% National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) cannabis cigarettes was also analysed.
Image: CC/Dan Klimke
Other research shows that cocaine seems to be particularly intransigent. It has been found unchanged by natural processes in surface waters in Italy and the U.K. But the treatment at the Spanish water utility plant showed that “the [drinking-water treatment] process can practically remove all these compounds,” says Ventura. “Some questions still remain: what happens when a more simple treatment is applied, and which potential disinfection byproducts are generated?” The results also show that “drugs of abuse are commonly found in the aquatic media at the same or higher concentration levels than other emerging contaminants (i.e., pharmaceuticals),”
via Cocaine from drains in Spain – Environmental Science & Technology (ACS Publications).
Sewage. It's all good, to DEA and health officials. Photo: CC/Les Chatfield
Scientists based in Oregon have been sampling sewerage through the United States, looking for traces of crystal meth, coke and other drugs, including coffee.
This study (excerpt and link, below), boasts new techniques to give authorities a picture of the levels of drug use in areas of concern to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Not surprisingly, crystal meth levels are highest in the South and West. (The boffins used a DEA map to guide their sampling.)
Factoid: cocaine is among the most difficult drugs to remove from sewerage during treatment. Photo: DurhamCountyNC.gov
I expect we’ll soon be hearing about a fine-tuned method of capturing what comes out of your toilet when it hits municipal pipes.
That’s when what you flush is no longer yours, and the government can start sniffing.
The observed ranges in index loads for illicit drugs including methamphetamine and cocaine and the regions of the US in which they occur are generally reflective of known drug use patterns in the United States (40, 41). The finding that methamphetamine concentrations for several municipalities are much higher than those reported in previous literature, all of which is from Europe, is reflective of known international drug use patterns (42). Attempts have been made to compare measured values for raw wastewater samples with estimated values (28); however, these have been rudimentary, based upon compounds with complex sociological and pharmacological phenomenon, and have not incorporated components of error surrounding sampling and flow measurements. Additional tools, such as the use of indicator compounds, like creatinine, are needed to enhance our capabilities for comparing the index loads for different municipalities.
Amped up on Adderall. Photo: CC/Unity Gain
Shrinks on the take from the pharmaceutical industry and the Rockefeller Foundation are pushing Adderall and Ritalin as productivity boosters for humans.
This can’t come to any good. Even the authors of this Nature piece (described in a Yahoo article, link and excerpt, below) concede the likelihood of a rich-poor divide over who gets the “brain-boosting” drugs.
My take: The poor will get their pills. Corporations can employ fewer, more productive workers, especially if they are on speed.
The seven authors, from the United States and Britain, include ethics experts and the editor-in-chief of Nature as well as scientists. They developed their case at a seminar funded by Nature and Rockefeller University in New York. Two authors said they consult for pharmaceutical companies; Farah said she had no such financial ties.
Some health experts agreed that the issue deserves attention. But the commentary didn’t impress Leigh Turner of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics.
“It’s a nice puff piece for selling medications for people who don’t have an illness of any kind,” Turner said.
The commentary cites a 2001 survey of about 11,000 American college students that found 4 percent had used prescription stimulants illegally in the prior year. But at some colleges, the figure was as high as 25 percent.
via Scientists back brain drugs for healthy people – Yahoo! News.
Several compounds in cannabis are known to kill bacteria. Now Italian scientists believe pot can take on today’s superbugs.
Anti-bacterial cannabinoids might also “provide a more environmentally-friendly alternative to synthetic antibacterial substances now widely used in personal care items, including soaps and cosmetics,” according to an announcement from the American Chemical Society.
The ACS also suggests that marijuana-derived meds can be made without THC, pot’s primary psychoactive substance.
Antibacterial Cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa: A Structure−Activity Study
Marijuana (Cannabis sativa) has long been known to contain antibacterial cannabinoids, whose potential to address antibiotic resistance has not yet been investigated. All five major cannabinoids (cannabidiol (1b), cannabichromene (2), cannabigerol (3b), Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (4b), and cannabinol (5)) showed potent activity against a variety of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains of current clinical relevance.