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http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/731030-New-York-Times-runs-first-ever-marijuana-ad New York Times runs first-ever marijuana ad #1 slimvictor View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Moderator Drugs in the Media -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Dec 2008 Location "Darkness cannot be dissipated with more darkness. More darkness will make darkness thicker. Only light can dissipate darkness. Violence and hatred cannot be removed with violence and hatred." - Thich Nhat Hanh Posts 6,377 Yesterday 12:09 When many Americans open their Sunday paper, a historic moment will be staring back at them. For the first time, an advertisement for a cannabis company has been approved to run in The New York Times. The full page ad right will be in Section A of the New York Times. It reads in part: “Just Say Know. Congratulations on the passage of the Compassionate Care Act New York.” “It’s great. In this industry there’s going to be a lot of firsts and it’s great we’re one of them,” said Seattle-based Leafly co-founder, Cy Scott. The company helps marijuana patients and consumers learn about 800 different strains, their effects, and the best dispensary, store or clinic near you. http://www.nwcn.com/video/featured-v...269698211.html

Is the American Media Finally Waking Up to the Truth about Israel's Assault on Gaza? There are more signs Israeli assaults on Gaza are solidifying a perception that Israeli leadership has lost its moorings. A Palestinian youth carries a bicycle from the wreckage of a building which was hit in an Israeli strike on the southern Gaza town of Rafah, on August 2, 2014 Photo Credit: AFP August 2, 2014 | There are more signs that what the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008-2009 did for the left, the latest assault is doing for the mainstream: solidifying a perception that Israeli leadership has lost its moorings, opening the floodgates of criticism. The Israeli attack on the UN school on Wednesday followed later by the attack on civilians in Shuja’iyyah market during an announced ceasefire had an effect on public officials. The school attack at last gained a rebuke from the Obama administration, though it didn’t pin blame on Israel. At the State Department briefing, reporters expressed distress that the U.S. is not saying more. [update: The U.S. government has now concluded that Israeli shells hit the school. The White House has called the attack "indefensible." Reporters in the State Department this afternoon asked again and again why the U.S. is supplying arms to Israel given massive civilian casualties. Why is this different from when we cut off arms to Egypt after it fired on its citizens? two reporters have asked.] And some of our leading MSM voices are letting their outrage show: Ayman Mohyeldin of NBC and Erin Burnett of CNN have shown humanity and courage. Burnett has tee’d up the obvious question: Why are Americans funding Israeli carnage? The US has finally condemned Israel implicitly, by condemning the shelling of the UN school. AP on twitter: The White House did call for “a full, prompt and thorough investigation.” Here’s the White House’s equivocal statement, from Eric Schultz to the press: It’s the sharpest criticism the U.S. has leveled at Israel over the more than three weeks of fighting At the State Department briefing, Matt Lee of the Associated Press dared to wonder about “consequences” if the U.S. ever were to determine that Israel hit the U.N. school, and another reporter asked about U.S. munitions involved in these assaults on civilians. Throughout the briefing, reporters asked about the overwhelming nature of the Israeli assault; and State condemned the school attack again and again, without blaming Israel, and expressed “concern” about the number of civilian casualties. The United States does condemn the shelling of a U.N. school in Gaza which reportedly killed and injured innocent Palestinians, including children and U.N. humanitarian workers….We also condemn those responsible for hiding weapons in the United Nations facilities in Gaza. All of these actions violate the international understanding of the U.N.’s neutrality. As you know, we first and foremost believe in Israel’s government — in the Israeli government’s right to and obligation to defend their citizens. They’ve chosen to take military action to provide for that protection. But as you also note, we’ve been very clear that Israel needs to do more to live up to its own standards to limit the civilian casualties. Excerpts of the reporters’ questions, along with Marie Harf’s occasional response: Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner general of the UN Relief and Works Agency, said we’ve moved into the realm of “accountability.” There must be legal action against Israel: Question: According to UNRWA, this is the sixth time that one of their schools has been hit. Israel has, in the past, said that it regrets any civilian casualties, says that it’s doing its best not to – or to mitigate collateral damage. You have said in the past that you think Israel needs to do more to live up to its own very high standards. This keeps happening, though, and I’m wondering, these mistakes or these – I don’t know if you – I don’t know if “mistakes” is the right word, but this seems to happen over and over again. Are you concerned that Israel is not attempting to live up to its own very high standards, or do you believe that they are trying to but are falling short in these cases? MS. HARF: Well, I do believe that they are trying to live up to the high standard they set for themselves… If you know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent civilians in any target, whether it’s a UN facility or anything, do you think that that is a legitimate target?… Marie, are you aware of the number of Palestinians that are in UNRWA schools? MS. HARF: I don’t have a number for you, Said. They may have one… this is becoming a daily ritual. I mean, the Israelis drop leaflets telling the Palestinians to evacuate, they take shelter in these facilities, then they are targeting. Parks are targeted, hospitals are targeted, and all these things are targeted. Pretty soon you’re not going to have any space where they are going to go. Where should they go?… Marie, you just said that – again, that you’re – you stand with Israel and, quote, “We are proud to do so.” MS. HARF: We are. QUESTION: Even after an incident like today which you have condemned without blame, but even after calling – saying that Israel has not lived up to its own high standards, you’re … comfortable with Israel not living up to its own high standards? MS. HARF: I didn’t say that. QUESTION: But using weaponry that’s been supplied by the United States, is that correct? MS. HARF: We have a very broad relationship with Israel to help it defend itself. I will check on the specifics about the resupply. But yes, we are very committed to their security. What is the appropriate response to the Israeli massacre? Many folks have passed along this incredible video of Chris Gunness of UNRWA breaking down over the latest atrocity during an interview– in evident despair over the world’s disdain for Palestinian life. I see that it is in the New York Times today. And posted by Hamas. Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced…. We are in the realm of accountability. I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage. US officials haven’t cracked. Chuck Hagel’s expression of concern for civilian casualties and unwavering support for Israel is soldierly and shameful. But here is one sign of US political breakage. Defense News: Roy Blunt of Missouri says Israel can wait for the regular Senate appropriations. And Defense News goes right to the Jewish vote: A top Senate Republican is breaking with other party leaders by opposing the use of emergency funding to assist Israel in its fight against Hamas. Maybe the media will give these officials more cover to begin to criticize. Erin Burnett’s coverage on CNN last night was excellent. She focused on the attack on the Shuja’iyyah market, showing this disturbing video of terrorized civilians. My wife had to leave the room; Burnett said, “Tough to watch.” “I’m a big fan of the Iron Dome, and the information we can share through Iron Dome [with Israel],” Blunt said during a brief interview. “There’s Iron Dome funding in the regular [defense] appropriations bill. I think that’s the place to do that.” Missouri’s Jewish population makes up only 1 percent of the state’s total population, according to the US Census Bureau. Her questions to former Israeli ambassador Dore Gold were just this side of withering. “That’s my question: where is ‘there?’” she pressed him, as he said that civilians could escape Israeli attacks. When Maen Rashid Areikat of the PLO came on and grew angry about questions of Israeli responsibility/Hamas’s responsibility for the latest massacre, Burnett let him go on, from the heart. The CNN headline says it all: “The world has to wake up, the United States has to wake up.” Burnett then did a segment on U.S. support for these atrocities. Her twitter feed indicates her attitude: She pointed out this horrifying editorial by Michael Oren: The U.S. is resupplying #Israel w/ ammunition…. the story of unilateral support for Israel’s military ops. “If U.S. really wanted the fighting to stop, wouldn’t they do something about it?” @ErinBurnett w/ that question to @aarondmiller2 and promoted the response to it on her show, from James Zogby: “more civilians will suffer, but by ending the cycle once and for all thousands of innocent lives will be saved.” We can only hope that Burnett follows up this coverage by going to Gaza herself after this onslaught ends, and seeing what the open-air prison, as Areikat put it, looks like. Seeing the occupation in the West Bank, too. “It’s a shocking and horrific statement, and an immoral statement.” James Zogby re: Michael Oren’s #WaPo article Andrea Mitchell of NBC is also evidently upset. She asked the Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer if “Israel may be losing its soul, may be losing the war because of the political impact of what is happening on the ground.” He said it isn’t: Ayman Mohyeldin continues to let his feelings show. Last week he reported on the miraculous birth of a baby whose mother had been struck by Israeli arms. Well, the girl died. “We are upholding our values under the most extreme circumstances.” Mohyeldin retweeted Ken Roth’s judgment on the Israeli attack on the UN school: Good Night Shayma’…Humanity has let you down. He has tweeted an image of that mosque that Israel destroyed yesterday, toppling the minaret “Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children.” “All available evidence” points to #Israel: Ban Ki-moon.http://trib.al/7sa3KNj And here’s Mohyeldin’s tweet about John Kerry’s protestations yesterday, subtly mocking the Israel lobby: Shati Refugee Camp, Gaza. Israel destroyed this mosque. In doing so, the blast severed the towering several-ton minaret structure which collapsed into, and destroyed the residential building across the street that had already been damaged by the explosive blast. Even if Israel is using surgical strikes, it’s the civilian population that – may have no idea what is happening in a mosque across the street – that is paying the price. Facing criticism Sec Kerry defends his senate record saying he had “a 100% voting record pro-Israel” & he’s 2nd to none in defending Israel Kerry’s remarks: I’ve spent 29 years in the United States Senate and had a 100 percent voting record pro-Israel, and I will not take a second seat to anybody in my friendship or my devotion to the protection of the state of Israel. But I also believe, as somebody who’s been to war, that it is better to try to find a way, if you can, to solve these problems before you get dragged into something that you can’t stop. And it seems to me that this is a reasonable effort, fully protecting Israel’s rights, fully protecting Israel’s interests, and Prime Minister Netanyahu himself said to me: Can you try to get a humanitarian cease-fire for this period of time? And if it weren’t for his commitment to it, obviously, the President of the United States and I would not be trying to make this effort. Now, either I take his commitment at face value, or someone is playing a different game here, and I hope that’s not the fact. Some things never change. http://www.alternet.org/media/american-media-finally-waking-truth-about-israels-assault-gaza?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/australian-drug-foundation-claims-flight-attendants-told-to-flout-responsible-service-of-alcohol-laws/story-fnhocxo3-1227011830020?nk=a34b153369178058739b223b29ead61d TREVOR PADDENBURG PerthNow August 03, 2014 11:07AM Angelica Mallett regularly flies to Melbourne. FLIGHT attendants are serving up to a dozen or more alcoholic drinks to passengers and are told to flout responsible service of alcohol laws in the air. It has prompted calls by the nation’s peak alcohol and drug group for airlines to consider scrapping free booze. And leading researchers say a limit of four drinks per flight should be considered. An investigation by The Sunday Times into mile-high booze has uncovered claims by the Australian Drug Foundation that flight attendants are told to keep the drinks flowing to keep customers happy. Budget airlines which charge for drinks are reluctant to cut consumers off because alcohol is their biggest in-flight money maker. It comes as federal aviation authorities and the International Air Travel Association report a rise in the number of alcohol-fuelled incidents of anti-social behaviour on commercial flights which, in some cases, have forced pilots to turn their plane around. While many business travellers and holiday-makers enjoy a tipple after takeoff, some anti-alcohol campaigners say flights should be no different from sports grounds where alcohol supply and consumed is strictly controlled. Australian Drug Foundation national policy manager Geoff Munro said there was no place for alcohol at 30,000 ft and it was time to consider an end to free drinks on passenger jets. He said aircrew were told to keep the drinks flowing. “We have had comments from in-flight staff complaining that they are required to keep serving passengers who are intoxicated because the policy is to keep passengers happy. Some stewards on flights have said the unofficial policy is to keep people happy,” Mr Munro said. “It is odd that airlines are so free with alcohol because the last thing they need is intoxicated passengers. And the last thing a passenger on a flight needs is to be intoxicated. “Airlines are very happy to give their passengers alcohol, and particularly free alcohol. A practical step would be to have a policy of no free booze.” National Drug Research Institute director Steve Allsop, who flies interstate about 40 times a year, said he’d seen one passenger served seven small bottles of wine by the same flight attendant between Perth and Sydney. He said banning free booze or imposing a limit of four drinks may need to be considered. “Some people seem to get served very large amounts of alcohol. Some airline staff do the right thing but other staff hand over bottle after bottle after bottle” Prof Allsop said. “Part of the problem is it’s free. I’d be looking at charging for it. But first and foremost it’s about not serving people to the point of intoxication (and) the airlines adhering to regulations.” Virgin Australia said it had “strict protocols in place” and cabin crew were “highly trained in the responsible service of alcohol”. Qantas, Jetstar, Scoot, Tigerair and Air Asia all have responsible service of alcohol policies stating that only drinking in moderation is permitted. Qantas gives complimentary drinks on international flights and charges on some domestic flights, while on most flights Virgin charges $7-$8 for beers, ciders, wines or spirits. Jetstar charges $7-$8 for beer, cider, wine and pre-mixed cans of spirits, while Tigerair and Air Asia also charge for drinks. A Tigerair Australia spokeswoman said the airline “has a strict responsible consumption of alcohol policy and has a zero tolerance for inappropriate behaviour on our flights”. Despite the calls to curb booze, airlines appear unlikely to voluntarily call last drinks. A survey by payment system company GuestLogix finding alcohol accounts for the biggest source of in-flight revenue for airlines. The latest National Drug Strategy Household Survey found less Australians were drinking at risky levels but our love affair with booze still cost $15 billion a year, caused more harm than illicit drugs and was a burden on health care. Mike Daube, director of the McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth, said the major carriers “clearly need to keep an eye on” drinking but he said incidents which forced pilots to turn a plane around were rare and not always alcohol-related. “If you said, ‘You can’t have a glass of chardonnay on a three and a half-hour flight’, I think that’s going too far,” Prof Daub said.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/731019-Scientists-Discover-A-Novel-Mechanism-Of-Action-Of-CBD-Against-Lung-Cancer-Cells bit_pattern View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Oct 2008 Posts 7,214 Yesterday 10:06 In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of cannabinoids, such as THC and cannabidiol (CBD), as potential anticancer agents. They have yielded promising results in both in vitro (cells in a dish) and in vivo (animal) studies, demonstrating a plethora of antitumor effects such as promoting cell death and decreasing cell migration and invasion. While they may look great on paper, support for their efficacy in clinical settings is lacking as no human cancer trials have so far been published. Furthermore, scientists actually know little about how they exert their effects on cancer cells. A few weeks ago, light was shed on one mechanism of action thanks to a UK study that identified previously unknown signaling platforms that mediated the anticancer effects of THC. Some are hesitant about using THC, however, given the unwanted psychoactive side effects. CBD may therefore represent a more useful therapeutic agent. In a recent study, published in Biochemical Pharmacology, scientists set out to unpick CBD’s antitumor properties in the lab. Previous work had found that cannabinoids increase the levels of a sticky protein called intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) on lung cancer cells which decreases their invasiveness and ability to spread (metastasize). However, how they promote cancer cell death was unknown. To address this gap in our knowledge, scientists used lung cancer cell lines and cells derived from a lung cancer patient and looked at how CBD-induced ICAM-1 affects adhesion of the cancer cells to killer white blood cells called lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells. The researchers discovered that CBD enhanced the susceptibility of these tumor cells to stick to the LAK cells, subsequently promoting their lysis (destruction). Furthermore, when the researchers blocked ICAM-1 using a neutralizing antibody, the effects of CBD were reversed. Likewise, when the researchers used molecular scissors to chop up ICAM-1 mRNA (the blueprint used to make the ICAM-1 protein), or blocked the cannabinoid receptors that CBD binds to, the compound no longer caused the increase in cancer cell destruction. The researchers then took this one step further by demonstrating that both THC and an endocannabinoid (a cannabinoid naturally produced by the body) mimic both promoted ICAM-1-dependent tumor cell killing. None of the 3 molecules tested in the study were found to increase the killing of non-tumor cells. Taken together, these data suggest that the cannabinoid-induced ICAM-1 boost on lung cancer cells is responsible for the increased susceptibility of these cells to destruction by LAK cells. This therefore represents a previously unknown antitumor mechanism of cannabinoids, adding to our knowledge of how these compounds exert their effects on cancer cells in the lab. Whether these effects will be induced in humans with cancer, however, remains unknown. Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/health-and...1q2TKdSrR2O.99

http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/we-cant-wage-war-on-drugs/ by Mike Jay Smoking opium, San Francisco, 1900. Public domain photograph, author unknown Mike Jay is a UK author and cultural historian. His latest book is The Influencing Machine (2012), now out in the US under the title A Visionary Madness. When the US President Richard Nixon announced his ‘war on drugs’ in 1971, there was no need to define the enemy. He meant, as everybody knew, the type of stuff you couldn’t buy in a drugstore. Drugs were trafficked exclusively on ‘the street’, within a subculture that was immediately identifiable (and never going to vote for Nixon anyway). His declaration of war was for the benefit the majority of voters who saw these drugs, and the people who used them, as a threat to their way of life. If any further clarification was needed, the drugs Nixon had in his sights were the kind that was illegal. Today, such certainties seem quaint and distant. This May, the UN office on drugs and crime announced that at least 348 ‘legal highs’ are being traded on the global market, a number that dwarfs the total of illegal drugs. This loosely defined cohort of substances is no longer being passed surreptitiously among an underground network of ‘drug users’ but sold to anybody on the internet, at street markets and petrol stations. It is hardly a surprise these days when someone from any stratum of society – police chiefs, corporate executives, royalty – turns out to be a drug user. The war on drugs has conspicuously failed on its own terms: it has not reduced the prevalence of drugs in society, or the harms they cause, or the criminal economy they feed. But it has also, at a deeper level, become incoherent. What is a drug these days? Consider, for example, the category of stimulants, into which the majority of ‘legal highs’ are bundled. In Nixon’s day there was, on the popular radar at least, only ‘speed’: amphetamine, manufactured by biker gangs for hippies and junkies. This unambiguously criminal trade still thrives, mostly in the more potent form of methamphetamine: the world knows its face from the US TV series Breaking Bad, though it is at least as prevalent these days in Prague, Bangkok or Cape Town. But there are now many stimulants whose provenance is far more ambiguous. Pharmaceuticals such as modafinil and Adderall have become the stay-awake drugs of choice for students, shiftworkers and the jet-lagged: they can be bought without prescription via the internet, host to a vast and vigorously expanding grey zone between medical and illicit supply. Traditional stimulant plants such as khat or coca leaf remain legal and socially normalised in their places of origin, though they are banned as ‘drugs’ elsewhere. La hoja de coca no es droga! (the coca leaf is not a drug) has become the slogan behind which Andean coca-growers rally, as the UN attempts to eradicate their crops in an effort to block the global supply of cocaine. Meanwhile, caffeine has become the indispensable stimulant of modern life, freely available in concentrated forms such as double espressos and energy shots, and indeed sold legally at 100 per cent purity on the internet, with deadly consequences. ‘Legal’ and ‘illegal’ are no longer adequate terms for making sense of this hyperactive global market. The unfortunate term ‘legal highs’ reflects this confusion. It has become a cliché to note its imprecision: most of the substances it designates are not strictly legal to sell, while at the same time it never seems to include the obvious candidates – alcohol, caffeine and nicotine. The phrase hasn’t quite outgrown its apologetic inverted commas, yet viable alternatives are thin on the ground: ‘novel psychoactive substance’ (NPS), the clunky circumlocution that is preferred in drug-policy circles, is unlikely to enter common parlance. ‘Legal highs’, for all its inaccuracies, points to a zone beyond the linguistic reach of the war on drugs, that fervid state of mind in which any separation between ‘drugs’ and ‘illegal’ seems like a contradiction in terms. Then again, if that conceptual link breaks down, what does become of the old idea of drugs? When the whiff of criminality finally disperses, what are we left with? I said ‘old idea’, but the word ‘drug’, at least in the sense that has been familiar throughout our lifetimes, turns out to be a recent coinage, peculiar to the 20th century. The word itself is, of course, centuries old: as a general term for any medication or chemical remedy, it dates back to the 14th century. But its more specific sense – as in ‘drug addict’, ‘drug control’ or ‘drug culture’ – can be dated quite precisely to the years around 1900. And on examination, it proves to be a curious hybrid, bridging two quite separate meanings. The first is psychoactivity. A ‘drug’ is a substance that acts on the mind, changing the way we think or feel. But this descriptive meaning also carries a strong suggestion of judgment, less easily defined but unmistakably negative. ‘Drug’, in this sense, is a label to be avoided. Thus, according to the industries that produce and promote them, alcohol and tobacco are not drugs; cannabis advocates insist it is not a drug but a herb; and LSD enthusiasts say that it is not a drug but a sacrament. Indigenous users of coca, betel nut or ayahuasca are appalled at the suggestion these substances might be drugs. A cup of tea is psychoactive, but we would only call it a drug if we wished to make a point. An indeterminate white powder bought off the internet, on the other hand, might be legal, but it is undoubtedly still a drug. Before the 20th century, it would have been difficult to express this idea. Many of today’s ‘drugs’, such as cannabis, cocaine and morphine, were sold in any high-street pharmacy. ‘Heroin’, for instance, emerged in 1898 as Bayer Pharmaceuticals’ new brand of over-the-counter cough medicine. Did the authorities simply turn a blind eye to the dangers that these substances posed? They did not: opium was classified as a poison because of its overdose risk, and cannabis was known to cause mental disturbance in some users. Yet these properties did not confer any exceptional status. And why should they? Even today, there are still plenty of prescription medicines that are toxic, habit-forming or that have deliriant side-effects. What made the drug-drugs special? In the 20th century, they came to be defined by their illegality, but of course they could not have been created by it. Only once certain hostile perceptions about drugs were in place could it make sense to ban them. What caused the perceptions? We might start with the temperance movement. In the 19th century, alcohol was being recognised as a causal factor in all sorts of social ills, and so temperance campaigns promoted sobriety as the path to personal health, moral virtue and social respectability. Progressive social reformers joined forces with doctors and religious authorities to condemn the habitual intoxication of previous generations. Other intoxicating drugs might not have presented such a widespread problem, but they all got swept up in the same mixture of medical, moral and social opprobrium. By the late 19th century, consumer groups were campaigning against the heavy doses of opiates and cocaine concealed in patent medicines Global trade, meanwhile, made imported drugs such as opium and cocaine cheap and abundant; industry refined them into newly potent forms, which an energetic and largely unregulated business sector advertised and distributed to a booming consumer market. At the same time, the hypodermic syringe was transforming medical practice. It allowed doctors – and, increasingly, the general public – to inject large quantities of pure and potentially dangerous opiates such as morphine. This brought a breakthrough in pain relief, but also new risks such as abscesses and blood poisoning and, for some patients, compulsive and self-destructive overuse. By the late 19th century, consumer groups were campaigning against the heavy doses of opiates and cocaine concealed in patent medicines, and doctors were diagnosing addiction as a medical pathology with serious social consequences. The first uses of ‘drug’ in its modern sense date from this era: in its earliest occurrences, it stood as an abbreviation of phrases such as ‘addictive drug’ or ‘dangerous drug’. Doctors advised governments and the public that injections of powerful narcotics should be confined to professionals. Use without medical supervision was classified as ‘abuse’. Largely couched in medical terms as it was, the whole notion of ‘drugs’ carried moral and cultural implications from the start. Within the temperance debate, intoxication was an evil in itself and abstinence a corresponding virtue. Also, a good many of the substances that caused concern in the West were associated with immigrant communities: opium in the Chinese districts of San Francisco or London’s docklands, cocaine among the black communities of the southern US. In the racially charged debates of the day, these substances were presented as the ‘degenerate habits’ of ‘inferior races’, a ‘plague’ or ‘contagion’ that might infect the wider population. Such ideas might no longer be explicit, but the drug concept certainly carries a murky sense of the foreign and alien even now. That’s why it rarely applies to the psychoactive substances that we see as part of normal life, whether caffeine in the west, coca in the Andes, or ayahuasca in the Amazon. During the first years of the 20th century, opium, morphine and cocaine became less socially acceptable, rather as tobacco has in our era. Their use was now viewed through the prism of medical harm, and their users correspondingly started to seem feckless or morally weak. The drugs themselves became, in a sense, ‘legal highs’: not technically prohibited but retreating into the shadows, available only under the counter or from those in the know. And then, once their sale was formally banned in the years around the Great War, ‘drugs’ became a term with legal weight: a specified list of substances that were not merely medically dangerous or culturally foreign, but confined to the criminal classes. The banning of drugs occasioned strikingly little public debate, certainly compared with the prohibition of alcohol in the US. Then again, the ‘drug problem’ was pretty marginal at that point, and confined to subcultures (ethnic, bohemian, criminal) without a public voice. The only organised resistance to this new language of condemnation came from the pharmaceutical industry, concerned that its legitimate trade was being tarnished by unfortunate associations. What’s now the American Pharmacists Association, pressured by its major corporate sponsors such as Johnson & Johnson, complained about the casual use of terms such as ‘drug evil’, ‘drug fiend’ and ‘drug habit’, and lobbied newspapers to specify the drugs in question as ‘narcotics’ or ‘opiates’. But ‘drugs’ was too vague and too useful to replace with more precise terms. It conveyed not simply particular chemicals, but a moral position on the use of them by certain people and for certain purposes. This position was eventually enshrined in the legal frameworks that emerged to prohibit them. The 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the founding document of the international drug laws, is unique among UN conventions in using the word ‘evil’ to describe the problem it seeks to address. Legislators celebrated the 1961 Convention as the culmination of a 50-year battle to prohibit drugs, a battle that had begun at the Hague Opium Conference of 1911. Yet with hindsight, 1961 was the moment at which the consensus around the evils of drugs began to fracture. An adventurous postwar generation, the first to be raised as truly global consumers, was awakening to the realisation that alcohol was not the world’s only intoxicant. An international underground was beginning to spread news of hashish-smoking in Morocco and LSD synthesised in Swiss laboratories, as well as Benzedrine pills that propelled truck drivers through the night, and hallucinogenic mushrooms in Mexican mountain villages. For many, the resounding denunciations of drugs as dangerous, foreign and criminal no longer rang quite true. Within a booming youth culture, controlled substances were becoming the talismans of a new morality, an entire view of life that valorised pleasure, experiment and self-discovery. In a sense, Nixon’s war on drugs was lost before it was even announced. It could have succeeded only by uniting an already polarised society in the belief that drugs were a genuine threat to civilisation, and that there was a genuine possibility of returning to a world without them. These propositions grew ever harder to sell over the intervening decades, as drug use became increasingly normal, while the vast sums of money spent trying to control it not only failed to reduce it, but actually created a global criminal market on a scale that Nixon could never have imagined. psychiatric diagnoses such as low self-esteem and social anxiety open the door to new ‘feel-good’ drugs designed to enhance confidence and happiness The problem is not just one of unintended consequences. As the war on drugs has dragged on, the medical, moral and cultural certainties that interlocked so tightly to create the very concept of ‘drugs’ have been drifting out of focus. In medical terms, the category rested on a clear distinction between sanctioned ‘use’ and criminal ‘abuse’. Yet today’s consumers are in practice free to make this distinction themselves. The arrival of online pharmacies means we can all take our chances with the prescription drugs of our choice: generic, pirated, off-label, out of date or semi-legitimately dispensed by doctors and pharmacists on the other side of the world. As a result, the line between pharmaceutical and illicit drugs is blurring. Recent studies in the US have found opiate users moving from prescription drugs such as OxyContin and Vicodin to street heroin and back again, depending on price and availability. As new ‘legal highs’ with opiate-like effects come on-stream, any such line may eventually become impossible to draw. Within the pharmaceutical industry as a whole, other pressures and trends are conspiring to soften the distinction between recreation and medicine, ‘feeling good’ and ‘feeling better’. Smart drugs and nootropics promise to make us feel ‘better than well’; the broadening of psychiatric diagnoses to encompass conditions such as low self-esteem and social anxiety opens the door to new ‘feel-good’ drugs designed to enhance confidence and happiness. Pop-science catchphrases such as ‘serotonin-booster’ might apply equally to antidepressants or to MDMA. At the cutting edge of brain research, neural network studies are pointing the way towards implants for deep-brain stimulation or brain-embedded fibre-optic cables: a brave new world in which moods and perceptions might be controlled electronically and drugs, good or bad, would be redundant. At the same time, the cultural landscape in which ‘drugs’ were defined is receding from view. Nixon launched his war on drugs in a country where even cannabis was a profoundly alien substance to almost everybody over the age of 30; today, most Westerners below retirement age recognise drugs, for better or worse, as part of the culture in which they grew up. We have long been comfortable global consumers, seeking out the novel and exotic in everything from food to travel, music to spirituality; our appetite for intoxicants participates in this pursuit of novel sensations, and is explicitly linked to it by corporate advertising that uses the visual lexicon of mind-expanding drugs to sell us everything from energy drinks to smartphones. ‘Drugs’, in its original sense, drew on a reflexive distaste for the culturally alien. This distaste has itself become alien to the inhabitants of the 21st century. As drugs have swirled into this kaleidoscope of lifestyle and consumer choices, the identity of the ‘drug user’ has slipped out of view. A unitary class of ‘drugs’ depended for its coherence on an identifiable class of users, clearly recognised as deviant. But drug use has long ceased to function as a reliable indicator of class, ethnicity, age, political views or any criminality beyond itself. Plenty of drug users self-identify with confidence these days and, if conspicuous drug ‘scenes’ are easily located, the majority of drug use nevertheless takes place outside them. Buying and selling, the point of greatest visibility and risk for the user, has been rendered virtual: the shady street deals of the past can now be conducted online via PayPal or bitcoin, the incriminating package delivered through the letterbox in an innocuous Jiffy bag. Though its medical and cultural underpinnings might be shifting, the category of drugs is still firmly defined by the law. At their margins, the drug laws could be starting to reflect the reality of what we might call a post-drug world, but it seems unlikely that they will drive the process. When the drug laws were first passed a century ago, they reflected a cultural shift that had already taken place; we can expect them to be dismantled only after the landscape of a post-drug world is plain for all to see. But even now, it is not hard to discern in outline. Alcohol prohibition, when it eventually collapsed, was superseded by a patchwork of regulatory controls – licensing, insurance, tax – that either existed already or were devised on the basis of pragmatic policy goals. We can envisage a similar patchwork for a day – however close or distant – when drugs are removed from the ambit of criminal law. In so far as any drug presents medical risks, it requires regulation to minimise them, and a well-established spectrum, from labelling to licensing to prescription, already exists for this purpose. In so far as they constitute a luxury market, we might expect them to be taxed. As with alcohol, in some jurisdictions they might remain illegal by broad popular consent. The prohibition of drugs, including alcohol, was an emergency measure that overrode the logic of pragmatism. The alternative is not another leap in the dark, but a return to the routine regulatory calculus. But what lies beyond the idea of ‘drugs’ itself? The simple answer is that there is nothing to replace. Behind the term lies a disparate group of chemicals whose varied effects – stimulant, narcotic, psychedelic, euphoriant – offer a more accurate language of description. Value-laden terms, both positive and negative, would doubtless emerge to complement them. A post-drug world would require not a new language but the recovery of an older one. The category of ‘drugs’ was an attempt, characteristic of its historical moment, to separate out good chemicals from bad ones. But as we have known since antiquity, good and evil, virtue and vice are not inherent in a plant or a molecule. Pedanius Dioscorides, the great classical authority on medicine, maintained that no substance is intrinsically good: it all depends on the dose at which it is administered, the use to which it is put, and the intentions behind that use. The Greek term pharmakon could mean both a medicine and a poison: there was no such thing as a harmless remedy, since anything with the power to heal also had the power to harm. All drugs, psychoactive or otherwise, are a technology, a prosthetic that extends our physical and mental reach. Like so many of the other technologies that are transforming our world, their benefits and dangers must ultimately be understood as extensions of ourselves.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730962-Life-as-a-Crystal-Meth-Addict #1 casual1 View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Greenlighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Aug 2013 Posts 14 Yesterday 18:16 By Luke Williams Researching ice addiction, the writer moved in to a meth house. Over three months, he became seduced by the drug and descended into psychosis. Rob’s bedroom is neat. It is in a neat new house, tightly packed alongside other neat new houses, on the fringe of one of Melbourne’s outer suburbs. Sitting in this neat room, on the corner of his bed, Rob holds a syringe full of crystal meth. Rob is, like thousands of Australians, a methamphetamine addict. For Rob, the loaded syringe is a ticket to a 12-hour all-encompassing sexual fantasy world, which he will spend the following week trying to realise. Gently, he eases the needle into his arm and dabs the blood off the entry point as he takes it back out. His eyes sparkle, he gives a naughty grin, and the chitchat begins. He tells me about his latest sexual fantasy, pretending to be kidnapped by both a man and a woman so he can then be used at their leisure. “So,” he says, “tell me what you’ve been beating off about lately.” If you don’t answer Rob, he gets aggressive. Very aggressive. He is on meth, after all. Australia has one of the highest rates of illicit methamphetamine use in the world, and the highest use among developed nations. And usage is increasing. In Victoria, abuse of crystal meth – also known as ice – is by all reports rampant. The number of deaths caused by the drug is increasing; the coroner’s office for the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association found that in 2010, one in every 25 drug-related deaths involved methamphetamines. Two years later, the figure had jumped to one in every 10 deaths. The Medical Journal of Australia last September published a study by Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre showing a 318 per cent increase in hospitalisations in Melbourne for ice problems from 2010-11 to 2011-12. It is unclear whether the increases were from a larger number of users or the result of greater purity of the available drug. Nationally, some studies have shown meth use has risen by as much as 10 per cent over the past two years. A two-month research project into police detainees in key areas around the nation conducted this year by the Australian Institute of Criminology found 61 per cent of those held at Kings Cross police station in Sydney tested positive to amphetamine, as did 40 per cent of those who ended up in the Brisbane City watchhouse and 43 per cent of those in East Perth. Statistics such as these have led to news reporting on meth use that borders on hysterical. So is the meth problem as bad as it seems? View the reasthttp://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/n...ct/1406901600# Last edited by slimvictor; Today at 11:19. Reason: Don't post the whole article - just a few paragraphs -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 poledriver View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jul 2005 Posts 8,403 Today 05:37 Pretty cool read. The depressing reality of being a meth addict and the people you hang around with to be able to get and use the drug. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 PriestTheyCalledHim View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelight Crew -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 5,610 Today 06:45 I'm not surprised he is bisexual. There's been a major problem with meth and stimulant addiction and abuse by bisexual and gay men for decades.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28583051 * 2 August 2014 By Tim Mansel BBC News, Sierra Leone Information poster about Ebola As West African nations try to stop the deadly Ebola virus from spreading, people living in the affected countries are nervous. In Sierra Leone, communities are keeping a close eye on the exact locations where the disease has emerged. The posters are crudely drawn and graphic. There's one pasted to the wall of the squat, concrete community centre in Kroo Bay, a slum in the centre of the capital Freetown, the kind of place where you can imagine disease spreading fast. The houses are built of breeze block and have battered, rusting roofs. The spaces between them are piled with garbage, small children with no shoes tote yellow plastic jerry cans of water through the narrow lanes. A pig lolls in the mud while her offspring snuffle in the filth. Many Sierra Leoneans can't read, so public information is often presented on large posters. People in Freetown are nervous. They are desperate to keep the virus at bay, to keep it out in the provinces. They keep track of the numbers in the way they keep track of football scores. Listen to From Our Own Correspondent for insight and analysis from BBC journalists, correspondents and writers from around the world Broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturdays at 11:30 BST and BBC World Service Listen to the programme* Download the programme I've been making radio programmes there, and a couple of weeks ago we recorded one in Port Loko, a province north of Freetown. "Ah, Port Loko," said someone when I got back. "Four cases." I'd know from my colleagues immediately if they were talking about Ebola. It was in the tone of voice, the roll of the eyes, the uneasy laughter. Then they would tell me that so and so had died and I would feel that rush of adrenaline triggered by sudden fear. One of my colleagues spent the whole day last week wearing a pair of blue rubber gloves. People are frightened for two reasons. First and most importantly, because there's no known vaccine, no cure; second, because of the ghastly physical reality of the disease, as portrayed in those lurid posters. Yet these are people inured to disease. Consider, for example, their attitude to malaria, which kills thousands in Sierra Leone every year. Not infrequently in the last few weeks I've encountered people complaining of a headache or a night of intense sweating. They slide off to the hospital and reappear a day or two later with a bag full of drugs. They laugh it off. "Oh yeah, there are so many mosquitoes at this time of year," they say. "But you sleep under a net, right?" Well, actually no, they don't, even though sleeping under a treated net is the single most effective way to avoid getting bitten by a mosquito and being infected with malaria. They see malaria as an occupational hazard but they see Ebola as a death sentence. The community centre in Kroo Bay I spent an instructive couple of hours at the weekend with a woman from Finland. Eeva was once a midwife, but she's just finished a five-week stint with a Red Cross team that has been going door to door in Kailahun province, the border region where Ebola first arrived in Sierra Leone. She was on what's known as a sensitisation mission, explaining to people exactly how the virus spreads and how to avoid it. There are three simple rules, she told me. Rule one: If you've got a headache or a fever, go to the health centre for a test. You can recover from Ebola if the infection is spotted early enough. Rule two: If someone dies, don't touch the body. It's highly infectious. Don't wipe the mouth, don't close the eyes. Rule three: Don't eat bushmeat, the meat of wild animals. The underlying message was this - Ebola is manageable. It's deadly and frightening but if you follow the three rules and use a lot of soap and water, you probably won't get sick. And if you do, even though the death rate is high, there are survivors. I told Eeva she was a brave woman, but she shrugged the compliment off. She said she'd had the opportunity to take two different jobs - one in Sierra Leone, the other in South Sudan, where there's continuing fighting. "I told myself, I'm not going to South Sudan - I've got a family," she said. A man washing his hands with disinfectant before entering a hospital in Freetown. As I left Freetown on Sunday morning there was a last reminder of the Ebola spectre. Outside the airport building was a table and a couple of buckets. We all had to wash our hands in water that carried a strong whiff of chlorine. My friend in the blue rubber gloves had jokingly asked me if I might have space for him in my suitcase. I sympathise with his powerlessness; I had a plane ticket; he can only sit and wait. I hope the message that Ebola is both manageable and survivable gets through.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/retail-alcohol-block-feasible/story-fn59niix-1227009312716 The Australian August 01, 2014 12:00AM Natasha Bita National Correspondent Brisbane SUPERMARKETS have told Andrew Forrest it is technically possible to block spending on alcohol, gambling and cigarettes through a new “cashless welfare card’’. As revealed in The Australian yesterday, the Forrest report recommends the Abbott government replace cash welfare benefits with a Healthy Welfare Card, which could be spent only on essentials such as groceries, rent, clothing and power bills. Aged pensioners and war veterans would continue to get cash through Centrelink. The debit card, issued by a bank or building society of their choice, could not be used to withdraw cash, and would be programmed to block the sale of alcohol, gift cards, pornography, gambling and “other illicit services’’. Although cigarettes are not named in the report, it is understood the ban would extend to tobacco. “More and more we are becoming a cashless society and this is the way we should manage welfare payments,’’ the report says. “Cash from government quickly converts to illegal drugs and alcohol abuse, particularly widespread amongst Australia’s youth.’’ The report says eftpos has assured Mr Forrest it can adjust its scheme rules to make the card function with supermarket giants Coles, Woolworths and IGA, as well as the Commonwealth, Westpac, ANZ and National Australia banks. The cards would be redeemed at any Australian store or online e-tailer that accepts Visa and Mastercard with eftpos payment facility — with the exception of alcohol and gaming outlets. “This will enable welfare recipients to purchase the goods and services required to maintain healthy lifestyles, yet block those goods and services — such as alcohol, drugs and gambling — that damage healthy, family wellbeing and ability to enter or return to work,’’ the report says. “Communities … are desperate to stop the incoming tide of drugs and alcohol enabled by untied welfare cash. This new system presents an opportunity to potentially remove the hundreds of millions of dollars from the market that provides the lifeblood of organised crime.’’ A spokesman for Woolworths confirmed the retailer — which owns Big W discount stores and BWS and Dan Murphy’s liquor outlets — had discussed the plan with Mr Forrest. He said the company did not have a view on whether a card should be introduced, but “if we got asked to do so, that would be technically feasible’’. The Forrest report proposes hefty on-the-spot fines for retailers who let people withdraw cash or buy alcohol with the cards — of $2000 for every $100 misspent. It suggests the cards could use the same technology as corporate credit cards, which block access to gambling outlets. It reveals that policing experts warned Mr Forrest that organised crime networks will “attempt to subvert the new system’’. “Additional police and support services may be temporarily needed as the card removes the ability to support long-term alcoholism and drug addiction through cash purchases,’’ the report says. “It will be important to provide adequate support for individuals needing to adjust to the new arrangements.” __________________________________________________________________________________________ So, how would they stop people from buying fruit juice, jam, honey, sugar, canned fruit, baker's yeast, etc. and fermenting their own "Chateau Yatala", because that is one thing which will result? In the USA, with their "food stamps" system, businesses set up stores to buy food from welfare recipients who have used their food stamps to buy it; the people take the cash, then visit their crack cocaine, meth, or heroin dealer.

I can imagine some enterprising people starting up businesses whereby they offer to shop for people's groceries, and deliver them for a modest fee; say $5. They produce the receipt; the householder pays in cash, which those people are then free to do whatever they want with it.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730870-Aus-Medicinal-cannabis-delaying-the-inevitable poledriver Aus - Medicinal cannabis: delaying the inevitable? In the 1990s, a woman was admitted to St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, with cancer of the uterus. She was told that chemotherapy followed by a hysterectomy would give her an excellent chance of cure. Unfortunately, she developed severe nausea and vomiting after chemotherapy. As none of the conventional medications suppressed her distressing symptoms, she decided that the treatment was worse than the disease and stopped her chemotherapy. The patient’s nurses then contacted me. Cannabis was provided to the patient and stopped her vomiting. The patient then completed her chemotherapy and had a hysterectomy. Today she is alive and well and teaching. Australians with distressing symptoms from serious conditions are still unable to legally try to alleviate their symptoms with medicinal cannabis. The conventional medicines for these conditions often work but they are sometimes ineffective or produce unacceptable side effects. A large recent Reachtel poll showed that 66 per cent of Australians support and 14 per cent oppose medicinal cannabis. There are majorities of supporters of medicinal cannabis among voters for the major political parties (Liberal/National, ALP, Greens, PUP), men, women and the four major age groups. The ban on using medicinal cannabis does not have ‘the consent of the governed’ and hasn’t for a long time. Hence the civil disobedience supply of medicinal cannabis in many parts of the country. Private Members Bills to allow medicinal cannabis have now been announced in three jurisdictions - (NSW, House of Representatives, ACT Legislative Assembly) with a parliamentary inquiry scheduled in Tasmania and the leader of the Opposition in Western Australia declaring public support. The political battle is not over yet but politically we are somewhere between the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. The main problem with medicinal cannabis is that this is a medical issue being decided by politicians. It’s time to take the politics out of the issue. Experts regulate medicines like penicillin, not politicians. Experts, not politicians, should also be deciding whether and how cannabis is regulated as a medicine. When used medicinally, studies show that cannabis is often effective in relieving distressing symptoms in a number of conditions while the side effects are minimal. It is wrong to draw conclusions about side effects of cannabis from studies of recreational cannabis just as it would be wrong to assess the safety of regulated alcohol from studies of bootleg liquor. People with advanced cancer and parents of children with rare and intractable forms of childhood epilepsy have recently begun to brave the media to discuss how medicinal cannabis had helped them and their families. They have testified that the symptoms of these diseases and the side effects of the treatments have been much worse than any side effects of medicinal cannabis. The question should not be whether medicinal cannabis is usually more effective then conventional medications but whether patients should be able to benefit from cannabis if the conventional medications have been tried and failed. More than two-thirds of Australians support the use of medicinal cannabis because they see this as a compassionate approach to suffering patients. Almost three-quarters of Australians believe we should be doing more research on medicinal cannabis. At present, getting funding, official approval and supplies of medicinal cannabis in order to carry out scientific research is almost impossible. Very few studies of medicinal cannabis have been carried out in Australia or the US. All nine Australian health ministers oppose medicinal cannabis. Why? Supply has been a problem but the establishment of Tasman Health Cannabinoids, a company chaired by Dr Mal Washer, until recently a federal politician, is a very encouraging development. The states and territories would require approval from the Therapeutics Goods Administration before a new medicine can be used and that involves an expensive process. For centuries western health authorities have been trying to replace medicinal plants with extracts and for good reason. Cannabis may be one medicine where for the time being the plant is superior to the extracts. Perhaps the main reason for the official resistance is the fear that medicinal cannabis would undermine the prohibition of recreational cannabis. Australia uses morphine, cocaine, amphetamine and ketamine medically but the recreational use of these drugs is banned. If our politicians wanted to they could allow the medicinal use of cannabis but continue to prohibit its recreational use. Medicinal cannabis is now available in 23 of the 50 states of the US (plus Washington DC). Recreational use of cannabis in the states which allow medicinal cannabis is no different than in the states which do not allow it. About 20 countries now allow medicinal cannabis. Why not Australia? Opponents of medicinal cannabis argue that there are already several cannabinoid medicines which are legally registered for multiple sclerosis, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and AIDS-related weight loss patients who need them. This is simply not true. Nabiximols (Sativex) is only approved (for use for a short period) for one condition (stiffness due to multiple sclerosis). Even for patients who satisfy the stringent criteria it is more available in theory than practise. If available and approved for other indications, the likely cost ($800/month) will prevent all but the wealthiest using the drug. Older cannabinoid medicines such as Dronabinol were hardly used. They were slowly and unpredictably absorbed and therefore difficult to use. It’s usual to start new treatments on a small scale and maybe expand later if a case can be made for expansion. But we should start with the conditions where the evidence for far greater benefit than risk is already clear. It’s time. Dr Alex Wodak AM President, Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/medici...#ixzz3979lPTpt

It probably referred only to the NBOMe family.

http://www.itv.com/news/border/update/2014-07-16/legal-highs-the-term-legal-does-not-equate-to-safe/ 2:30pm, Wed 16 Jul 2014 Legal highs on the rise in Cumbria Legal highs: The term "legal" 'does not equate to safe' One of the UK’s biggest drug and alcohol charities, CRI, has warned that the UK is ‘only scratching the surface’ and underestimating the serious public health challenge posed by ‘legal high’ misuse. The charity has taken a leading role in treating and educating young people on the dangers of taking these substances, which it calls ‘strange molecules’. It offers support to people via its services across the UK. Its drop-in clinics are seeing a rise of people using synthetic cannabinoids like ‘Spice’, Mephedrone, MDMA, ketamine, Poke and Euphoria. Many of these substances are freely available in shops located on the high street, as well as online. “We believe that the common term of ‘legal high’ is incredibly misleading; legal does not equate to safe, and some substances which were legal have now been classified. "Some of these substances are highly potent and can be very risky, possibly up to 10,000 times stronger than the street drugs they emulate, with tiny amounts able to trigger extreme psychoactive responses." – David Biddle, Chief Executive of CRI ----------------------------------------------------------------- The writer is obviously ignorant of the fact that Mephedrone, MDMA, and Ketamine are not synthetic cannabinoids, but it's interesting to note that the experience at the cutting edge of increases contradicts what the UK govt.'s so called "think tank" (read "propaganda machine") has recently stated about young people turning their back on drugs.

There is no winning a nuclear war, and I'm sure that the political leadership of those countries understand that, but my main concern is about rogue states or terrorists, who can be unpredictable. Even if the worst occurred, the wind systems around Australia would limit fallout from the Northern hemisphere. Only the Russians currently have enough ICBMs to target every major Western city, and Putin may be a megalomaniac, but he's not crazy; he wants to enjoy his power, and knows his position would become untenable in such an event.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730166-Drug-Companies-Are-Manipulating-The-Rules-At-Your-Expense-Study neversickanymore View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Senior Moderator Recovery Support Science & Technology -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2013 Location babysitting the argument in my head Posts 10,570 25-07-2014 02:00 Drug Companies Are Manipulating The Rules At Your Expense: Study 07/23/2014 By Diane Bartz WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - U.S. rules that ensure prescription medicines are not misused have been manipulated by brand-name drug companies to fight off generic competitors, costing consumers billions of dollars, according to a report released on Wednesday. Called "risk evaluation and mitigation strategies" (REMS), these U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules are meant to secure the safe distribution of dangerous medicines. However, the report from the Generic Pharmaceutical Association said REMS have been used to prevent generic drugmakers from getting branded medicine to test their own versions, which is required to win FDA approval. This has delayed the arrival of 40 potential generic drugs, costing consumers some $5.4 billion a year, according to the report by Matrix Global Advisors and released by the generic drug trade group. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said the issue was worrisome. "This study raises serious concerns about whether safety protocols are being inappropriately used to inhibit access to cheaper alternatives," he said in an emailed statement. "The potential savings that this study suggests must be considered as we in Congress continue to work to slow health care spending." The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which works with the Justice Department to enforce antitrust law, has also voiced concern. In a 2013 amicus brief filed in a case brought by Actelion Ltd against companies that wanted access to its Tracleer and Zavesca drugs, the FTC said it had investigated allegations of abuse, but had not filed any complaints. Tracleer is a treatment for hypertension and Zavesca treats Gaucher disease, a rare metabolic disorder. Generic Pharmaceutical Association members include Impax Laboratories Inc, Perrigo Co Plc, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, Sandoz Inc; Teva Americas, a unit of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Apotex Corp, among others. (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Ros Krasny, Bernadette Baum and Andre Grenon) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5615043.html RECOVERY FORUMS ~~~ADDICTION GUIDE~~~ CONTACT ME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 ro4eva View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2004 Location Um, at the potato range? Serving up my weapon of mash destruction? Posts 2,811 Blog Entries8 25-07-2014 03:47 Wait until they are punished.... another fine. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 Crankinit View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Sep 2007 Location I can make Opi-O's! Posts 5,288 28-07-2014 19:28 Originally Posted by ro4eva Wait until they are punished.... another fine. The sum of which will be less than the profits they made breaking the law.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-01/melbourne-man-arrested-following-seizure-of-ice/5641508 Posted yesterday at 4:18pmFri 1 Aug 2014, 4:18pm Photo: The drugs were concealed in a container of porcelain toilets. (ABC News: Tom Maddocks) Police in Melbourne have seized more than 50 kilograms of the drug methamphetamine, also known as ice, found in a shipping container full of porcelain toilets. A 33-year-old Kings Park man has been charged with importing a commercial quantity of drugs and possessing a commercial quantity of drugs believed to be worth $50 million. Seventeen packets of drugs were found in the container that was carrying 70 boxes of porcelain toilets on July 25. A joint investigation involved the Australian Crime Commission, Customs and Victoria Police. On Wednesday, 135 kilograms of ice worth $130 million was found by police in four suitcases at an inner city apartment in another joint operation. Assistant Commissioner Steven Fontana, of Victoria Police, said the seizures highlighted the "significant threat" posed by international crime gangs targeting Australia. "We've got a glut of drugs out there and that's the reality," he said. "Whilst this will make a significant dent there's still a lot of product out there. The prices haven't gone down." Assistant Commissioner Fontana said the importation of the drugs was driven by the demand in the community. "We really have to start rethinking our attitude to using illicit drugs. There's plenty of illicit drugs out there." Richard Grant of the Australian Crime Commission said meth was one of the most dangerous and harmful drugs on the market. "In the past week, Australian law enforcement in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland have seized approximately 220 kilos of this drug," he said. "The 50 kilos seized [on Thursday] represents another half million hits of methamphetamine that's off the streets. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Whilst this will make a significant dent there's still a lot of product out there. The prices haven't gone down." - Did he mis-speak? You'd expect prices to go up after multiple big seizures, in accordance with the economic law of supply and demand, although "buyer resistance" also plays a part, but a lot of meth / ice users are addicted to it, far more so than with cannabis (which, had they decriminalised / legalised would have prevented a large part of the current "ice epidemic" sweeping Australia). The other factor is risk; the more risk, the greater the profits have to be, and there will always be people willing to take a chance if the rewards are there. The fact that prices remain stable indicates large stockpiles already in the country.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/07/30/more-than-two-thirds-of-canadians-want-marijuana-laws-softened-though-a-majority-still-against-legalization-poll/ July 30, 2014 LUIS GENE/AFP/Getty Images A majority of Canadians want restrictions on pot softened, but only about 40% want it fully legalized. OTTAWA — More than two-thirds of Canadians want marijuana laws softened, says an opinion poll conducted for the federal government. And while a small majority believes companies should not be permitted to sell marijuana just as they sell alcohol and cigarettes, it’s clear many people have no problem with the proposition. Among the poll’s highlights: 37.3% say marijuana should be legalized; 33.4% want possession of small amounts of marijuana decriminalized, leading to a fine rather than a criminal record; 13.7% say the marijuana laws should stay the same; 12% want penalties increased. The results of the national survey of 3,000 people, commissioned by the Department of Justice, will add fuel to the debate that is heating up before the 2015 election. The Liberals under Justin Trudeau want marijuana legalized so its sale is regulated, making it harder for youths to obtain. The Conservatives say such a change would lead to more kids smoking marijuana. Instead, the government is considering allowing police to fine anyone caught with small amounts of the drug. Ottawa hired Ipsos Reid to conduct focus groups and an extensive poll to gauge Canadians’ views on hot-button issues such as marijuana and prostitution. The results were posted online Wednesday. “The government of Canada wanted a clear and current understanding of the Canadian public opinion on a range of justice issues,” said the report. “This research was conducted to provide insight into the views, concerns and priorities of Canadians on criminal justice issues.” The poll, conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 7, found respondents were divided about how the government should legislate on prostitution. In June, Justice Minister Peter MacKay introduced contentious legislation to prohibit buying sex from prostitutes. It also bans sex workers from selling their services near schools, playgrounds and daycare centres. Critics say the bill is deeply flawed and will eventually be struck down by the courts. By comparison, the poll suggested Canadians are not happy with the status quo on marijuana. Many of them don’t think legalization would increase pot-smoking: 52.6% believe marijuana use would “stay about the same” if legalized, 38.4% say it would increase and 6.3% say it would decrease. If marijuana is legalized, it is unclear how it would be distributed and who would be allowed to sell it. To the question, “should companies be allowed to produce and promote the sale of marijuana just like tobacco and alcohol?,” 55.6% said no and 42.4% said yes. However, 82.9% of respondents believe doctors should be allowed to prescribe marijuana to patients — something that is now allowed. The pollster also organized 14 focus groups of 10 people each to discuss the issue in depth. Most focus-group participants supported leaving the law alone or fining people with small amounts of marijuana so they would not have a criminal record. There was some support for legalization in focus groups held in British Columbia, but elsewhere there was “very little support.” Deputy Liberal Leader Ralph Goodale said Wednesday the poll shows Canadians don’t believe the current marijuana laws accomplish their “public policy objectives.” “The status quo is obviously failed policy,” he said. “That’s clearly recognized by the vast majority of Canadians. They come to some different conclusions about what exactly to do about it, but clearly they want change.” Mary Ann Dewey-Plante, a spokeswoman for Mr. MacKay, said Mr. Trudeau would “fully legalize recreational marijuana, which would make it easier for kids to buy and smoke in their neighbourhoods, like cigarettes today.” The Liberals want to make smoking pot “a normal, everyday activity for Canadians. We, on the other hand, want to protect children and teens from the harmful effects of smoking pot on their health and development.” She reiterated the government is considering a proposal by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police to allow police to fine those caught with small amounts of marijuana. Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian PressMarc Emery and his wife Jodie in Vancouver on May 10, 2010. The pro-marijuana activists are throwing their support behind Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. The Canadian debate over marijuana legalization sharpened this week after a New York Times editorial called for Washington to repeal its 44-year ban on pot. The newspaper, which says the decision should be left to individual U.S. states, has reignited hot debate among Americans. It concluded the ban has inflicted “great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.” Some U.S. states have already reformed their pot laws. Colorado has allowed the sale of marijuana for recreational use since Jan. 1 and Washington followed suit this month. Oregon and Alaska will vote on the matter in November. The Ipsos survey of 3,000 adult Canadians was conducted between January 30 to February 7, 2014 and has a margin of error of 1.8 percentage points.

Cannabis oil supplier defends providing mother with drugs Date July 31, 2014 - 7:24PM Tom McIlroy Legislative Assembly reporter at The Canberra Times Sydney girl Abbey, and her mother, Cherie, have been left without access to the oil after Australian Federal Police raided the ACT home of a supplier who had contacted Chief Minister Katy Gallagher. Photo: Brendan Esposito A desperate mother, a dying child, the rigid law and one man's experimental drug. The ACT's medical marijuana debate found a name and a face on Thursday as it was revealed a 2½-year-old girl suffering from a rare genetic disorder in Sydney had been treated using small doses of cannabis oil supplied by a Canberra man. Sydney girl Abbey, and her mother, Cherie, have been left without access to the oil after Australian Federal Police raided the ACT home of a supplier who had contacted Chief Minister Katy Gallagher. Abbey improved enough to leave hospital after receiving the cannabis oil through a feeding tube, but the raid has left that progress with an uncertain future. Ms Gallagher said she acted in line with her legal obligation to report the man's actions to child protection authorities, leading to the February raid. The supplier, who Fairfax Media has agreed not to name, said he had only ever acted in the best interest of Abbey. "I think if there was another person in Canberra who had knowledge to be able to save this baby the way that I did, they would do anything they could to help," he said. Cherie started administering the oil to her daughter after doctors told her Abbey would most probably die from the rare CDKL5 disorder, which leads to serious seizures, developmental delay, muscle problems and audio and visual impairment. "This story seems to have tugged at the heartstrings of a lot of people and that is very comforting to know I have that support because it is a very difficult situation." Cherie started administering the oil to her daughter after doctors told her Abbey would most probably die from the rare CDKL5 disorder, which leads to serious seizures, developmental delay, muscle problems and audio and visual impairment. About 800 children worldwide have the condition. There is no known cure. Abbey improved enough to leave hospital after receiving the cannabis oil through a feeding tube, but the raid has left that progress with an uncertain future. After supplying the oil to Cherie without a charge, the man said he had been made out to be like a drug dealer. Acknowledging he was acting illegally, he said officers had seized only pipettes, a glass casserole dish and other household items during the raid. He has not been charged with any offence yet. "It's not a drug lab like Breaking Bad," he said. "I used a natural plant and a very simple process to come up with a non-toxic medicine that I knew would save this baby's life. "But never underestimate the power of an angry woman. What has happened to me has quite literally put Abbey's life in jeopardy and that is unforgivable in this day and age." Ms Gallagher, who also serves as the ACT's Health Minister, received threats and vitriolic abuse online on Thursday. Some dismissed her legal mandatory obligation to report suspected harm of a child to authorities. Ms Gallagher said reporting the case came after years of correspondence with the man, who had sent her personal information and photos of Abbey. "I felt that there was no other alternative available to me than to forward that to both child protection and to the police, which is what I did and I still think it is the right thing to do despite people raising concerns about it," she said. "It's very easy in social media to have a go, it's very easy to read a headline and not actually understand the complexities of the issues that lie beneath." Despite the mandatory reporting requirements, the supplier said a police raid had been an overreaction and only harmed Abbey and Cherie. NSW Department of Family and Community Services officers contacted Cherie on Thursday night and are expected to visit her home to discuss Abbey's care in coming days. "I am a father myself and I know it is a very primal urge to look after and nurture and save these children. Abbey may not be my baby but I still feel that call to help when this baby is in distress," he said. He said threats of violence and abuse being labelled at Ms Gallagher "were unforgivable and despicable". A week ago, ACT Greens Minister Shane Rattenbury introduced a private member's bill to legalise medical marijuana in the territory. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/cannabis-oil-supplier-defends-providing-mother-with-drugs-20140731-zyx3e.html#ixzz397Wgzo65

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730824-UK-Dark-net-drugs-adverts-double-in-less-than-a-year edgarshade Bluelighter Angus Crawford By Angus Crawford BBC News The number of listings offering illegal drugs for sale on the "dark net" appears to have more than doubled in less than a year, BBC News has learned. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) closed down the original online illegal drug market, Silk Road, in 2013. But new figures suggest the trade has actually increased since then. And other research indicates one in four British drug users has accessed hidden websites. 'Big problem' In October 2013, there were 18,174 drugs listings across four main markets, according to the internet safety organisation Digital Citizens Alliance, based in the US. A recent trawl of the dark net by BBC News revealed there were now 43,175 listings across 23 markets. Oxycodone The strong opioid Oxycodone is one of the drugs illegally sold online In this context, the term "dark net" refers to parts of the internet that cannot be reached easily unless specialised software is used. Its content is hidden from conventional search engines such as Google and Bing. Commonly used apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Evernote - whose content does not show up in search results either - are not covered by the term. Britain's National Crime Agency recognises the drug trade on the dark net is a threat. "It's a big problem," says Caroline Young, deputy director of the NCA's Organised Crime Command. "In our threat assessment we have cocaine and heroin as a high priority, and because it's cyber-enabled that makes it even more of a high priority." However, she said the figures might be misleading. "The numbers of vendors in the UK has reduced by 40%, each vendor may have more than one listing," she says. One internet safety campaigner was concerned by the findings. "We still think the internet can be a wonderful tool for consumers and businesses, but we do worry good people and companies get caught up in the web spun by criminals and rogue operators," said Adam Benson, deputy executive director of Digital Citizens Alliance. "That will slowly erode the trust and confidence we have in the internet." line The dealer's view Angus Crawford One anonymous drugs dealer said he thought the dark net market was growing "exponentially" After months of negotiations, a dark net drug dealer based outside the UK agreed to answer my questions. He would only do it anonymously and using encrypted messages. "To us the dark net is all about anonymity and freedom," he said. I put it to him that he was still selling dangerous substances and supporting organised crime. "A street dealer could sell you anything without you knowing what it is exactly," he replied. "Because of the strong community on the dark net, this almost never happens. And when it happens, the vendor in question will lose all of his clients." He added that the online drugs trade showed no signs of reducing. "I've seen the dark net market grow almost exponentially." Undesired publicity Californian Ross Ulbricht was arrested last year and is awaiting trial charged with being the administrator of the original Silk Road site, which he denies. Customers and dealers used encrypted email and paid using the virtual currency Bitcoin, which can be hard to track. Heroin advert Drug dealers offer to ship illegal substances across the globe The FBI seized the site and confiscated all funds. But some observers say that has only increased interest in the markets. "No-one's going to find out who I am, I just feel safe using it” Sam Dark net drugs buyer Deepdotweb.com is a website that observes developments on the hidden web. A representative from the site said: "The Silk Road bust was the best advertising the dark net markets could have hoped for." Anonymous network One of the most popular access methods for the dark net is the TorBrowser. It allows people to use Tor, an "onion-routing" system that makes a PC's net address untraceable. It bounces encrypted data through several randomly selected computer servers on a volunteer network - before it reaches its destination. There are also many hidden sites on the network ending in the dot-onion suffix, including drugs markets. Tor was first created by the US military and is now also used by pro-democracy campaigners, whistleblowers and journalists operating under repressive regimes. But criminals too are taking advantage of its anonymity. Cocaine clicks One buyer agreed to talk to me, but only if his identity was hidden. Views from both sides of the internet drugs market Sam, not his real name, admitted he used to buy drugs from a dealer in London. "I bought cannabis, around every two to three weeks from a street vendor, it was pretty terrifying," he said. He then showed me the cannabis he bought online - it was delivered to his house by first-class post. "I don't have to reveal my identity at all, it's completely anonymous, no-one's going to find out who I am, I just feel safe using it." And there is evidence he is part of a growing number of people going online to buy illegal drugs. The Global Drug Survey has taken place each year since 1999. For the 2014 survey, more than 79,000 people worldwide were questioned about their drug habits. Some 25% of British respondents said they had accessed dark net drugs markets. The survey's founder, Adam Winstock, said it was just like the growth of any e-commerce. "Better quality, better range, more convenient," he said, "and certainly in the case of drugs, avoiding having to come into contact with dealers." Targeting dealers Those who observe the dark net believe sales will continue to grow. US customs officers US customs officers check thousands of parcels and letters a year to try to limit trade Deepdotweb.com expects methods may change. "We will see movements toward decentralised markets as they have better potential for being safer, are impossible to shut down, and can provide better solutions for handling transactions," said its editor, who asked to remain anonymous. Britain's National Crime Agency says it will do all it can to disrupt the trade. "We will use all and every tool and technique we possibly can," said Caroline Young. "Whether they are dealers and buyers online or on the street - they are exactly the same. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28242662 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 The Network View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2010 Posts 1,228 Blog Entries11 Today 03:50 Man what is this when people are too afraid to find a friend that is either a dealer or knows one? Way safer and cheaper and faster than someone you don't know posting an advert on the deep web. There's also the risk, if you're an idiot or maybe just unlucky, that instead of 10g of cannabis showing up, about 10 cops show up at your door. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 Libertin View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jun 2014 Posts 170 Today 04:02 BBC News One internet safety campaigner was concerned by the findings. "We still think the internet can be a wonderful tool for consumers and businesses, but we do worry good people and companies get caught up in the web spun by criminals and rogue operators," said Adam Benson, deputy executive director of Digital Citizens Alliance. That will slowly erode the trust and confidence we have in the internet." Wow. Just wow. So this person really thinks that online drug sales are going to harm the reputation of the internet? That is simply hilarious. The internet is the greatest human enterprise ever, this trend isn't going to change that, only make it even better! And how exactly would 'good people and companies' get caught up in this? It's impossible to end up involved in the dark web unless you're trying to. It's not like taking a wrong turn on the way to the library. I wonder if he thinks formula 1 racing is undermining the public's confidence in our road system. His comments are embarrassing. Originally Posted by The Network Man what is this when people are too afraid to find a friend that is either a dealer or knows one? Way safer and cheaper and faster than someone you don't know posting an advert on the deep web. There's also the risk, if you're an idiot or maybe just unlucky, that instead of 10g of cannabis showing up, about 10 cops show up at your door. I have to disagree; the internet makes drugs safer and more accessible to many people. Reputation systems allow consumers to vouch for the purity/quality of a vendor's drugs. Additionally, buying drugs the traditional way, 'off-line', doesn't necessarily avoid the risk of being arrested. And remember, this online drugs black market is still in its infancy, it's only going to improve. The internet is brilliantly subversive and exactly what we need to iron out this atrocious situation of drug prohibition. Last edited by Libertin; Today at 04:18. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 The Network View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2010 Posts 1,228 Blog Entries11 Today 04:24 I disagree about the part where it still carries the same risk of getting arrested. If you know a couple people and don't buy your own drugs directly from a dealer, you have several layers of padding before they get to you. And if they're really good friends, they won't ever even consider ratting you to get out of jail time. Online, I'm not sure how people tend to do it, but I'm betting a lot of people use a home address or PO box, which are both easily traceable, a neighbor's address less so but still somewhat. Internet, good place to buy some legal drugs, controversial or not, or a TV, or a computer, or do your grocery shopping. Illicit drug sales? Much easier to just find someone you're already friends with that can get you a source, even if it's slightly marked up. For most people that is. Obviously you can't just stroll into town and ask for an eightball if you live in the mountains in Idaho or something, so maybe the deep web would be good for something like that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #5 Crankinit View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Sep 2007 Location I can make Opi-O's! Posts 5,288 Today 13:29 A lot of places in the world don't have specific drugs available, and even if they are, it can be very hard to track down certain drugs that only exist in specific circles or subcultures. On top of that, the darknet allows people to avoid the criminal aspect entirely, not putting up with wannabe gangsters and ''dealer time,'' and because listings have feedback, quality and delivery is assured to the even most marginally careful buyer. No more buying a gram, only to get home and find out you spent your money on 700mg of glucose or baking soda and 300mg of your drug of choice, or buying something that was supposed to be something else and getting sick (or dead). The tradeoff is the wait (although some would argue that this is a benefit, as it prevents regretful impulse buying) and dealing with the postal system. There's obviously an enormous appeal, because otherwise these markets wouldn't be popping up faster than they're shutting down.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Australian-airline-passengers-told-to-flush-drugs-5655543.php By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press Updated 7:29 am, Wednesday, July 30, 2014 CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian airline apologized on Wednesday for a warning a flight attendant gave passengers who might have been flying high that there were drug-sniffer dogs awaiting them at Sydney airport. Many of the 210 passengers aboard the Jetstar flight from Gold Coast city on Sunday night had attended the Splendour in the Grass weekend music festival at Byron Bay and were returning home. "We have been told there are sniffer dogs and quarantine officers waiting in the domestic terminal," Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper on Wednesday quoted the attendant as telling passengers via the Airbus A320's public address system. "If you need to dispose of anything you shouldn't have, we suggest you flush it now," he added. The newspaper said the warning prompted passengers to rush for the toilets. Jetstar spokesman Stephen Moynihan confirmed the newspaper report was accurate. He said the public response to the announcement had been "mixed." The airline said it routinely makes quarantine announcements on such flights that cross state borders. "The crew member's words were poorly chosen and are plainly at odds with the professional standards we'd expect from our team," Jetstar said in a statement. "We apologize to customers offended by the comments." Jetstar said it was "addressing the matter with the cabin crew member involved," but did not detail any potential disciplinary action. One passenger told the newspaper several passengers suddenly made for the toilets with "things clenched in their hands." "Why would you tip people off about this?" the passenger, who was not named, asked." If they have got something illegal, let them get caught." But the response on Jetstar's Facebook page was largely positive. "What a good Samaritan, Jetstar Australia this guy deserves a promotion," Rohit Dwivedi posted. "Of course you should warn your passengers to help avoid them being humiliated, locked in a cage or fined," Jebediah Cole posted. Australian Federal Police declined on Wednesday to comment. ---------------------------------------------------------------- As Charlie Pickering pointed out on 10's The Project: "Think of the goodwill it created towards Jetstar from those passengers", or words to that effect.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-and-dog-get-seizures-from-crazy-monkey-drug-doctors-say/ July 29, 2014, 5:23 AM Man and dog get seizures from "Crazy Monkey" drug, doctors say Despite serious health risks related to smoking synthetic marijuana, the drug still has its fans -- and it continues to cause trouble. In a new report, researchers describe a case of a man and his dog that both experienced seizures after exposure to a synthetic cannabis variety called "Crazy Monkey." The 22-year-old man brought his dog to a veterinary clinic after the animal suffered a seizure, but while the vet was evaluating the dog, the owner himself had a seizure too. When the man arrived at the emergency department of a local hospital, he was very agitated and violent, to the point that he had to be restrained by several people and sedated, Dr. Hallam Melville Gugelmann, a medical toxicology fellow at the University of San Francisco, California, who treated the patient, told CBS News. Both the man and the dog recovered after receiving treatment, and the doctors concluded that exposure to synthetic cannabis was the likely source of the two poisoning cases. "The man later endorsed smoking three containers of a substance called 'Crazy Monkey' daily for several weeks, but would not disclose how his dog had been exposed," the researchers wrote in the case report, published in the July issue of the journal Clinical Toxicology. Play Video DEA cracks down on synthetic drugs in 29 states The investigators suspected that the dog had been poisoned as a result of eating the drug rather than inhaling second-hand smoke, Gugelmann said. The patient does not appear to have learned a lesson from this experience. Three months later, the report says he had to be "sedated, paralyzed, intubated, and admitted to another local hospital for seizures" after smoking the same product. Since the initial incident, which happened in November 2013, the patient ended up at emergency departments of different hospitals four times because of seizures from using "Crazy Monkey," Gugelmann said. Synthetic marijuana -- also known as Spice, K2, Skunk and other nicknames -- is a mix of plants and chemicals that produces mind-altering effects similar to marijuana, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "The structure [of synthetic marijuana] is very loosely based on THC," which is the main component of marijuana, Gugelmann said. Other side effects of smoking synthetic cannabis may include anxiety, delusions, psychosis, acute kidney injury, stroke and diffuse pulmonary hemorrhage -- life-threatening bleeding in the lungs. The researchers say the drugs first came to the attention of the medical community in 2006, but have likely been available online or in specialty shops since a couple of years before that. Synthetic marijuana is sometimes labeled "not for human consumption," the National Institute on Drug Abuse says, but this does not stop people from smoking it. Some manufacturers claim that the products are only to be used as incense, or they put "Do not smoke" labels on the products to evade possible legal hurdles, Gugelmann said. So why are some people still smoking Spice and similar products despite all the risks? One possible reason is that synthetic pot is almost impossible to detect in a traditional urine analysis, as the manufacturers keep changing the molecular content of the drug, Gugelmann explained. Users think they can get away with smoking it without getting caught. Synthetic cannabis also tends to be more energizing than natural marijuana, which is an effect that some users want, he said. Finally, human curiosity and the temptation to experiment may play a role. "People are always looking for the newest high," Gugelmann said. However, he stressed that because of the constantly changing molecular structure and the lack of reliable information regarding the exact ingredients of different types of the drug, synthetic cannabis can have unpredictable health consequences. "We don't know what effects they [different types of synthetic cannabis] are going to have," Gugelmann said. The case of the man and his dog seems frightening proof of that.

The implications of quantum theory (your computer operates on "the electron tunneling effect", which is a quantum phenomenon) are that it is virtually certain. "It has long been accepted that time flows in a linear manner, from beginning, to end. There is another way of understanding it, however, which is from the point of view as the experience of time being changes in probability states, as "actualisation", or what in quantum physics is termed "the collapse of the wave function". You may well be aware of how movies operate, projecting around 24 frames per second in a certain order, to simulate the appearance of movement. It appears seamless to us, except at times when some things, like the spokes of a wagon wheel, or the blades of a fan are rotating at similar speeds, or close to multiples of it. There are some movies and books with different pathways / alternate endings, and reality may well be exactly the same. The universe may be considered as a series of probability states, each slightly different than the other. As changes occur in those probability states, we perceive the occurrence of events, experienced through the never ending "now" moment, in a similar manner to how someone watching a movie perceives the flashing of many frames of still projections of pictures as motion, when no such actual motion is involved. From our point of view, the first probability state was the so called "big bang", or singularity which occurred around 13.7 billion years ago. A change took place in that initial state, in what, had we been there, we would have noted as occurring in less than one attosecond, over an immeasurably small distance. Another change took place, and another, and so on, until here you are now, following an almost infinite number of such changes, each occurring over smallest possible unit of distance, along that particular series of probability states leading to your particular "here" and "now". One of the implications of the above is that there is no real death; those "frames" continue to exist/always will exist; always have existed, even the "future" exists right now. It is the "playing", or "projecting" of those frames, or probability states being actualised in accordance with quantum physics that we experience as living our lives. Moreover, each time we make a decision, or any probability based quantum event takes place, the universe splits; one path leading on to the decision you made, and executed, and the other to an alternate, equally valid universe which we are now and forevermore incapable of perceiving". http://a-dogs-breakfast.8m.com/blank_5.html

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730479-Study-Social-Media-May-Be-Just-As-Addicting-As-Other-Vices-Drugs-and-Alcohol neversickanymore View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Senior Moderator Recovery Support Science & Technology -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2013 Location babysitting the argument in my head Posts 10,528 Today 06:37 Study: Social Media May Be Just As Addicting As Other Vices, Drugs and Alcohol July 26, 2014 (WWJ) — Many consider social media as a “serious hobby,” but a report from Harvard University explains that social media addiction can be just as problematic as any other addiction. The study shows that disclosing information about yourself via social media can trigger the same sensations as eating or drinking. Dr. Gerald Shiener of Birmingham specializes in addiction psychiatry and said that social media can be as addicting as any drug. “People gravitate to social media because it’s a way to seem like you’re contacting people while you take no risk,” Shiener said. “You sit at you computer, people can’t see how you look, people can’t see your tone of voice, whether you’re smiling or not and you can really control what you show — that’s very safe communication.” When it comes to young people, Shiener said that parents should be aware of what’s going on with their children. “They have to have rules in the house,” Shiener said. “No texting at the dinner table; a certain amount of time that has to be spent outside your room — I’m not very big on letting kids have their own computers in their own room. Let them us their computers in public areas — the house — so people can see what they’re doing. “Kids at that age shouldn’t have anything to hide.” Shiener pointed out that it isn’t just youngsters who get addicted to social media — adults also lose the ability to interact with people if exposed too much to social media. The Harvard report indicated that a person may be addicted if they post to social media in the middle of a crisis before calling for help or if they ignore the person sitting right next to them in favor of sending a post http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/07/...-and-drinking/

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730754-Denmark-to-look-at-decriminalising-drugs 27 Jul 2014 10:30 GMT+02:00 The WHO's surprising recommendation to decriminalise personal drug use has MPs planning to reevaluate Denmark's national drug policies. VIDEO: 'Denmark will definitely legalize weed' (07 Jul 14) Record year for drug busts: police (25 Jun 14) The World Health Organization’s (WHO) call for the decriminalisation of drugs will be taken up by Danish politicians in the autumn. In the WHO report, which focused on international HIV prevention, the UN agency encourages countries to stop criminalising the use of drugs. “Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalise injection and other use of drugs and, thereby, reduce incarceration,” the report read. The report’s recommendation, and Denmark’s overall approach to its national drug policy, will be on the political agenda when politicians return to Christiansborg following summer holiday. “I can go as far today as to say that I think WHO’s message is in line with what has been a Social Democratic position,” Flemming Møller Mortensen, the health spokesman for the governing Social Democrats, told Information. “I will take up a discussion with Parliament’s Health Committee [sundhedsudvalget] after summer holiday and will recommend that the committee carry out a hearing,” he added. The Social Democrats have had a very public split over drug policy. Copenhagen’s mayor Frank Jensen, the party’s vice chair, has vocally advocated for the legalisation of cannabis, while his party’s national leaders, including PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt, have repeatedly rejected his proposal. See also: 'Denmark will definitely legalise weed' Over in the camp of the left-wing Socialist People’s Party (SF), legal spokeswoman Karina Lorentzen said that Denmark’s current drug policies have failed. “I can’t see how our current approach has helped at all. On the contrary, we have created a very lucrative market for organised criminals,” she told Information. She pointed to Portugal’s success with decriminalising drugs. Since that country changed its drug policies in 2001, it has seen a sharp decrease in drug abuse. “Those types of models apparently offer an effective approach, and I just think that we have reached the limits of what can be achieved by using police and punishment as the means to fight this,” she said. On the other side of the political aisle, the Conservative party’s spokesman Tom Behnke said the party “was not resigned to decriminalisation”. “There is a good reason that it is illegal, and that is because it is dangerous to be on drugs. On the other hand, we do need to admit that there are people who take these drugs so we need to try to respond to that. The important thing is to have a good treatment program, so we can help people break their addictions,” he told Information. The Social Democrats’ Mortensen agreed that the health aspect of drug addiction should be given more weight. “It is true that here in Denmark, the health part has been a bit secondary in relation to the legal framework, and that is not the right way to tackle this development if we want to improvement the health aspect,” he said. According to the 2014 European Drug Report, the 35.6 percent of Danes who admit to having smoked cannabis in their lifetime is the highest proportion among European countries. Danes’ next drug of choice is amphetamines, with a lifetime prevalence of 6.6 percent, followed by cocaine at 5.2 percent. In June 2012, Denmark passed legislation allowing for legal injection rooms. The one that opened in Copenhagen’s Vesterbro district in August 2012 has widely been viewed as a success and led to similar clinics opening in Odense and Aarhus. The Danish Health and Medicines Authority (Sundhedsstyrelsen) gave the injection rooms the lion’s share of the credit for the fact that drug-related deaths have reached their lowest level in nearly 20 years. http://www.thelocal.dk/20140727/denmark-to-look-at-decriminalising-drugs

I'm not anti Semitic, but anti Zionist; I used to support Israel back in the times of the 6 day war, but now realise that the oppressed has become the oppressor. Remove all Jewish settlements from the West Bank! The disproportionate response to the rocket attacks by Hamas are reminiscent of those by the Nazis in response to attacks by the French resistance in WW2. The Israelis are in grave danger of becoming the very people they despised most.

27 Jul 2014 Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI) http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154 Author: Robert H. Brown DRUG ADDICTION OFTEN A FAMILY ISSUE, TOO I have worked in the addiction field in Hawaii for 35 years and facilitated the Family Program at Hina Mauka Recovery Center in Kaneohe for 12 years. I know well the impact that addiction has on the family and the suffering that families experience while their addicted family member is focusing on their drug of choice. So I read with interest last month's article, "Epidemic Coming," by Rob Perez ( Star-Advertiser, June 22 ). Whether an epidemic is coming or is already here, I certainly agree that drug addiction and drug abuse are very serious public health problems. While treatment programs focus on the addict, it is also important to understand that addiction is a significant issue for families and has serious consequences. Families struggling with addiction need help with the stress and chaos that addiction brings. People attending the family classes at Hina Mauka shared how they struggled with feelings of shame, hurt, anger and confusion related to having an addict in the family. They said this made it difficult to reach out for help and, as a result, by the time they started attending the class and spoke openly about the issues drug use created in their families, they were stressed out, isolated and exhausted. We found that it was common for family members to put so much time and energy into trying to help the addict that their own life started to shrink, and they began to lose sight of their own needs and interests. Many times it was the non-addicted family members that were seeing a doctor for some condition related to the stress of addiction in their family. There is a temptation for family members to think they must be instrumental in creating a cure for the addict. We found this was especially true for parents of addicts, whether the addict is 16 or 46. Family members would try harder and harder to find a solution, as they believed it was their job as parents to find the key to overcoming their loved one's addiction. Trying to fix the addict is a trap for members of the family because it prevents them from seeking the type of assistance that might be helpful, both to themselves and the addict. We found that what was most helpful was for family members to learn the skills needed to be able to respond to addiction in a healthy way. These include learning to create and maintain healthy boundaries with the addict; finding and using appropriate support; managing the loss of trust; giving up trying to control outcomes for the addict; and improve communication with the addict and other family members. Once these skills are learned, many family members can make important progress in improving their lives and their relationship with their addicted family member. They can learn to stop reacting from fear and instead respond to the addict with a plan that is based on accurate information and new skills. It is important for family members to understand that they can begin their own process of recovery regardless of whether the addict is willing to seek treatment. When they decide to take back their own lives and make changes, the addicts take notice - and this often leads to the addicts adjusting their own behaviors. Robert H. Brown, of Kailua, co-authored "Families and Addiction: How to Stop the Chaos and Restore Family Balance." http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v14/n622/a05.html?397