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http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730199-History-of-Heroin-Ten-Facts toothpastedog View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Dec 2010 Location Fascist Valley, USA Posts 2,174 Blog Entries21 Yesterday 08:16 Ten Startling Facts About the History of Heroin Whatever you hear about the drug now, remember that it has been used and perceived in lots of different ways throughout its illustrious past. Originally Posted by Keri Blakinger | 7/21/14 Today, we think of it as the highly illegal brown (and sometimes white) powder you score from some shady dude on the corner. But heroin wasn’t always viewed that way. After its discovery in the latter half of the 19th century, it was hailed as something of a wonder drug. Heroin’s fall in status to scourge of society didn’t happen overnight, though, and the drug’s history—and our dramatically evolving views of it—took some surprising twists. What got me into this? Before my arrest in 2010 during my last semester in college, I was addicted to heroin—and oddly, I enjoyed researching it while high. Let’s just say I got a lot of research done. 1. Heroin possession and use were not always criminal. In fact, it was perfectly legal for the first 50 years of its existence, after its discovery in 1874. In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act made the recreational use of opiates and coca leaf derivatives illegal in the US—one of the first federal efforts to regulate nonmedical drug use. But in practice the act just meant that users now had to get the drug from a doctor. Ten years later, the 1924 Heroin Act made the drug completely illegal, even for medical purposes. Other countries soon followed suit. Mexico prohibited heroin in 1924, Costa Rica in 1928, Poland in 1931, Spain in 1933 and Bulgaria in 1934. Although the UK made the drug illegal in 1926, doctors could—and still can—prescribe it for withdrawal. Denmark and Switzerland also allow the prescription use of heroin for addiction treatment, while in Portugal the drug is illegal but the possession of less than a 10-day supply is not considered a criminal offense. 2. Heroin was originally called tetra acetyl morphine. Although that’s quite a mouthful, the chemical name used today—diacetylmorphine—is still pretty ungainly. Why the change? Basically, the original name was the result of a slight scientific misunderstanding. In 1805, an uneducated pharmacist’s assistant named Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner isolated opium’s active organic alkaloid compound by dissolving the opium in acid and neutralizing it with ammonia. He named his new compound morphine, in homage to Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. Serturner published his work in 1806, but initially his findings were largely ignored. Once people finally paid attention, however, the drug caught on in a big way. Merck began manufacturing morphine commercially in 1827, and within three years Britain was importing 22,000 pounds of opium per year in order to make it. Despite the morphine’s popularity, scientists didn’t accurately understand its structure. In fact, in 1874, when a British chemist named C.R. Alder Wright first synthesized what we now call heroin, it was still believed that morphine had a double empirical structure. Thus, when Wright was actually adding two acetyl groups per molecule, he thought he was adding four per molecule—and so he named it tetra acetyl morphine to indicate that it required the addition of four acetyl groups onto morphine. Then, in 1890, the German scientist W. Dankwortt tried making heroin using a different method. When he heated anhydrous morphine with excess acetyl chloride, Dankwortt discovered that morphine actually had a single empirical structure and thus only required two acetyl group (di) instead of four (tetra). That’s why today the chemical name is diacetylmorphine. 3. Bayer started selling the wonder drug under the brand name “Heroin” in 1898. Yep, that’s right, Bayer, the company that first brought us Alka-Seltzer and aspirin. For the first two decades after its first synthesis, heroin had been neglected. Then, Bayer scientist Heinrich Dreser seized on the drug’s potential. After testing it on humans, animals and himself, Dreser had it ready for widespread distribution by 1898. One year later Bayer was already producing a full ton of heroin. The company stopped making heroin in 1913, the year before the government started regulating it. 4. The narcotic’s name comes from the German word for heroic. When Bayer began testing the drug on its workers in the late 1890s, they loved it (no surprise) and said it made them feel heroic—”heroisch.” At the time, the term was used to refer to any particularly strong drug, and even before its effects were well understood, heroin’s strength was readily apparent. Hence, Bayer trademarked “Heroin” and began marketing it worldwide. 5. Heroin was once marketed to—or at least for—kids. At a time when tuberculosis was one of the top three causes of death and 30% of deaths occurred in children under age five, any substance that appeared to improve respiratory health by cutting coughing and easing breathing was bound to be popular. Thus, Bayer launched a child-focused marketing campaign. In 2011, a watchdog group called Coalition Against Bayer Dangers dug up ads from a 1912 Bayer campaign in Spain. One, which shows two unattended children reaching for a bottle of heroin, makes it pretty clear who the intended consumer is. 6. In the late 1800s, most opiate addicts were upper- and middle-class women. One of the main ways that heroin and other opiates were sold was as an active ingredient in cough syrup, which women bought for their medicine cabinets and used for almost any ailment; as a result, they ended up comprising a large portion of the addicted population. Surveys conducted between 1878 and 1885 showed that well over half of US opiate addicts were affluent women. The rate of addiction was almost triple what it would become a century later, during the so-called heroin epidemic of the mid-1990s. 7. Heroin was believed to be less addictive than morphine. In fact, at one point heroin was even used to treat morphine addiction. When Wright first synthesized heroin, he was looking for a non-addictive version of morphine. Later, when Dreser began testing the substance, he concluded that it was not habit-forming. (This error may help explain why, by the end of his life, Dreser was reportedly addicted to it himself.) In 1900, the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal wrote, “It possesses many advantages over morphine…. It’s not hypnotic, and there’s no danger of acquiring a habit.” Whoops! 8. The term “junkies” was first applied to heroin users in the 1920s. As heroin’s legal status began changing in the previous decade, addicts in New York City began collecting and selling scrap metal to support themselves and their habit. They spent their days scavenging junk and thus were called junkies. (Before they were called junkies, they were often referred to instead as “heroinists” in medical literature.) 9. Heroin was once massive in Egypt. Now, Egypt isn’t a place particularly associated with the drug, but in the 1920s, out of a total population of 14 million, an estimated 500,000 people—3.5% of all Egyptians—were addicted to heroin. By contrast, in 2011 only about 1.6% of Americans said they had even tried it. It all started in 1916 when cocaine and then heroin were first sold for nonmedical consumption in Egypt. Heroin was sold at rock-bottom prices and caught on like wildfire. Contractors were even paying their workers in heroin. Heroin use spread through all classes of society, peaked in 1929 and then declined due to a combination of new international regulations and the closure of three Turkish heroin-producing factories. 10. It’s widely known that heroin use was huge among American soldiers in Vietnam—but not everyone learned the right lessons from this. In 1971, two congressman reported that 15% of US serviceman in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. As a result, President Nixon created the Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention to address the problem. The head of that office, Jerome Jaffe, contacted psychiatric researcher Lee Robbins to conduct a study. Robbins found even more dramatic results: 20% of soldiers self-identified as addicts. All were kept in Vietnam to dry out before coming home. When Robbins followed up with them after they had been back in the US for a year, she found that only 5% had become addicted again. By contrast, Americans addicted to heroin who dried out in the US had a relapse rate of 95%. One lesson of this study is that changing the physical, or at least social, environment in which addiction occurs can greatly improve treatment outcomes. Another is that the vast majority of people who have problematic use of a substance, even one as powerful as heroin, can resolve it without relapse. http://www.substance.com/ten-startli...f-heroin/9292/ I would hope most of this is not so new or startling anymore, and as much as I hate "10 blablabla fact that will blablabla you" articles for some reason I enjoyed this one. God only knows... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 S.J.P. View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2011 Location Montreal, Canada Posts 777 Yesterday 08:27 Neat, I didn't know that it was originally called tetra acetyl morphine. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 toothpastedog View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Dec 2010 Location Fascist Valley, USA Posts 2,174 Blog Entries21 Yesterday 08:28 That was news to me too! Cool bit of dope trivia huh -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 Trying2Iso View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Oct 2013 Posts 207 Yesterday 08:35 if i was in Nam i would have shot up too... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #5 Waffle Sock View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Feb 2014 Location Planet Nibiru Posts 1,753 Today 01:31 Great read. Thanks for posting. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #6 ro4eva View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2004 Location Aiding my comrades in mythbusting prohibitionist propaganda - one cliche at a time. Posts 2,797 Blog Entries8 Today 09:23 Originally Posted by toothpastedog One lesson of this study is that changing the physical, or at least social, environment in which addiction occurs can greatly improve treatment outcomes. Another is that the vast majority of people who have problematic use of a substance, even one as powerful as heroin, can resolve it without relapse. It's mind-boggling to me how and why this appears to work, however, I can testify from personal experience that it does in fact work when it comes to habitual use of µ-opioid agonist substances/drugs, and when the person is physically dependent on it. Although I should note, my opinion is based solely on my personal, first-hand experience. Therefore, I can't say for certain that it'll help everyone. Also, it's definitely not a magic bullet, so to speak. More specifically, while I did notice that it was easier to stop, it still wasn't easy overall, just noticeably easier when compared to attempting to stop while at home for example. So yeah... P.S. - Cool article, didn't know about a couple of those facts. I learn something new everyday on BL

http://www.voanews.com/content/after-decades-of-silence-drug-users-gain-seat-at-aids-conference/1964892.html Anita Powell Last updated on: July 25, 2014 2:27 AM MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — Intravenous drug users at the International AIDS Conference say their particular needs have been overlooked in broad efforts to stem the spread of the virus. But that has changed this year, as a group of drug users has been allowed space in the venue. They hope their presence and their voices will lead to greater progress in the fight against AIDS. Ruth says she has heard every argument against her longtime heroin use. “People who use drugs aren’t aliens. They aren’t bent on self-destruction or interested in punching your grandmother for her TV,” Ruth said. “We’re just all making our way in this world as best we can, and some people find that drugs help them do that, and some people don’t. And I really don’t think it should be the business of those who don’t to mess with the business of those who do.” Ruth asked us to leave her surname out of this story because heroin is illegal in her native Australia. IV drug users Most people view so-called recreational drugs as potentially deadly addictions. But, Ruth argues, that does not mean that regular IV drug users like her deserve to be marginalized in discussions about their elevated risk of acquiring HIV. And so, for the first time, after years of lobbying, a small booth in the corner at this year’s conference hall proclaims: People Who Use Drugs. A member of the community also addressed the conference during the closing ceremony. The drug users’ stand is adorned with eye-searing paintings of the five-pointed cannabis leaf, the rounded coca leaf and a splotch of bright pink something that Ruth says is a type of opium poppy. The booth, she is quick to point out, does not dispense any illegal drugs. But, she says, it provides visibility for a large segment of the HIV-positive community - one that was among the epidemic’s first victims, but which remains nearly silent in discussions about the illness. Ruth says that the medical community should consider the particular circumstances of drug users, instead of flatly condemning drugs. She says the AIDS community is slowly coming around to this idea. “I think it’s becoming more and more difficult for the international HIV and AIDS community to exclude drug users. It’s just becoming silly to do so if we’re going to tackle this epidemic, we need to be looking at the environments that allow HIV to flourish, and certainly criminalization of both sex work and drug use are the best friends of HIV,” she says. New infections Susie McLean, a senior adviser on HIV and drug use at the International HIV/AIDS Alliances, agrees, noting that if you exclude data from sub-Saharan Africa, 30 percent of all new HIV infections worldwide are among drug users. “They’re not a marginal group in terms of the HIV dynamics,” McLean says. “They’re a primary group. But one of the issues that concerns us that we have tried to get across at this conference, certainly the amount of funding that those populations receive and that the organizations that are serving those populations.” That may change following a new recommendation from the World Health Organization on the use of Naloxone, a lifesaving drug that can reverse overdoses of drugs like heroin and methadone. But the drug is controversial: some critics argue that drug users will view the antidote as an insurance policy of sorts, and become more reckless. McLean says her group supports Naloxone, and also wants people to change the way they see drug users. “Drug users are people like us. They’re our brothers and our sisters, our mothers and our fathers, our sons and our daughters. And we think that a lot of the problem that goes on in public policy is what I tend to call “othering” -- in which we say that people who use drugs are other people over there, and that they’re bad,” McLean says. “And so what we try to stress is that people who use drugs are people like us. Sometimes they need help and support, always they need human rights. And the more we respond in that kind of way that’s about health and rights, the more possible it is to end HIV,” she adds. Ruth says she wants, as her ultimate goal, the decriminalization of some illegal drugs - she argues that the criminalization of drugs is driven by politics. And like many other drug decriminalization advocates, she says oversight and regulation will make drugs safer to use and decrease the impact of illegal drug syndicates. That is a fight that she may or may not win - but for the first time ever at a major AIDS conference, she has been welcomed into the fight against AIDS.

http://www.tripme.co.nz/forums/showthread.php?12148-Hunting-For-the-Marijuana-Dopamine-Connection 22-07-2014, 11:03 AM #1 Neo View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message Add as Contact Administrator Join Date Oct 2006 Posts 5,218 Thanks 3,242 Thanked 2,928 Times in 1,066 Posts Hunting For the Marijuana-Dopamine Connection Why do heavy pot smokers show a blunted reaction to stimulants? Most drugs of abuse increase dopamine transmission in the brain, and indeed, this is thought to be the basic neural mechanism underlying the rewarding effects of addictive drugs. But in the case of marijuana, the dopamine connection is not so clear-cut. Evidence has been found both for and against the notion of increases in dopamine signaling during marijuana intoxication. Marijuana has always been the odd duck in the pond, research-wise. Partly this is due to longstanding federal intransigence toward cannabis research, and partly it is because cannabis, chemically speaking, is damnably complicated. The question of marijuana’s effect on dopamine transmission came under strong scrutiny a few years ago, when UK researchers began beating the drums for a theory that chronic consumption of strong cannabis can not only trigger episodes of psychosis, but can be viewed as the actual cause of schizophrenia in some cases. It sounded like a new version of the old reefer madness, but this time around, the researchers raising their eyebrows had a new fact at hand: Modern marijuana is several times stronger than marijuana in use decades ago. Selective breeding for high THC content has produced some truly formidable strains of pot, even if cooler heads have slowly prevailed on the schizophrenia issue. One of the reports helping to bank the fires on this notion appeared recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Joanna S. Fowler of the Biosciences Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Director Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and other researchers compared brain dopamine reactivity in healthy controls and heavy marijuana users, using PET scans. For measuring dopamine reactivity, the researchers chose methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin, the psychostimulant frequently prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Ritalin basically functions as a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, meaning that the use of Ritalin leads to increased concentrations of synaptic dopamine. In the study, heavy marijuana users showed a blunted reaction to the stimulant Ritalin due to reductions in brain dopamine release, according to the research. “The potency of methylphenidate (MP) was also reported to be stronger by the controls than by the marijuana abusers." And in marijuana abusers, Ritalin caused an increase in craving for marijuana and cigarettes. “We found that marijuana abusers display attenuated dopamine responses to MP including reduced decreases in striatal distribution volumes,” according to the study’s conclusion. “The significantly attenuated behavioral and striatal distribution volumes response to MP in marijuana abusers compared to controls, indicates reduced brain reactivity to dopamine stimulation that in the ventral striatum might contribute to negative emotionality and drug craving.” Down-regulation from extended abuse is another complicated aspect of this: “Although, to our knowledge, this is the first clinical report of an attenuation of the effects of MP in marijuana abusers, a preclinical study had reported that rats treated chronically with THC exhibited attenuated locomotor responses to amphetamine. Such blunted responses to MP could reflect neuroadaptations from repeated marijuana abuse, such as downregulation of DA transporters.” Animal studies have suggested that these dopamine alterations are reversible over time. Another recent study came to essentially the same conclusions. Writing in Biological Psychiatry, a group of British researchers led by Michael A.P. Bloomfield and Oliver D. Howes analyzed dope smokers who experienced psychotic symptoms when they were intoxicated. They looked for evidence of a link between cannabis use and psychosis and concluded: “These findings indicate that chronic cannabis use is associated with reduced dopamine synthesis capacity and question the hypothesis that cannabis increases the risk of psychotic disorders by inducing the same dopaminergic alterations seen in schizophrenia.” And again, the higher the level of current cannabis use, the lower the level of striatal dopamine synthesis capacity. As for mechanisms, the investigators ran up against similar causation problems: “One explanation for our findings is that chronic cannabis use is associated with dopaminergic down-regulation. This might underlie amotivation and reduced reward sensitivity in chronic cannabis users. Alternatively, preclinical evidence suggests that low dopamine neurotransmission may predispose an individual to substance use.” The findings of diminished responses to Ritalin in heavy marijuana users may have clinical implications, suggesting that marijuana abusers with ADHD may experience reduced benefits from stimulant medications. Photo Credit: http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remove Your Thanks The Following User Says Thank You to Neo For This Useful Post: CLICKHEREx (Today) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yesterday, 12:15 PM #2 Drael View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message Add as Contact Highly Valued TripMe Senior Contributor Join Date Sep 2007 Posts 1,648 Thanks 463 Thanked 1,036 Times in 456 Posts Weed in NZInteresting article. Although worth pointing out that dopamines pleasure inducing effects are now thought to be indirect, via the beta-endorphin (opiate) system, rather than a direct property of dopamine. Dopamine is increasingly being thought of as related to problem solving and motivation, rather than as a simple pleasure center, with pleasure effects instead mediated by the opiate system, albiet with a variety of drugs through the dopamine system. Cannabis is indeed very complex. Not as complex as booze though. Even the full mechanism of simpler drugs like MDMA and LSD are not fully understood. Partly of course because neurobiologists have abandoned the information revealing bio-assay approach of shulgin etc, which combined with the more clinical research informs one a lot more about how drugs are acting. It's a bit like studying the moon via a telescope, rather than flying there.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2014/06/04/ssris-during-pregnancy-tied-to-uptick-in-autism/70800.html By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 3, 2014 SSRIs During Pregnancy Tied to Uptick in Autism A new study suggests using common antidepressant medications during pregnancy may contribute to a higher risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in children, although this risk is still very small. Experts say results from past studies of prenatal use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and ASD risk have not been consistent. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter whose use by the brain is altered during depression and modified by SSRI use, and has been shown to play an important role in brain development. An ongoing challenge in this line of research is trying to differentiate the potential risk of the medication on the fetus, as compared to the risk on the mother and the fetus from the effects associated with the condition for which the medication was prescribed (most commonly depression). Based on past studies, both SSRIs and genetic factors associated with depression are likely associated with greater risk of ASD. This new study, published online ahead of print last month in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, suggests that under-reporting of maternal depression — if not properly considered in analyses — may influence results of studies trying to address this question. In the study, researchers from Drexel University analyzed large population-based registers of nearly 750,000 births in Denmark from 1997 through 2006. They found that about 1.5 percent of children born to women who had taken an SSRI during pregnancy were diagnosed with ASD, compared to about 0.7 percent of children born to an otherwise similar group of women not taking the medication. “We found a twofold increased risk for ASD associated with in utero exposure to SSRIs compared to the unexposed reference group,” said lead author Nicole Gidaya, Ph.D. “More importantly, in our analysis we accounted for under-reporting of maternal depression in the register. This suggests that under-reporting of maternal depression may be a limitation in approaches previously used in the other studies.” Gidaya, who performed this study while a doctoral student in the Drexel University School of Public Health, noted that “if the increased ASD risk we saw here is real, it is important to realize that the number of ASD cases that could be prevented by reducing SSRI exposure in pregnancy still represents only a small fraction of overall cases of ASD.” The researchers further advised caution in interpreting the results in practice. Because of the challenges of distinguishing effects of medications from those of the condition indicating their use, more research in larger study populations will be needed to confirm the findings. In addition, the decision whether or not to use an SSRI in pregnancy is a complex one; pregnant women and their doctors need to consider women’s physical and mental health needs as well as other pregnancy-associated risks. That includes risks associated with untreated depression both during and after pregnancy. However, the research team believes that the greater value of this finding is to direct further attention on understanding the mechanisms by which in utero SSRI exposure might influence the developing brain. The authors of the current study point out that there is still a need for more population studies of possible associations between maternal SSRI use and autism, in light of the limitations of the present study and the conflicting results within the field’s previous studies of the question. They say future studies should use a large population sample where there is good quality data about exposure to medication, mental health diagnoses as well as ASD diagnoses. “As we complete research in our attempts to understand autism’s causes we continue to realize that there are likely many genetic and non-genetic contributors,” said Craig Newschaffer, Ph.D., director of the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute and the study’s senior author. “We must begin trying to map these multiple risk factors on to common pathways, so that these pathways can be a focus in our effort to prevent the impairment associated with ASD. Pathways involving the brain’s serotonin system are still one viable candidate.” Source: Drexel University

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/there-are-huge-hidden-costs-of-alcohol-and-drug-problems-in-australian-workplaces-2014-7 James A. Pitts, Odyssey House Yesterday at 4:27 PM Flickr/ Zach Klein As an employer or a work colleague, would you know if someone in your workplace was struggling with an alcohol or other drug problem, or a mental illness, or both? In severe instances the warning signs might be obvious. However, people often don’t reach out for help at work, meaning addiction may not be identified as the cause of their lower productivity, sick days or erratic behaviour. Yet 62 per cent of people who misuse alcohol and other drugs at harmful levels are in full-time employment, which accounts for approximately 300,000 workers in Australia. In addition, the incidence of co-existing mental illness among people with drug problems is rising at an alarming pace. At Odyssey House, one of Australia’s largest alcohol and other drug rehabilitation services, more than half of clients also have a mental health problem, a ten-fold increase in ten years. Given the economic and personal burden of substance misuse and associated mental illness, it is vital that workplaces give top priority to identifying and/or supporting workers suffering with addiction-related problems, or at the very least to promoting a safe workplace culture. The figures alone are compelling. The annual economic cost of alcohol and illicit drug misuse to Australian society is estimated at $23.7 billion. Leading researchers Collins and Lapsley found that alcohol misuse cost society $15.3 billion and illicit drugs cost $8.2 billion, while alcohol and illicit drugs acting together accounted for a further $1.1 billion in the in the 2004/05 financial year. The International Labour Organisation estimates 20 to 25 per cent of all occupational injuries are a result of alcohol and other drug use. Collins and Lapsley (2002) estimate a $5.5 billion loss of national productive capacity in the paid workforce as a result of drug-attributable death and sickness. Other studies cite alcohol use as responsible for 5 per cent of all workplace deaths and up to 11 per cent of non-fatal injuries (Pidd and Roche, 2013). The Australian Drug Foundation says the annual cost of absenteeism alone due to alcohol is estimated at up to $1.2billion! So what factors contribute to alcohol, other drug misuse and mental health problems in the workplace, and what can employers do to reduce the likelihood of these problems? Harmful use of alcohol (and other drugs) occurs at all levels in organisations and is more prevalent in some industries than others. The focus on alcohol is because illicit drug use is not a major factor in Australian workplaces, although it is increasing (the exception is the transport industry where the use of amphetamine type stimulants has been reported by some drivers). There are differing explanations for the way workforce factors impact on the consumption patterns of workers, but a unifying and consistent explanation is workforce culture. Additional factors include: Workplace stressors including shift work The work environment Poorly designed equipment Fear of losing one’s job Conflict with a supervisor Peer pressure Discrimination and/or prejudice Personal stressors including marital or personal relationship problems and financial problems Various adverse consequences in the workplace occur due to the use/misuse of alcohol and other drugs. Alcohol affects depth perception, estimation of speed, reaction time and eye/motor coordination and concentration. Consequently, the use of alcohol can increase the probability of people injuring them themselves or others because of compromised reflexes and judgement. It can affect productivity because it causes an individual to work at minimal capacity which increases the workload for others, lowering productivity and compromising product and service quality. Even low blood alcohol levels can introduce added risk into situations that would already be considered hazardous. Personal consequences and costs to employees of drug misuse may include: loss of job; loss in wages; diminished physical and mental health; medical expenses; difficulty meeting financial commitments; demotion at work; interpersonal problems with family, friends and work mates; and loss of self-esteem. This can set up a vicious cycle where the consequences of a person’s drug misuse and/or mental illness add to their burden. Work mates can suffer too, such as from: an unsafe work environment caused by a drinking or drug-using colleague; the need to cover for a colleague’s poor work performance; the embarrassment if forced to “dob in” a mate; and disputes. The responsibility of employers regarding alcohol, other drug use and mental health problems can be difficult to determine. In most cases employers and HR departments don’t have enough information to attribute staff absenteeism to alcohol and other drug misuse. Also, most alcohol and other drug misuse occurs outside of work hours. And, although we are making headway in encouraging people to seek help for alcohol and other drug dependence and mental illness, affected people still feel significant shame, guilt and fear in disclosing their problems to loved ones, let alone employers or work mates. However, employers can play a significant part in addressing the role their workplace plays in people’s harmful use of alcohol (and other drugs). A helpful stance is to adopt a failsafe duty-of-care approach whereby employers create a positive workforce culture and foster an environment where employees feel they can speak up and seek support for their problems without retribution. Many larger organisations offer a confidential Employee Assistance Program for staff and their family members to seek employer-funded professional help. Guidance is also available from government. For example, the Workplace Health and Safety Act of NSW, 2011, describes what is “reasonably practical” in relation to an employer’s duty of care to ensure health and safety. Work Cover NSW’s booklet “Alcohol and other Drugs In the Workplace” outlines how to identify alcohol and other drug-related users and how to develop an alcohol and other drug policy. By the time people come to us at Odyssey House seeking professional help, most have been struggling with alcohol or other drug dependence for many years and have reached rock bottom, having perhaps lost jobs, income, homes and family connections. The challenge for Australian employers is to take responsibility for the workplace they create and promote employees’ welfare to reduce the likelihood of problems occurring… and to support those brave enough to step up and admit they need help. With billions of workplace dollars and thousands of lives on the line, the stakes are high and the potential benefits are enormous. People seeking help for alcohol and other drug dependence, including those with a co-existing mental illness, can contact Odyssey House on 02 9281 5144 (no referral is necessary) or www.odysseyhouse.com.au, or the Australian Drug Information Network www.adin.org.au. Photo: supplied. James A. Pitts is the CEO of leading rehabilitation service provider Odyssey House. James has worked in the field of alcohol and other drugs since 1978 and has headed Odyssey House NSW since 1984. Highly respected in the Australian and international treatment sectors and the wider community, James is a founding member and board director of the Australasian Therapeutic Communities Association. He has contributed to state and national drug policy through various boards, working parties and expert committees and was a delegate to the Australia 2020 Summit. He is often called upon to speak publicly and in the media about alcohol and other drug issues.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730170-A-Buddhist-pathway-to-freedom-from-addiction?p=12493237#post12493237 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 10,465 Today 02:37 A Buddhist pathway to freedom from addiction By Wallace Baine 07/22/2014 Addiction is one of the most bedeviling and ruinous torments of the human experience. And for millions of those trapped in this cycle of suffering, the famed 12-step program established by Alcoholics Anonymous and its affiliated organizations has been an effective way out. But, for many people, the heavily religious, specifically Christian cast of 12-step programs can get in the way of treatment. Writer and teacher Noah Levine points to another option: Buddhism. For the past decade, since the publication of his revelatory memoir "Dharma Punx," Levine has been one of the country's most prominent Buddhist writers. His latest book, "Refuge Recovery" (HarperOne, $16.99, 288 pages) takes on the topic of addiction, as a kind of guidebook for an effective addiction-treatment program based on fundamental Buddhist practices and precepts. Levine offers the "Refuge Recovery" path, he says, without casting any negative light toward Al-Anon and 12-step. "I have a lot of gratitude (for 12-step)," he says. ADAPTING BUDDHIST TEACHINGS As outlined in "Dharma Punx," Levine experienced a youth rife with drugs, alcohol and incarceration. "I have nothing bad to say about that (12-step) approach," he says. "But it is a theistic spiritual system that depends on an external higher power. Now, that resonates to the core of a lot of people. A God-based philosophy is particularly great for Christian-minded people. But what about the people who don't believe in God?" Levine, 43, grew up in Santa Cruz, the son of well-known poet and Buddhist teacher Stephen Levine. He later studied with well-known Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. He moved away from Santa Cruz in the late 1990s, and since settling in Los Angeles, he's been working to establish a Buddhist path to the treatment of addiction. The book adapts the Four Noble Truths of Buddhist teaching to dealing with addiction. Given that transcending suffering is at the center of Buddhist philosophy, Levine says that Buddhism is a natural way to address the problem. The "Refuge Recovery" way, like 12-step, emphasizes self-honesty, abstinence and community. "There is an educational component to it," says Levine. "People want to know what Buddhism has to offer, and ... this is a clear and detailed map out of addiction." SPREADING ACROSS THE COUNTRY The book also tells the stories of others who have escaped addiction through meditation and other Buddhist practices. The Buddhist approach outlined in "Refuge Recovery" came from Levine's own struggles with addiction. "The seeds were germinating even back in 1988," he says, "when I was in Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall trying to figure out a way out." Levine says that, for the most part, he left out his own story of addiction in the new book because "I didn't want this to be about me" and because his story has been told in many of his other books, which include "Against the Stream" and "The Heart of the Revolution." The program is beginning to spread in communities across the country. "It's growing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Seattle -- up and down the West Coast. But we're also seeing it take hold in unlikely places, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Atlanta, Richmond. "I have no intention to control this in any way," he says. "It's a peer-led process. People change the format to fit their own communities. People are taking ownership of it, and it's led to quite a bit of excitement." http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci...from-addiction .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ......................................... I use many principals and from budaism as well as many other gems from other schools of ancient wisdom in my recovery. Changing the way I think and the thus the way I look at perceive the world has been one of the strongest cornerstones to my recovery. Im glad this aproach is catching on as I think its spot on. RECOVERY FORUMS ~~~ADDICTION GUIDE~~~ CONTACT ME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 toothpastedog View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Dec 2010 Location Fascist Valley, USA Posts 2,174 Blog Entries21 Today 07:32 ^Mindfulness (any of it's forms, whatever you want to call it - clarity, understanding, acceptance, self awareness, etc. etc.) is really necessary to succeed long term in recovery and to live a happy, fulfilling life. It's like the part that is missing from most confrontational or motivation therapies, especially abstinence based, 12-step or CBT oriented programs. At some point one has to focus not on avoidance or denial, but simply recognizing whatever the issue at hand might be, and moving on (to something better). I respect 12-step groups and whatnot, as well as what they have to offer and the fact they're widespread and free. However, I have a lot of issues with how they're prioritized over other (for many more effective) forms of treatment as some gold standard of treatment that everyone can or should be able to benefit from. Bullshit. AA, for instance, if like any therapist or doctor (or other form of treatment) - it can sometimes take a long time to find a good one, a good group and/or sponsor that you work well with. For some it never happens, for a few it happens rather quickly, but it's no different from trying a good therapist. Finding what one's own path can be the most challenging part of the picture. And, frankly, I will say that most groups don't necessarily support even that (as they generally are centered on the confrontational interview approach to therapy that requires rule following and conformity at their core, which again dose benefit some, but certainly, again, not all. Sorry I'm repeating myself now... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 CLICKHEREx View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join DateSep 2012 Posts114Today 17:38 Many people are constitutionally unable to meditate. Most people who are able to follow instructions recorded in their own voice are able to use Yoga Nidra, however. YOGA NIDRA: (actually a meditative practice; no bodily flexibility is needed, and no asanas / special positions are involved) The mind can be like a naughty child: what we tell it to do; it won't! So sit, or recline comfortably in a room, which is neither cold nor too warm, in dim light, but not in pitch darkness, with fingertips pointed upwards, not touching anything (this minimises tactile input). Take plenty of time with each section: to hurry in this exercise is to completely miss the point. If others are involved, take even longer (ask later whether they felt hurried, and adjust, next time). Focus all your awareness on your right big toe................... then the other toes of the right foot.............. then that foot............. the ankle............. the calf.............. the knee............... the thigh.............. Then left big toe...........then other left toes..........then that foot...........the ankle.............the calf.............the knee............the thigh........... Then the right thumb...........then other fingers of the right hand............then the right wrist............the forearm...........the elbow............the upper arm............the right shoulder. Then the left thumb..............then the other fingers of the left hand............then the wrist..............the forearm..............the elbow..............the upper arm................then the left shoulder................then the head................then the chest.................then the abdomen................... Then, focus your attention on any sounds you can hear; aeroplanes, traffic noise, children, or dogs barking in the distance................. Then refocus your awareness on your right big toe....................the other toes, and repeat that sequence exactly as before. Next, focus your awareness on the thoughts which come into your mind. Now is not the time to follow those thoughts; just be aware of, and note them. Then refocus your attention on your right big toe, and go through that sequence again..................... Next, refocus on anything you can hear.................. Then, once again, on your right big toe, and repeat that sequence. Then refocus on the thoughts coming into your mind..................... Keep repeating this process for around 20 minutes, at least. Eventually, the mind will tire of this, and reach a state of calm. If you are tired, or physically fatigued, you may find yourself falling asleep. You may then go through the process again. If it occurs regularly, however, ensure you are getting adequate sleep, and not running a "sleep deficit", like so many people in modern Western society, who are materially rich, but time poor. Try practising it earlier in the day, when you are alert, and rested. Otherwise, it should be regarded as an attempt by the negative part of your mind to resist change, which it regards as moving into unknown territory: a frightening prospect, for some people. Exercise determination, and persevere with the process. ~~~ ................. indicates where pauses should be used, to give people plenty of time to perform the recorded instruction.

Dr. John Cannell, of http://vitaminDcouncil.org believes that low levels of cholecalciferol / vitamin D3 in pregnant, and nursing women is a major factor, which appears to be supported by the fact that there has been a huge increase in the rate of autistic spectrum disorders diagnosed, following public health campaigns about the hazards of sun exposure causing skin cancer*, and advice to cover up, and use sunscreens, which block not only the harmful UVA, but also the healthy (in reasonable amounts) UVB. He theorises that oestrogen & progesterone in females may be exerting a protective effect on those deficient in the vital hormonal substrate vitamin D, which is necessary for hundreds of biochemical reactions in the body. View http://your-mental-health.weebly.com/w.html for some of his posts, as well as info on the Gluten Free/Casein Free diet, low in oxalates, which reportedly helps autistic children. * Dr. Mercola states that sensible sun exposure actually decreases the risk of skin cancer. Increase in Melanoma Skin Cancer NOT Caused by Sun Exposure articles.mercola.com/.../deadly-melanoma-not-due-vitamin-d-deficiency.aspx ‎ Similar 20 Nov 2011 ... Melanoma skin cancer rates are increasing but it is NOT because of sun ...Vitamin D's protective effect against cancer works in multiple ways, including: ..... Dr. Mercola cautions that people living and working in caves might ... Can Sunshine Decrease Your Risk of Melanoma Skin Cancer? articles.mercola.com/sites/.../vitamin-d-lowers-melonoma-risks.aspx ‎ Cached Similar 28 Apr 2012 ... By Dr. Mercola ... Sensible Sunlight is Protective Against Melanoma ... VitaminD's protective effect against cancer works in multiple ways, ... Sun can Actually Protect You Against Skin Cancer articles.mercola.com/.../sun-can-protect-you-against-skin-cancer.aspx ‎ Cached Similar 16 Jun 2011 ... Sunlight causes your skin to produce vitamin D -- a fact that, ironically, ... VitaminD's protective effect against cancer works in multiple ways, including: ..... As Dr. Mercola mentioned, sunscreen is necessary for some people in ... Sunshine Helps Protect Your Health | Vitamin D Benefits articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/.../vitamin-d-benefits.aspx ‎ Cached Similar 1 Jul 2013 ... Mercola.com .... Melanoma is more likely than other types of skin cancer to spread to other ... is protective against melanoma—or rather, the vitamin D your body ... that chronic sunlight exposure can have a protective effect.". Vitamin D from Sun Exposure May Help Protect Against Cancer articles.mercola.com/.../research-from-100-countries-proves-vitamin-d-protects-against-cancer.aspx ‎ Cached Similar 28 Jan 2012 ... Mercola.com .... Vitamin D's protective effect against cancer appears to work in multiple ways, including: ... It's important to understand, however, that the risk of skin cancer from the sun comes only from excessive exposure. Vitamin D May Help Prevent Your Risk of Cancer By 77 Percent articles.mercola.com/sites/.../vitamin-d-may-prevent-breast-cancer.aspx ‎ Similar 12 May 2013 ... Vitamin D has powerful effects when it comes to breast cancer, to the ... If you're pregnant and have good D3 levels, you are passing on important health protection to .... My wife took Dr. Mercola's Multivitamin/Mineral formula throughout .... Not only are they companies selling skin-cancer remedies but they ... Is Vitamin D the Silver Bullet for Cancer - Natural Health Articles articles.mercola.com/.../is-vitamin-d-the-silver-bullet-for-cancer.aspx ‎ Cached Similar 11 Mar 2010 ... Follow Dr. Mercola on Twitter Follow Dr. Mercola on Facebook ... Vitamin D'sprotective effect against cancer works in multiple ways, ... The ideal way to optimize your vitamin D level is by exposing your skin to appropriate ... Sun Exposure: Benefits Beyond Vitamin D Production articles.mercola.com/.../sun-exposure-vitamin-d-production-benefits.aspx ‎ Similar 29 Sep 2012 ... Aside from vitamin D production, sun exposure offers a lot more benefits, due to its UVB rays. ... is actually protective against melanoma (the most lethal form of skin cancer). ... that chronic sunlight exposure can have a protective effect." ..... up is when UVB is available not 50 degrees that Dr.Mercola states. Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Depression - Natural Health Articles articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/.../vitamin-d-deficiency-depression.aspx ‎ Similar 2 Jan 2014 ... In short, it shows that vitamin D can affect genetic expression ... D has tremendous protective effects against a variety of different cancers, including pancreatic, lung, ovarian, breast, prostate, and skin cancers. ..... Dr. Mercola is right that we should be doing all we can to take on companies like Monsanto. New Model Of Cancer Development Vitamin D is the Key articles.mercola.com/.../new-model-of-cancer-development-vitamin-d-is-the-key.aspx ‎ Cached Similar 11 Jun 2009 ... Mercola.com ... Researchers studying the preventive effects of vitamin D oncancer have ... certain hormonal activity, or it could have a protective effect on brain ... of cancer including pancreatic, lung, ovarian, prostate, and skin ... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=mercola%3B+skin+cancer%3B+vitamin+D%3B+protective+effect&gbv=2&oq=mercola%3B+skin+cancer%3B+vitamin+D%3B+protective+effect&gs_l=heirloom-hp.12...27.1729.0.4743.10.8.0.0.0.0.1303.1303.7-1.1.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..10.0.0.47ENmXENBhU

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730163-Number-of-drug-users-in-England-and-Wales-rises-to-2-7m edgarshade View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Aug 2010 Location UK Posts 2,404 Today 01:19 Guardian Alan Travis, home affairs editor Thursday 24 July 2014 12.08 BST With reader comments Figure up 230,000 on last crime survey, with 8.8% of adults saying they have used illicit drugs in past year. The number of adults using illicit drugs in England and Wales rose by an estimated 230,000 to 2.7 million over the last year, crime survey figures show. The increase was driven by more people saying they had used cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and ketamine. Nearly one million people – or 3% of adults – used class A drugs including powder cocaine, heroin and ecstasy in 2013/14. The Home Office statistics from the crime survey of England and Wales show that cannabis use remained stable, with about two million people aged 16 to 59 smoking or otherwise consuming it over the past year. Most of the increase – 180,000 of the 230,000 extra illicit drugs users – comprised teenagers and young adults aged 16 to 24, who make up 1.1 million of the total number of drug users. The survey does not capture the popularity of legal highs, as it asks only about illicit drug use, but it does show a growing use of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, which has been sold by the balloonful at festivals in particular in recent years. There was a small rise in users of mephedrone, banned in 2010, from 98,000 to 115,000 young adults. Overall, 8.8% of adults said they had used illicit drugs, up from 8.1% in 2012/13 and flat on 2011/12. The rise follows a decade in which illicit drug use appeared to be becoming less fashionable, declining from a peak of 3.48 million – 12% of all adults – in 2002/03. The detailed results show that 3% of adults regard themselves as frequent drug users, meaning they take an illicit substance more than once a month. Frequent drug use is much more likely among men than women, among those who go often to pubs and nightclubs, and among those who live in deprived areas. Gay or bisexual men are much more likely than straight men to take illicit drugs. A third of gay or bisexual men said they had used illicit drugs over the previous year, compared with 23% of gay or bisexual women, 11% of heterosexual men and 5% of heterosexual women. Among ethnic groups, adults from Asian or British Asian backgrounds had the lowest levels of drug use last year. The survey found that 57% of adult drug users bought their drugs from someone well-known to them, such as a friend, work colleague or neighbour. Just under a quarter said they had gone to a dealer, and 4% to a relative. Most said they used them at home or at somebody else's house, while a quarter said they took them in the pub, at a club or at a party. Norman Baker, the crime prevention minister, said drug-related deaths in England and Wales had continued to fall over the past three years and people going into treatment were more likely to free themselves from dependency than ever before. "The National Crime Agency and Border Force are involved in targeted operations across the world and at our borders to disrupt organised crime and stop drugs reaching the UK. We will continue to monitor our response to established drugs and I have commissioned a review to see if we can better tackle the challenge of new psychoactive substances, which will report shortly," Baker said. The crime survey involves interviews with 36,000 people about their experience of crime in the past 12 months. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...s-crime-survey

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-2703722/Alleged-heroin-mule-denied-bail-NSW.html By Australian Associated Press Published: 15:12 AEST, 24 July 2014 | Updated: 15:12 AEST, 24 July 2014 A man who allegedly stashed about five kilograms of heroin in chocolates and tried to smuggle it through Sydney airport has been denied bail. Mohammad Reza Kaveh, 41, applied for bail at Sydney's Central Local Court on Thursday but it was denied by Magistrate Les Mabbutt. The court found there was an unacceptable risk Kaveh would "fail to appear at any proceedings for the offence" and might "commit a serious offence" if released from custody. The Australian citizen was arrested and charged on Wednesday at Sydney airport. After arriving on a flight from Singapore, his bag was scanned and "multiple bags of chocolate ... displayed inconsistencies," NSW Customs boss Tim Fitzgerald said. "Initial testing of the chocolates returned positive results for heroin. The exact weight and purity of the heroin will be determined at a later date." Kaveh will spend more than a month in custody before he faces Central Local Court on September 17. He's due to appear via audio visual link, on one charge of importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug. If convicted, the maximum penalty Kaveh faces is life imprisonment, Customs and the AFP said. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-2703722/Alleged-heroin-mule-denied-bail-NSW.html#ixzz38SV2sKcS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Customs look for inconsistencies, or any other indications that the goods are not as they are stated to be. Then they will test (they also have psychologists, trained in observing the body language of nervousness, scanning the passengers). I'm wondering if it was varied weights, X ray scans, or sniffer dogs that gave the poor fool away, or a combination of the above factors.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730075-ANOTHER-VIEW-Criminalizing-Drugs-Cause-Urban-Bloodshed ANOTHER VIEW: Criminalizing Drugs Cause Urban Bloodshed #1 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 10,444 Today 04:45 ANOTHER VIEW: Criminalizing Drugs Cause Urban Bloodshed Posted: Monday, July 21, 2014 5:45 am By Stephen Downing Earlier this month, our nation celebrated the Fourth of July with unprecedented bloodshed. A Chicago newspaper grabbed the biggest headline, saying that police were “Outgunned” with 82 shot and 14 killed. Even Long Beach reported five shootings over an 18-hour period. The ferocity of the bloodshed was business as usual across the country and the responses from our leaders was exactly the same — across the country — just as it has been year after year after year. They first declare their outrage and then call for more money and resources to fund the same old failed solutions. The redundancy is mind numbing. Not once did any one of our so-called leaders risk making reference to the unambiguous source of the violence. The fountainhead that has spawned the gangs and cartels that continues to settle their grievances with guns on the street rather than lawyers in a courtroom — the war on drugs. Why is that? The gangs and cartels love drug prohibition because they are the winners and will always be the winners as long as the politicians and law enforcement and the so-called moral leadership of our country keeps saying and doing the same things, over and over and over. Why can’t We the People see that? Why can’t we see that by regulating and controlling all drugs, the cartels and gangs will lose their main source of income and dry up? Street corner and school ground peddling would fade away, just like it did when we ended the prohibition of alcohol. Why can’t we see that those who continue to pontificate the same empty solutions for all of the violence are the same ones who feed and nourish their own self-interests at the taxpayer’s trough? The clear answer is because they don’t want us to see it. They don’t want us to understand that gangs and cartels are not the only ones benefitting from the drug war. They are too. Drug war money is just too good to give up. They’d rather endure the violence. They’d rather build more prisons. They’d rather pontificate about their “crackdowns” and their Sunday afternoon basketball games and picnics and summer youth programs while they continue to line their pockets with overtime money, bigger grants, military equipment and dues paying, campaign donating public employee unions like police, prison guards, probation officers, social workers and all the others who feed at the drug war money machine. After all, its “only” the black and brown kids who are dying, going to foster homes or getting macerated into the cesspool of the 43 million who have already been locked down and destroyed by the violence of our nation’s mass incarceration hysteria over the past 40 years. The only difference now compared to the times of alcohol prohibition is that, in the times of alcohol prohibition, law enforcement — the police and judges — got their money in brown paper bags. Today, they — and all the other drug war apologists and rehab specialists — get their money through legitimate, systematic programs run by the federal government. That’s why all the pro-drug war brown baggers use their lobbying organizations to fight every reform. That’s why this nation was “outgunned” over the July 4 weekend. Stephen Downing is a Long Beach resident. http://www.gazettes.com/news/another...9bb2963f4.html

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v14/n604/a07.html?397 23 Jul 2014 Source: Washington Post (DC) Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491 Author: Richard Leiby JUST SAY WHATEVER Pity the Lonely Anti-Weed Crusaders, Whose Clout Has Gone Up in Smoke As pro-marijuana forces deployed their sidewalk soldiers to gather signatures to put pot legalization on the District's November ballot, Aaron McCormick, a 47-year-old city native and father of three, watched with growing alarm. Somebody must stop this scourge, he decided. But how? McCormick says he knew of no group fighting the initiative, heard no opposition to it in his church and got no traction for his anti-weed views on his vibrant Twitter account, @blackmanhelping, where he opines on local affairs. McCormick, a construction project manager, considered challenging the ballot initiative himself, but he ultimately realized the futility of fighting an army of marijuana advocates. Such is the lonely lot of today's pot opponent. Parents like McCormick, once heroes of the just-say-no 1980s, find themselves outgunned: The anti-marijuana movement has little funding or staff, little momentum and, it appears, little audience. Decriminalization went into effect last week in the District, setting a $25 penalty for possession of up to an ounce of weed. Earlier in July, pro-marijuana activists scored another victory, submitting 57,000 voter signatures, more than double the number required, to bring the ballot measure, which could add the District to the vanguard of legalization along with Colorado and Washington state. "I hope and pray that Congress will step in and shut it all down," McCormick said, noting federal lawmakers' penchant for trying to block marijuana initiatives in the District. "To me, we just came out of the crack epidemic and are still seeing its effects. Now we want to allow people to smoke marijuana 24-7?" It would seem so. More than half of Americans support legalization, various polls show. The Pew Research Center has found that 48 percent have tried pot. Seventeen states plus the District have eliminated jail time for possession, and medical marijuana is now okay in nearly half of the United States ( 23 states plus the District ). "Interestingly, whenever we have a debate on TV, we hear the producer asking, 'Who can we get to debate against marijuana?' " says Tony Newman, spokesman for the reformist Drug Policy Alliance. The cable-show bookers' "con" choices are indeed scant. "It's unbelievable what's happened," says Robert DuPont, a psychiatrist who was the first director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the 1970s. "You can't find anybody to speak on the other side. . . . The leaders in both parties have completely abandoned the issue." DuPont, an addiction specialist, could hold his own in any debate about drugs. He and other experts point to research showing that 9 percent of marijuana users become addicted, a figure that rises to 16 percent when use begins in teen years. In various studies, weed also is linked to lower academic performance and mental illness and other health problems. The marijuana normalization movement bats back such findings by citing the devastating results of alcohol and tobacco dependency and abuse, for example, and the palliative effects of marijuana as medicine. And they say the disproportionately higher rate of minorities' arrests and incarceration for pot-related offenses have caused greater social harm - which became a major selling point for decriminalization in the District. Backed by deep-pocketed funders, the legalizers deploy lobbyists, spokesmen and researchers from well-staffed organizations like the Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, Americans for Safe Access and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws ( NORML ). They even have their own business alliance: the National Cannabis Industry Association. "These guys are in a full-court press coming at you from every angle," says DuPont, 78, who runs the small, Rockville-based Institute for Behavior and Health. He sounds exasperated. "They have a bench 1,000 people deep. . . . We've got Kevin Sabet." Sabet, 35, first testified before the Senate against drug legalization when he was 17 and now runs an anti-pot-legalization group called Smart Approaches to Marijuana ( SAM ). Last year he made No. 1 on Rolling Stone's "Legalization's Biggest Enemies" list. "Do we want a stoned America?" asks Sabet, who has served drug czars in the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. "Is that where we want to go at a time when America's place in the world, in terms of academic and economic competitiveness, is greatly threatened? Good luck." Based in Cambridge, Mass., Sabet says he commits "100-plus hours a week" to raising the alarm and has help from SAM affiliates in 27 states. People who still see grass as "a harmless giggle in our basement" are ignoring the "Wall Street sharks" hoping to profit from a nationwide cannabis industry as large and powerful as the booze or tobacco businesses, he says. Sabet predicts increases in buzzed driving and health problems. But such arguments clearly have not stopped the other side's momentum. "Woeful Kevin" is what Allen St. Pierre, NORML's executive director, calls Sabet. "I feel blessed by someone like Kevin," St. Pierre says. "Since he has come on the scene we have prevailed, prevailed, prevailed. We could use 500 Kevins." The reversal of fortunes in the reefer battle is rooted in politics as much as anything. NORML was founded in 1970, when the counterculture ethos was in full flower, so to speak; millions of baby boomers experimented with drugs. The Nixon administration was decidedly anti-hippie, but by the time Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency, "decriminalization looked inevitable," DuPont recalls. In 1977, Carter said the punishment for marijuana possession "should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself " - a message still reinforced by legalization advocates today. But in the mid-1970s, a potent countermovement was already stirring across the land, a phenomenon tracked by Emily Dufton, who wrote her recent doctoral thesis at George Washington University on the remarkable shifts in American attitudes on marijuana in recent decades. In the mid-1970s, middle-class parents, alarmed at finding stashes in fake Coke cans and hash pipes under mattresses, started banding together to talk about behavioral changes they saw in their weed-toking kids. In 1977, one Atlanta woman wrote to DuPont, then at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and invited him to meet with her group. At the time, he supported decriminalization, but he came away a staunch prohibitionist, convinced that heroin was not at the center of America's drug woes - it affected relatively few users - but marijuana, which affected vastly more families. The parent movement, embraced by the Reagan White House, eventually garnered enough strength to entirely change the debate. In just a few years, they transformed marijuana "from a seemingly benign middle-class drug into the most dangerous drug in the United States," as Dufton put it. But in the 1980s came a new scourge, crack cocaine, and marijuana became significantly less frightening to people than crack, she says. The parents' campaign did result in a major drop in teenage marijuana use from the 1980s to the dawn of the ' 90s, research shows, but the campaign was ultimately doomed. Professional organizations like the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and D.A.R.E. siphoned funds away from the amateurs. The public grew weary of nonstop, sometimes hyperbolic anti-drug messages. ( See: "This is your brain on drugs." ) Promoting a message of compassion for the sick, medical marijuana advocates led the way in the 1990s to a more accepting public view toward recreational pot. The number of pro-pot groups began to surge. "It's our fault," Sabet admits, but he cites one mitigating factor. "They have money and we don't." Still, other forces explain why reform has caught on now, including supportive baby boomer voters; a lingering recession that dampened government revenue, making the taxation of marijuana tempting; and an overwhelming public view that alcohol prohibition was a "great failed experiment," St. Pierre says. In addition, the Obama administration decided not to challenge legalization in Washington and Colorado and to allow banks to do business with legal marijuana sellers. "This is like gay marriage," St. Pierre argues. "Twenty years ago if you voted for it you were a loser; now 20 years later, if you vote against it you're a loser." In the District, the legalizers are predicting success. Sabet's group decided against challenging the signatures gathered for the ballot initiative: "We are picking our battles," he says. So where does that leave concerned residents like Aaron McCormick, who has 6- and 7-year old daughters and a 14-yearold son? Even if pot is legal, he has told his teenager, think of career consequences: If you want a good job, you're still going to have to pass a drug test. In the Navy, where McCormick served six years, regular drug testing was part of the drill. "I have never smoked it," he says. "My kids know that Daddy is definitely a hard-nosed person. I don't give any slack on this marijuana issue. None. Zero." So, kids, some advice: You'd better just say no.

I distinctly remember reading in books about herbs that peppermint can be hazardous to women who are pregnant, trying to be, and possibly those breastfeeding; Google it's hazards. There should be some books on herbal medicine in the local libraries, or your state may have statewide database and borrowing like mine does.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730099-More-prison-drug-focus-needed-on-root-causes-says-Australian-National-Council-on-Dru poledriver View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jul 2005 Posts 8,351 Today 09:22 More prison drug focus needed on root causes, says Australian National Council on Drugs Australian prisons are investing heavily in trying to stop drugs getting into jails when they should be more focused on root causes, the Australian National Council on Drugs says. As Canberra's jail introduced two new drug-detection dogs on Wednesday, council executive director Gino Vumbaca called for more funding in prisons for addiction therapy and rehabilitation programs. ''You could spend an exorbitant amount of money on reducing supply but there'd always be drugs in prisons,'' Mr Vumbaca said. Drug testing is mandatory on admission to the Alexander Maconochie Centre, and from late 2011 to early this year 77 per cent of results indicated drug use. ''Invest in demand reduction,'' Mr Vumbaca said. ''Treat the drug use, deal with the substance misuse problems; in the long term and the medium term, it's the best return on your investment.'' Minister for Corrective Services Shane Rattenbury said the territory did invest significantly in therapeutic and rehabilitative programs, including the Solaris program at Alexander Maconochie ''The Solaris program … allows detainees with substance abuse issues to receive therapeutic counselling and support while incarcerated,'' Mr Rattenbury said. However, as he welcomed Boone and Teddy to the K9 Unit to replace two retiring dogs, Mr Rattenbury maintained supply reduction had an important role to play at Alexander Maconochie. Illicit drugs were intercepted on 18 occasions last year, including 14 seizures by sniffer dogs. ''Every jail across the world has issues with people trying to smuggle contraband in,'' Mr Rattenbury said. ''The AMC (Alexander Maconochie Centre) takes a very serious approach to security. We've got a range of detection techniques, including physical searches and X-rays, and the dogs certainly add an extra layer that really helps us keep out as much contraband as possible.'' K9 Unit officer in charge Jeffrey Kennedy said the English springer spaniels would be trained for passive alert detection of illicit drugs and used for visitor, cell and vehicle searches. ''Drugs will get into every jail anywhere in the world,'' Mr Kennedy said. ''It's just one of those things. ''The dogs are very effective, and they're a very good visual deterrent as well … the dogs will have their day in the end.'' Mr Rattenbury also confirmed that the development application for an expansion to the Alexander Maconochie Centre had been finalised to accommodate last year's surge in prisoners, blamed for the rise in contraband smuggling at the jail. Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-...#ixzz38L3or1kv -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 CLICKHEREx View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join DateSep 2012 Posts111Today 13:51 ''The dogs are very effective, and they're a very good visual deterrent as well … the dogs will have their day in the end.'' - Dogs can only be trained to detect a modest number of drug types, such as cannabis, meth / ice, opiates, cocaine, and MDMA / esctasy, and the more types people try to train them to detect, the more false positives they will produce. They will have no hope with the Novel Psychoactive Substances / synthetics, as there are hundreds of them already, and potentially many millions. Dogs also need to ingest the scent molecules in sufficient quantity, and by carefully packing drugs, and keeping them in places where dogs normally don't have access, or so that the trail of molecules they emit doesn't reach the dog's nose, as well as thoroughly cleaning any scent traces from hands, body, and clothing, the risks of detection can be greatly reduced. Every human culture has means of attaining altered states of consciousness, with drugs being a popular method in most countries, these days, and it's about time that repressive control freak politicians and law enforcement realised that, and stopped trying to prevent people from doing what they want to, if they are not harming others. They say it's fine if you want to base jump off cliffs, hang glide, climb Everest, etc., or get other type of adrenaline, or fatigue poisons, alcohol, and such like, but not to take drugs. Their war on drugs has failed, their "just say no" approach as well. They increase the penalties; it increases the risks, demanding higher prices, thereby creating greater incentive for people to produce, transport, and sell drugs. Decriminalise and legalise; strip the wealth of people who can be shown to have made their money from illicit drugs. Stop persecuting drug users. Sure, let them set up drug treatment and rehabilitation programs in prisons, for those who want to attend voluntarily. But then they'll want to adopt the carrot and stick approach.

17 Jul 2014 Source: Westword (Denver, CO) Website: http://www.westword.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1616 Author: William Breathes HOW MUCH THC EQUALS A LETHAL DOSE? Dear Stoner: I know that you cannot OD by smoking weed, but what about ingesting it? There are some very strong eatables; what if I get the munchies on marijuana chocolate bars? I would like to know the limits. Garufa Dear Garufa: If by "limits" you mean how much weed an otherwise healthy person would have to ingest to literally die from THC, it's surprisingly less than you'd think - but even so, you'd never be able to come close to doing it. Allow us to drop some science. There's a thing known as the "median lethal dose" for pretty much all foreign chemicals we humans use and occasionally put in our bodies; it's called an LD50 rating. Basically, it's how much of something someone would have to ingest to die at least 50 percent of the time. ( LD stands for "lethal dose." ) For THC, there are varying figures, ranging from 1,260 milligrams of THC per kilogram of body weight down to 666 mg/kg. Even going with the lowest figure, a 175-pound man would have to consume more than 53 whole grams of pure THC all at once. And pure THC isn't something you are going to find in even the purest shatter oils and waxes produced. If we're talking commercially produced edibles, then you would probably die from an overdose of salt ( 3,000 mg/kg ) or sugar ( 1,100 mg/kg ) before even coming close to the threshold for marijuana. Need more perspective? Caffeine has an LD50 of 192 mg/kg, and nicotine is around 60 mg/kg. Alcohol doesn't necessarily have an LD50 that translates well, but if just .4 percent of your roughly 160 ounces of blood contains booze, you're not likely to wake up. Even synthetic, marijuana-derived pharmaceuticals have higher LD50 ratings than natural marijuana. Now, if you mean can you eat enough to get sick or have a bad time? Absolutely - it happens to the best of us. I have gotten sick - spinning head, a sinking feeling in my stomach - from a too-strong edible ( or seven ). Or maybe it's just an overdose of chocolate.... In any case, do I suggest finding your limits that way? No. And unfortunately, I can't tell you how much you'd have to eat before you'd boot your lunch - nor do I suggest finding out the hard way. Stick with smaller doses and increase slowly each time you consume until you find a comfortable level. And if you ever are truly concerned about eating more pot food while you've got the munchies, we advise taking a walk to the nearest 7-Eleven and going for Cheetos instead. MAP posted-by: Matt http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v14/n599/a06.html?397

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2014/jul/22/oregon_marijuana_legalization_in by Phillip Smith, July 22, 2014, 04:05pm, (Issue #844) Posted in: 2014 Marijuana -- Personal Use Marijuana Industry Marijuana Legalization News Brief The New Approach Oregon marijuana legalization initiative has qualified for the November ballot, the secretary of state's office reported today. It won't get a measure number until next month. First word came in an email from New Approach Oregon's Anthony Johnson. When the Chronicle contacted Johnson to confirm the email, he said "I got the call from the secretary of state's office today." The initiative had needed some 87,000 valid voter signatures to qualify; it handed in about 145,000 a couple of weeks ago. That means Oregon will join Alaska in voting on marijuana legalization this year. The District of Columbia is also likely to join that list; the cultivation and possession legalization initiative there is awaiting certification after handing in more than twice the number of signatures required to make the ballot. Colorado and Washington led the way in 2012. Now, at least two more states, and probably DC, have the chance to legalize it this year. And then comes 2016.

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/turns-out-smoking-hookah-will-kill-you-after-all?trk_source=popular Turns Out Smoking Hookah Will Kill You After All Written by Laurens Kraaijenbrink July 16, 2014 // 11:31 PM CET For a while I used to smoke hookah with my friends on a fairly regular basis. You know, those Middle Eastern waterpipes that make merry little bubbling noises when you inhale. The smoke, which emerges from your face in beautiful thick white plumes like cotton balls, is cooled and filtered by the water, resulting in a much more mellow and less dangerous smoking experience. At least, that’s what I always thought. The reality is different. According to a new report from the Dutch drug research institute Trimbos, 1 in 10 adolescents in the Netherlands occasionally smokes hookah. Many of them seem to think smoking a water pipe is less harmful than smoking cigarettes. But science wouldn’t be science if it didn’t barge in on the party at this point to take a piss. The Trimbos report lists several sources that claim a hookah may not be less harmful than cigarettes at all. Recent research from the National Institute of Health confirmed that. Indeed some studies suggest it’s is in fact far worse than smoking cigarettes. According to a 2007 study by the American Lung Organization, a single hookah-session equals about a hundred cigarettes in terms of smoke intake. Why? Because smoking a cigarette usually lasts about five minutes at most, while smoking a hookah often means pumping smoke through your body for up to an hour. The levels of harmful substances in hookah smoke also appear to be far higher than your average cigarette (although of course one might light more than one cig in the hour that it takes to smoke a hookah). An NIH study found 1.7 times more nicotine, 6.5 times more carbon and 46.4 time more tar than in a cigarette. And if that wasn’t enough, the charcoal that is used to light the tobacco releases heavy metals, toxic chemicals and dangerous amounts of carbon monoxide. Smoking the candy-colored, fairytale-scented miracle machine pictured above is like lighting a giant doomsday cigarette pumping an hour’s worth of drama into your body. So I’m sorry, dear aficionados of Eastern smoking accouterments, but smoking a hookah may be just as bad as smoking 10 or so cigs, perhaps even more. Although the merrily bubbling water may sound nice, it seems to add little to nothing in the way of filtration. And to make matters even worse, the Trimbos Institute also reports that passing the pipe carries significant risk of transmitting all kinds of fun diseases. Oh, and everyone has herpes. Have a nice day.

http://www.naturalnews.com/046112_radiation_Fukushima_Tokyo.html Monday, July 21, 2014 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer Tags: radiation, Fukushima, Tokyo (NaturalNews) In an essay addressed to his colleagues, Japanese doctor Shigeru Mita has explained why he recently moved away from Tokyo to restart his practice in western Japan: He believes that Tokyo is no longer safe to inhabit due to radioactive contamination caused by the March 11, 2011, meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The essay, titled "Why did I leave Tokyo?" was published in the newsletter of the Association of Doctors in Kodaira, metropolitan Tokyo. Soil tests prove contamination Dr. Mita opens his essay by contextualizing his decision to leave, noting that he had a long history as a doctor in Tokyo. "I closed the clinic in March 2014, which had served the community of Kodaira for more than 50 years, since my father's generation, and I have started a new Mita clinic in Okayama-city on April 21," he wrote. Dr. Mita notes that, for the past 10 years, he had been working to persuade the municipal government of Tokyo to stock iodine pills to distribute to the population in the case of a nuclear accident. Dr. Mita's concern had been that an earthquake might trigger a meltdown at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant. All of his requests were rejected, however, under the excuse that there was no reason to expect such an accident. When the disaster did occur -- albeit at a different plant than Dr. Mita had feared -- Tokyo did not act to protect its population, and still has taken no measures. Yet, based on soil surveys, Dr. Mita noted, "It is clear that Eastern Japan and Metropolitan Tokyo have been contaminated with radiation." Dr. Mita compares radioactive contamination of the soil (measured in becquerels per kilogram, Bq/kg) in various parts of Tokyo with that observed in various portions of Europe following the Chernobyl disaster. Prior to 2011, Shinjuku (the region of Tokyo that houses the municipal government) tested at only 0.5-1.5 Bq/kg. Today, levels at nearby Kodaira are at 200-300 Bq/kg. "Within the 23 districts of Metropolitan Tokyo, contamination in the east part is 1000-4000 Bq/kg and the west part is 300-1000 Bq/kg," Dr. Mita wrote. For comparison, Kiev (capital of the Ukraine) has soil tested at 500 Bq/kg (Cs-137 only). Following the Chernobyl accident, West Germany and Italy reported levels of 90-100 Bq/kg, and both experienced measurable health effects on their populations. Dr. Mita notes that the radiation situation in Tokyo is getting worse, not better, due to urban practices of concentrating solid waste in small areas such as municipal dumps and sewage plants. That is why, he says, radiation levels in Tokyo riverbeds have actually been increasing over the prior two years. "Tokyo should no longer be inhabited, and... those who insist on living in Tokyo must take regular breaks in safer areas," Dr. Mita writes. "Issues such as depopulation and state decline continue to burden the lives of second and third generation Ukrainians and Belarusians today, and I fear that this may be the future of Eastern Japan." Patients showing radiation-induced sickness Dr. Mita's essay also chronicles the many cases he has observed of patients presenting with radiation-induced health problems. He notes that, since 2011, he has observed while blood cell counts declining in children under the age of 10, including in children under one year old. In all of these cases, symptoms typically improve if the children move to western Japan. He has similarly observed persistent respiratory symptoms that improve in patients who move away. Other patients have shown symptoms including "nosebleed, hair loss, lack of energy, subcutaneous bleeding, visible urinary hemorrhage, skin inflammations, coughs and various other non-specific symptoms." He also notes high occurrences of rheumatic muscle symptoms similar to those observed following the Chernobyl disaster. "Ever since 3.11, everybody living in Eastern Japan including Tokyo is a victim, and everybody is involved," he wrote. Sources for this article include: http://www.save-children-from-radiation.org http://science.naturalnews.com Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/046112_radiation_Fukushima_Tokyo.html#ixzz38GXUnQbc

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/729981-UK-Richard-Branson-calls-for-rethink-on-repressive-UK-drug-laws?p=12488890#post12488890 edgarshade View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Aug 2010 Location UK Posts 2,402 Today 06:40 Daily Express Published: Tue, July 22, 2014 With reader comments DRUG users should be treated with compassion rather than criminalised with a rethink needed on "repressive" policies, Sir Richard Branson has said. The billionaire Virgin chief said the "war on drugs" had poured resources into jailing people and policing at the expense of education, vocational training and the treatment and rehabilitation of drug users. "There has been now four decades of the so-called 'war on drugs' and this has done, I think, terrible things to societies everywhere. It has done damage to drug users, it has done damage to their families, it has done damage to their communities," he told the International Aids Conference in Melbourne, Australia. "I believe it is time to support an alternative approach to the prohibitionist framework that has been in effect and has been so ineffective for decades now. People who use drugs or have a drug problem should be treated with compassion rather than being criminalised." Sir Richard, a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, said between £1.5 billion and £2.5 billion a year in the UK is spent on the enforcement of both drug supply and possession offences. More... http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/490...s-war-on-drugs Reader comment malcolmkyle If you support prohibition, then you are guilty of demagoguery, sadomoralism, greed, deception, self-deception, despotism, racism, willful ignorance, fraud, murder, oppression, torture, espionage, corruption, theft, money laundering, illegal arms transfers, militarising domestic police forces, political intrigue, bigotry, class warfare, hate crimes, human rights crimes, erosion of constitutional rights, invasion of privacy, extortion, environmental pollution, obstruction of justice, corruption of the scientific method, infanticide, genocide, trespassing, bribery, illegal restraint of trade, illegal surveillance, religious intolerance, thuggery…this list may actually be endless. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reader comments onsite. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #5 CLICKHEREx View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Sep 2012 Posts 110 Today 13:28 My opinion of him has further changed for the better, after Virgin removed a mobile phone antenna from the top of a residential building in London, where 4 people in 6 of the flats on the top floor had cancer, and his annual April fool's jokes, my favourite of which was the UFO landing in a foggy park near London, scaring spitless the local bobby sent to investigate: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=r...w=1877&bih=939 https://www.google.com.au/search?cli...est&gws_rd=ssl We can only hope that his support of drug reform in the UK and worldwide helps to bring about changes to the repressive and punitive legal situation.

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/tripping-in-the-rift-is-virtual-reality-the-next-drug?trk_source=popular July 21, 2014 I strap the universe to my face. Accelerating out of an airlock, I hear staccato synth music pump through my spacecraft's speakers; starlight studs the periphery, interspersed with splashes of mauve nebulae and interstellar dust. Neck movements control my ship’s steering, I discover. Around me: the cosmos. However many shandies deep I am, I'm buzzed. I probably shouldn't be operating spacecraft tipsy, I think. Nevermind. Got to focus. Dodging asteroids, I brandish my noggin like a turret, gunning down enemy spacecraft. adversaries erupt into satisfying, if unrealistic, fireballs à la Star Wars. In truth, I never left Earth. My head, which I swing from side-to-side, is fastened with an Oculus Rift VR headset. I plant my face in my crotch occasionally to execute flips and other evasive maneuvers. My ears are plugged with noise-cancelling earbud headphones, preventing me from hearing throngs of towel-toting beach-goers jaunting toward the boardwalk outside and the bemusement of my friends who guzzle beer beside me. It's a trip. In more than one sense. My brain—convinced by an apparently gullible occipital lobe—interprets myself as being not here on the couch, but there, in this digital universe. Though my body may be perched at my friend's pad on the south shore of Long Island, my consciousness is zipping through outer space like an astral projection, or that trippy scene—you know the one—from 2001: A Space Odyssey. "Virtual technologies are things, devices, ways to take us somewhere other than where we are physically," Jim Blascovich, professor of psychology and co-director of the Research Center for Virtual Environments & Behavior (ReCVEB) at the University of California, Santa Barbara told me later. Blascovich, co-author of the book Infinite Reality, on the evolution of virtual and digital technologies, views these technologies as an extension of ancient rites and practices—including but not limited to mind-altering drugs. "It probably started with storytelling thousands of years ago," he said. Humans are escapist creatures—biologically, even. Our minds seem to wander nearly a third of the time we're awake; we tend to dream about four to six times in a normal night's sleep. Our ancestors decorated caves with murals, developed language, told stories, created art, theatre, poetry, literature, the printing press, photography, radio, cinematography, video games, the internet. "Minds wander all the time, and we dream, and people take drugs to go places, and people take drugs to bring themselves back," Blascovich said. Inexpensive head-mounted displays such as the Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard are simply the next evolution of immersion. It's no coincidence that one of the biggest proponents of hallucinogenic drugs in the '60s became an advocate for cybernetics three decades later.​ The connection between VR and mind-altering substances has been made before. It’s no coincidence that one of the biggest proponents of hallucinogenic drugs in the '60s became an advocate for cybernetics three decades later. One-time Harvard psychologist and all-time LSD-evangelist Timothy Leary trumpeted the potential of emerging communications technologies in his last book Chaos & Cyber Culture."“The PC is the LSD of the '90s," he proselytized. I asked another VR researcher, Albert "Skip" Rizzo, who directs a Medical Virtual Reality program and helps treat PTSD patients at the University of Southern California, whether it might be possible to mimic hallucinogenic experiences with virtual reality technology. He was skeptical. "I don’t know if you can say it rises to the level of hallucinogenic experience," he said. Not yet, at least. "We can build virtual environments with optical illusions and mess with people’s perceptual systems and make it look like a hallucinogenic experience, though I don’t know if anyone has really done that." He added: "I think it might make you ill or cybersick before you have that kind of experience." Still, both psychedelic drugs and virtual reality have a profound ability to affect people's minds, emotions, perceptions. I asked Rizzo whether VR could suffer anything similar to the fate that befell the psychedelic movement in the late 60s, when Congress criminalized LSD in the US. There are, after all, already rehabilitation clinics for people addicted to the web and gaming. Will certain mind-altering technologies be controlled as addictive substances someday? "It would be hard for someone to say virtual reality should be banned, because we would have to ban movies and books and Disneyland," Rizzo said. It could, however, be regulated. "What we could see is outside groups moving to moderate, manage, or censor it," he said, drawing an analogy to the film industry. "Maybe virtual experiences will be rated in the same way, and kids under 18 won’t be able to access certain virtual experiences." Movies. It's said that at a screening of one of the early motion pictures—a minute-long clip of a train pulling into a station—panicking members of the audience fled the theater, terrified. Will future generations laugh at our credulity? A friend taps my shoulder and I flinch. As the day—and night—wears on, I continue to drink and sample other simulations, slowly merging old-fashioned and next-gen intoxication. I play pong with my face; I skydive; I ride a rollercoaster through a medieval castle; I soar above skyscrapers; I float through a haunted mansion while being tailed by a growling demon; I investigate a Tuscan villa. This last simulation blurs as I jerk my head, triggering instant vertigo. The sensation is akin to the after-effects of consuming copious vodka. My stomach clenches into a knot. I feel nauseated. And the bottles of booze I've knocked back aren't helping. I have unwittingly stumbled into the so-called "uncomfortable valley." As Wired explained, "If you turn your head and the image on the screen that's inches from your eyes doesn’t adjust instantaneously, your visual system conflicts with your vestibular system, and you get sick." I rip off the Rift, re-enter real reality, and lurch onto a sofa. Queasy and seemingly hungover, I recall a comment made by Chris Dixon—a prominent investor at the venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz, which has a stake in Oculus Rift as well as the VR company's recent acquirer, Facebook—to The New York Times: "In some ways, the biggest competitor to virtual reality might be a bottle of wine." Indeed, please Rift responsibly. Images by the author

CCHR may be funded by scientologists, but I'm forced to admit that they can assemble facts well, and on some topics we agree. http://www.cchrint.org/2014/07/16/persecutionofmaryannegodboldobydetroitprosectors/ * The Persecution of Maryanne Godboldo: Detroit Prosecutors Still Going After Mom Who Refused to Drug Her Daughter On the continued attempts of Detroit Prosecutors to charge Maryanne Godboldo, Attorney Allison Folmar states, “This is a case of misdiagnosis, misinformation and unrestrained persecution. Five out of five judicial reviews found that Maryanne had the right to defend her home and child. That the prosecution refuses to end this attack is ample proof that she is being persecuted. This case really puts psychiatrists and the pharmaceuticals on trial because they tried to do something that they had no right to do.” "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed"—Martin Luther King Once Again, Prosecutors have attempted to bring criminal charges against Detroit mother Maryanne Godboldo. And once again, they have failed. By Kelly Patricia O’Meara July 16, 2014 On March 24, 2011, the Maryanne Godboldo case garnered international headlines when images of a battle-ready SWAT team, tanks and a helicopter, were unleashed upon a Detroit mother for refusing to administer a dangerous and potentially lethal antipsychotic drug to her daughter. The illegal seizure of the then 13-year old caused a firestorm of press and public outcry. By December 11th, 2011, nine months and numerous court battles later, Godboldo was acquitted of all charges based on the unconstitutional and illegal seizure of the child. But Detroit prosecutors seemed hell bent on making an example of Maryanne Godboldo, attempting and failing twice in the last few months to prosecute her. Last Friday, July 11th, 2014, there was loud applause in the court when Judge Gregory Bill reaffirmed the dismissal of criminal charges against the Detroit mother for a second time this year. Watch video* to see Maryanne Godboldo describe all her fears coming true when the state took and force drugged her daughter Yet, while human rights activists celebrated, prosecutors were already talking to the press about appealing the ruling—preparing for the next assault. A spokesperson for the Prosecutor’s Office stated, “We do not agree with the court’s ruling affirming the dismissal of the case in 36th District Court, and we will be appealing to the Michigan Court of Appeals.” If that isn’t a vendetta, then what is? Moreover, one can only wonder why State Prosecutors aren’t pursuing charges against illegal seizure and forced drugging of children with drugs documented to have potentially lethal side effects.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/729888-VICE-A-Shaman-an-Exile-and-a-Rapper-Are-Bringing-a-Hallucinogenic-Heroin-Cure-to By Keegan Hamilton July 20, 2014 | When Murtaza Majeed learned that the international health organization Doctors of the World planned to open Afghanistan’s first needle-exchange operation, the idea seemed preposterous. The Islamic nation suffers a heroin epidemic of horrific proportions in large part because addicts are treated as utter pariahs. “There was nothing that existed to help drug addicts,” Majeed, a Kabul resident and former staff member in Doctors of the World’s harm-reduction program, told VICE News. “The concept of our government was, unfortunately, either you use drugs or you don’t use drugs.” Despite the cultural disdain for addiction, Doctors of the World began handing out free, clean needles in 2005 and started offering methadone to Kabul’s junkies a few years later. It helped that Majeed and others administering the program had the support of the World Health Organization, the Global Fund, and other influential non-governmental organizations. But Majeed also developed a strong argument to sway skeptics. “We had to convince them it was something that could help drug users and help the society,” he said. “Everyone, at the end of the day, wants to cure drug addiction. For me, harm reduction was a step in between. By having harm reduction, we can talk with drug users and try to make them addiction-free.” Yet the introduction of those services has ultimately done little to curb the insatiable demand for drugs in Afghanistan. The United Nations estimates that 1.6 million Afghans — more than 5 percent of the population — are addicted. Majeed, who is 27, has now plotted an audacious response to the growing crisis. It involves a hallucinogenic drug from Africa, a self-proclaimed shaman, and the rapper Immortal Technique. The idea is to open Afghanistan’s first rehab clinic specializing in ibogaine treatment. Ibogaine is an alkaloid extracted from the root bark of a rainforest shrub native to western Central Africa. It has been used for centuries as a vision-inducing sacrament in religious ceremonies, and has become increasingly popular as an alternative method of kicking heroin addiction. Proponents claim that the intense, dreamlike state prompts junkies to re-evaluate their lives, and scientific research has found evidence suggesting that ibogaine blocks withdrawal symptoms and suppresses drug cravings. According to Tom Kingsley Brown, a researcher at the University of California at San Diego, who works closely with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, there is no scientific consensus on how ibogaine works in the body, but its effects on recovering addicts are often dramatic. “You get this interruption of the addiction where you don’t get the withdrawal symptoms,” Brown said. “It also has been shown to reduce the kind of cravings you get for heroin and other kinds of opiates. That cessation of the cravings can last for months for many people.” The problem with ibogaine is that it can produce a variety of harsh side effects, including severe nausea and vertigo. It occasionally even kills people. Since 1990, at least 19 people have died after taking it, mostly due to preexisting medical conditions or because it was combined with other drugs. Ibogaine is a Schedule I substance in the United States, a designation reserved for heroin, MDMA, marijuana, and other drugs the government believes have a high potential of abuse and no accepted medical application. Ibogaine is largely unregulated elsewhere, however, and clinics — many of which charge thousands of dollars per visit — treat patients in dozens of countries around the globe, including in Canada and Mexico. The drug’s most prominent evangelist is Dimitri “Mobengo” Mugianis, a 51-year-old recovered heroin addict turned New York ibogaine shaman. Mugianis underwent ibogaine treatment in the Netherlands and eventually studied Bwiti, an African religion that uses the drug ritualistically. He performed illicit ibogaine ceremonies on recovering opiate addicts in the US until he was targeted by a DEA sting operation in 2011 that ended with a misdemeanor drug possession charge, a small fine, and a brief period of house arrest. Mugianis now performs the ceremonies in Costa Rica and works at the non-profit New York Harm Reduction Educators in East Harlem and the Bronx. An episode of VICE on HBO featured him conducting an ibogaine ceremony with a heroin addict in Tijuana. Majeed met Mugianis in 2009 at a harm reduction conference in Bangkok, and today refers to the shaman as “one of my greatest advisors.” Mugianis told VICE News that he hopes to create “a circle of healing” by treating Afghan junkies and American war vets suffering from addiction and PTSD. “It’s about working both sides of the conflict and bringing healing to both sides,” Mugianis said. “But the thing about doing this is, you know, it’s Afghanistan. You can end up with some bodies on your hands very quickly unless you’re very, very careful.” Majeed’s safety is a particular concern. He left Afghanistan three years ago because he had “some political issues with the government,” as well as personal problems that he declined to discuss. He now lives in Sweden and feels safe enough to have scheduled a return to Kabul in September, when he plans to begin the bureaucratic process of getting ibogaine approved as medicine. If all goes smoothly, an ibogaine specialist from South Africa will supply the drug and travel to Afghanistan to help launch the program and train local doctors — but that is hardly a sure thing. The Afghan Ministry of Public Health did not respond to a request for comment about ibogaine and the country’s drug policy. Majeed said that ibogaine currently occupies a legal gray area in Afghanistan, were it is not specifically banned or sanctioned. The main obstacle is that it is frowned upon by American health officials who have considerable influence over their Afghan counterparts. “We are quite influenced by American drug policies,” Majeed said. “The focus is always on drug cultivation. The government’s main focus is, ‘We're producing more than 90 percent of heroin in the world, so we should eradicate everything.’ But nobody is caring about the drug users.” It took years of campaigning just to get a mainstream treatment like methadone into the country. Olivier Maguet, who headed the Doctors of the World harm reduction effort in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2013, told VICE News that public health officials supported the organization’s project in Kabul, but noted that the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics was “more than reluctant” to embrace methadone. He added that the government has yet to expand the program. There’s also the difficulty of convincing officials in a devoutly Islamic nation to embrace a potent hallucinogenic drug. Anwar Jeewa, the South African ibogaine specialist who hopes eventually to join Majeed’s enterprise in Afghanistan, told VICE News that he has treated over 1,500 patients in his country with no interference from religious leaders. “We have a very conservative Muslim community here, and nobody has objected,” Jeewa said. “The majority of the patients I’ve treated are Muslims. They understand this is a plant material that is natural, it is not contradicting Islam in any way.” In addition to Mugianis, two charismatic New Yorkers are helping Majeed raise money to cover his travel expenses and fund the ibogaine project. The first is Felipe Coronel, better known by his stage name Immortal Technique. The respected indie rapper supports a variety of international aid ventures, including an orphanage in Afghanistan and Majeed’s effort to bring an ibogaine clinic to Kabul. “I thought at least I could give [ibogaine] a chance and have a conversation about it and force that conversation into the halls of American government,” Immortal Technique told VICE News. “Ibogaine does what the US military and all its might tried to do, which is stop heroin addiction. The poppy situation is one reason we’re there. This takes away from the excuses America has to be there.” The rapper was recruited to the cause by Dana Beal, a 67-year-old New York political activist with a bushy white handlebar mustache, who is known for supporting medical marijuana and ibogaine. Beal landed in trouble with the law in 2008 when he was caught in Illinois with two duffel bags stuffed with $150,000, cash he planned to use to fund an ibogaine research clinic. He was also arrested with two companions in 2009 after a traffic stop in Nebraska turned up 150 pounds of pot in their van, and again in 2010 after Wisconsin police found 186 pounds of pot in another van. Beal was paroled in February after serving prison sentences in Nebraska and Wisconsin. He told VICE News that he had raised more than $5,000 on Majeed’s behalf, including several thousand dollars at a fundraiser last month that featured a performance by Immortal Technique. Beal said that his goal is to help establish ibogaine treatment in Afghanistan as a way to raise the profile of the drug in the US. “The road to ibogaine goes through Kabul,” Beal says. “When rich Americans here read that they can’t be treated with this but the poorest people in Kabul are getting treated, they’ll say, ‘Hey, why can’t we get that here?’ ” Majeed, however, cautions that it might be a long time before the first Afghan junkie receives a dose of ibogaine. His short-term goal is to create a small pilot project, which will require securing approval from officials with the country’s Ministries of Public Health, Justice, and Counter Narcotics. Drawing on his previous experience advocating harm reduction in Afghanistan, Majeed has already perfected his pitch. “In the Qur’an it says for every disease we have a medicine on Earth, and it’s the responsibility of humans to search for it,” Majeed said. “That’s my opening line when I talk about ibogaine. Maybe this is the treatment God has created for us.” https://news.vice.com/article/a-hallucinogenic-treatment-for-heroin-addiction-heads-for-afghanistan

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/719231-6-Insane-Drug-Myths-People-Used-to-Teach-as-Fact-(Cracked) my3rdeye View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Aug 2012 Location Planet Microdot Posts 929 13-04-2014 11:26 Not bad through they confuse a flashback with HPPD 6 Insane Drug Myths People Used to Teach as Fact Life has never been good for people who like drugs. Well, unless you're including every second of every day before the 1920s. Children's medicinal heroin is still a few years of hard lobbying from finding its way back to the shelf, but pot users finally have a light at the end of the tunnel, and there's even hope for MDMA, thanks to Zoloft's shit-eating incompetence at treating PTSD. It's the dawn of a new era. "New" doesn't mean "free of bullshit," though. And being hip doesn't mean you aren't prone to believing a whole galaxy of lies. #6. Drug Addicts Are Easy to Spot This is the 21st century, and no one besides the odd straight-edge kid and maybe your eighth grade counselor believes any of the lies peddled by D.A.R.E. We're enlightened, and we know that someone who likes the occasional puff of the devil's lettuce or dose of magic mushrooms can still be a productive member of society. But our tolerance for illicit narcotics comes to a quick end once "hard" drugs enter the picture. Meth, for example: It's basically crack for poor white people. We know it rots your face, and Breaking Bad has given us a pretty clear picture of average users: They're emaciated wraiths living in the margins of society and making their money through a combination of drug dealing, panhandling, and ATM-based murder. Those drug addicts exist. And so do these: Researchers from the great schools of America's meth belt (the Crystal League?) have concluded that meth use is often seen as a necessity: "The long hours and tedious work in oil fields, agriculture, construction, ancillary health care, and fast food restaurants may be more tolerable on methamphetamine. Users report using meth to provide the energy to work multiple jobs or be a good mother." And that's a critical part of the whole meth story. It's a stimulant, and large numbers of people rely on it because they need more energy than 60 hours of manual labor and three kids leave them with. Is all that meth helping their lives out in the long run? Of course not, but they aren't living the party life 24/7. They're doing a bump before their 16-hour shift at Walmart, because have you ever had to work a 16-hour shift at anything? It's also worth noting that Walt's infamous "blue" meth wouldn't have made one fuck of difference to street-level addicts. Any sane dealer is going to cut that shit because it means more profit! There's only one group of meth users that would really care about 99 percent purity: rich people who like to party. And these people aren't getting busted on the street or breaking any visible bad. They have lawyers and nice cars, thus rendering them functionally invisible to most copdar. So yeah, the stereotype of the unemployed drug addict isn't particularly accurate. The gub'mint estimates that three-quarters of drug users are employed. That shouldn't be too surprising if you've been to any good parties. But while we're busting myths, let's talk about the drug-addicted welfare recipient, tokin' his marijuanacrack on Uncle Sam's dime. Drug users are just about as common among welfare recipients as they are anywhere else. There's zero evidence for a giant underclass of drug-addicted welfare sucklers. It's almost like bad shit happens to sober people too. #5. Addiction Is Like a Lurking Monster One of the few things I did take away from my high school drug awareness class was the knowledge that some substances are inherently addictive. Try heroin or crack just once and BOOM, sweet lady addiction has you dead to rights. The Reefer Madness bullshit gets wiped out as soon as you meet someone who smokes pot without having their life boil up in catastrophe, but absolutely everything about heroin looks sketchy, and crack smells like burning garbage. Factor in those horror stories of abuse and meth mouth, and the only way drug addiction makes sense is if these substances are like vicious narcotic tigers dragging poor souls into madness. Only no, of course that's not how it works. Chemicals aren't ninth-level wizards: They can't dominate people. At most, 23 percent of heroin users become dependent, while 80 to 90 percent of people who try methamphetamine or crack never develop an addiction. The whole substance model of addiction is based on a study that showed that rats trapped in cages, alone, will choose heroin over food. This was extrapolated as "Heroin's so addictive, it'll make you stop eating!" What it really said was "Rats trapped in cages are so miserable, they'll drug themselves to death." Another scientist took rats that were already addicted and put them in a cage with friends, exercise toys, and space to run around. Shockingly, the rats vastly decreased their drug use and started doing normal healthy rat stuff. Some of them still took drugs on occasion, but hell, who doesn't? #4. Drugs Cause Crime This is basically the whole premise that kicked off the war on drugs, as well as the underlying assumption behind both RoboCop and the Judge Dredd reboot. It makes sense: Even if you're talking about drugs that don't cause violent behavior, like heroin or pot or sizzurp, people who get addicted to that shit commit a ton of crime just to buy more. This is the world as police procedurals have painted it for us. But science has found the literal opposite to be true: Only a small percentage of drug users commit non-drug crimes. When arrested drug users commit a second crime, it's almost always another case of "caught getting high." There's no armed robbery switch that enough hydrocodone flips in your head. If you're willing to shoot a man for drugs, you'd probably be willing to shoot him for a whole bunch of reasons. Surveys of the prison population have found that 60 percent of incarcerated drug users didn't start until after their first arrest. So there's a pretty clear connection between being in prison and drug addiction. Someone should look into that. #3. Pot Is "Natural" and Therefore "Safe" "Hey, bro, did you know that Ecstasy is, like, bad for you? That's why I stick with ganj. That's Mother Nature's high, yo. So you know it's safe." Cracked has already weighed in on the whole "natural drugs aren't always safer" issue. If you still have doubts, take a huge dose of Datura and then a huge dose of LSD and see which one leaves you shitting blood in a field. (Hint: Datura means "unending fountain of death poop" in Navajo.) But this is about an even more insidious myth: the idea that smoking pot is harmless because, on its own, pot is super benign. Here's the thing: Pot farmers are in it to make money. And one thing that fucks up your whole money-making potential is bugs eating your goddamn crop. Hence, lots of pot winds up doused in pesticide. The folks growing corn and cabbage have to undergo scrutiny by the FDA to make sure their products don't hit your table completely drenched in poison. Marijuana is still about 40 percent illegal at the best of times. Drug dealers are the only authority scrutinizing your pot, and they don't really care if your dank nugs smell like Agent Orange farted off a burrito filled with Raid. There's no government oversight to make sure you aren't smoking a big fat bowl of DDT, and that means you totally are. Up to 70 percent of the pesticides on a bud transfer into the smoke. You gotta cough to get off ... and to vastly increase your risk of emphysema. It's true that marijuana has never been anyone's primary cause of death, but between 1997 and 2005, the FDA listed it as a contributing cause to 279 deaths. #2. Everyone is Lying to You About Flashbacks Acid flashbacks are one of those rare cases where the anti- and pro-drug sides come together in irresponsible ignorance. Back in school, your D.A.R.E. cop probably told you stories of kids leaping from tall buildings because they fell back into a trip from years before and suddenly thought they could fly. It was obvious B.S., so a few years later, when your druggie friend vehemently denied that LSD caused flashbacks, you assumed he was right. Here's the truth: Heavy, long-term psychedelic use can cause "flashbacks" in anyone. But these flashbacks aren't you suddenly going "FUCK YEAH, THESE ARMS ARE WINGS NOW, ASSHOLES!" and doing a Wilbur Wright off your deck. They're more like tiny halos glowing around objects, or a vague sensation that the stucco on your wall is actually a subtly shifting pattern. Sometimes little tracers follow stuff like cars and tennis balls. It's a little like having shitty night vision. And if you have shitty night vision, you might want to put some time between night driving and any three-month acid binges. These hallucinations aren't dangerous or really that bothersome. The trouble starts when people worry about them: The symptoms are mild, but stressing yourself out about possible brain damage can be, well ... damaging. Tragically, the point at which this stuff becomes a bother is the point at which more drugs won't relax you. It's nature's cruelest Catch-22. #1. Pot is a Gateway Drug There's a whole family of research that kicked off with scientists grabbing one line from a middle school anti-drug course and going, "Let's make our hypothesis the opposite of that." Case in point: The idea that marijuana is a gateway drug. You probably know that's untrue, since most people know way more occasional pot users than they do crackheads. But research actually indicates that pot is the opposite of a gateway. Which is ... what, one of those slides on a crash-landed airplane? Anyway, studies in the wake of medical marijuana laws show that a 20 percent drop in heroin use corresponds with a 10 to 20 percent surge in marijuana use. If you want the populace to get fucked up less often, the best way might be to stop hassling them about it. Portugal decriminalized drug use 10 years ago, and while more adults do drugs now, fewer teens do, and fewer people of all ages die from overdoses. It makes a lot more sense when you think about drug use from the perspective of a stupid person. If you're dumb and your friend has a seizure because of whatever felony you just snorted, you might just leave him to die in his car, because fuck calling 911 and bringing The Man down on you both. And that's really the best case for ending the war on drugs: It'll make things safer for kids, poor people, and the stupid. http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-insane...src=fanpage%2F -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 Clocktower View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jul 2012 Posts 950 13-04-2014 15:18 Wow, I don't always have a high opinion of Cracked but this is a REALLY good article. Bravo! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 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 10,313 13-04-2014 16:14 I agree. I do have to say that I unfortunately experienced a very strong addiction after the first dose using an new strong and fast delivery system. i had always enjoyed the substance and had over indulged but had never been addicted. I absolutely intended to only try it once.. you know just to see what it was all about. for the experience. One dose and I was off to the races with a real addiction after the very first dose with that delivery system. I personally think that one really good rush is all it takes to become addicted. How fast the addiction progresses after that I think is individual.. but mine progressed like wild fire and I went from partying and frequently abusing and using many drugs but having little or no big direct negative impacts caused by the drugs themselves. To in less than nine months to signing myself up and paying for a trip to rehab, a place I said I would never need to go.. as it escalated so fast and came with so much negative aspect and this coupled with the inability (or at least no knowledge on how) not to use the drug and the frequency and scale the addiction drove me to use after just a short time.. worked me like a little bitch. That being said guess the ten years of hard partying still preceded that addiction. But I remember the rush of that dose like it was yesterday and there is little doubt in my mind that it is possible for a person to become addicted after just one really fast strong rush. May take awhile for the ugliness to show up, but that doesn't mean the addiction wasn't created right then. RECOVERY FORUMS ~~~ADDICTION GUIDE~~~ CONTACT ME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 'medicine cabinet' View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jun 2006 Location Baltimore Posts 6,393 14-04-2014 00:11 Yes good article indeed. I was already pretty bad off on dope before I shot for the first time and I was more or less hooked x 10 after I felt how incredible iv was. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #5 toothpastedog View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Dec 2010 Location Fascist Valley, USA Posts 2,119 Blog Entries21 14-04-2014 04:18 Originally Posted by neversickanymore I agree. I do have to say that I unfortunately experienced a very strong addiction after the first dose using an new strong and fast delivery system. i had always enjoyed the substance and had over indulged but had never been addicted. I absolutely intended to only try it once.. you know just to see what it was all about. for the experience. One dose and I was off to the races with a real addiction after the very first dose with that delivery system. I personally think that one really good rush is all it takes to become addicted. How fast the addiction progresses after that I think is individual.. but mine progressed like wild fire and I went from partying and frequently abusing and using many drugs but having little or no big direct negative impacts caused by the drugs themselves. To in less than nine months to signing myself up and paying for a trip to rehab, a place I said I would never need to go.. as it escalated so fast and came with so much negative aspect and this coupled with the inability (or at least no knowledge on how) not to use the drug and the frequency and scale the addiction drove me to use after just a short time.. worked me like a little bitch. That being said guess the ten years of hard partying still preceded that addiction. But I remember the rush of that dose like it was yesterday and there is little doubt in my mind that it is possible for a person to become addicted after just one really fast strong rush. May take awhile for the ugliness to show up, but that doesn't mean the addiction wasn't created right then. After talking to a number of diverse individuals in the scene, I don't think it was an anomaly or anything, although I'm still not so sure it's the norm either. Anyways, I remember the first time I used IV heroin. Amazing feeling. Can't remember the first time I IM'd dope, but I can remember the first time I used/snorted some heroin/ECP nearly as well as the first time I felt the IV rush. However, to this day, I'd rather snort some ECP than IV a dose. If you handed me a needle and some tar, I'd IM (properly - three years and thousands of IM shots later and I've never had an abscess or infection due to proper care) over IV any day. Point being, although I remember that first IV hit of heroin, and how amazing it felt, it's not something I ever really sought out again. I prefer the general opioid emotional and sensory "stability" and general euphoria opioids can provide. On a certain level I get it, but in another more personal sense I never really understood why people could get so into/obsessed with certain methods of using drugs like smoking or IV. But hey, everyone's different right? But I digress. Pretty good article OP! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #6 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 6,336 14-04-2014 08:48 Originally Posted by neversickanymore I agree. I do have to say that I unfortunately experienced a very strong addiction after the first dose using an new strong and fast delivery system. i had always enjoyed the substance and had over indulged but had never been addicted. I absolutely intended to only try it once.. you know just to see what it was all about. for the experience. One dose and I was off to the races with a real addiction after the very first dose with that delivery system. I personally think that one really good rush is all it takes to become addicted. How fast the addiction progresses after that I think is individual.. but mine progressed like wild fire and I went from partying and frequently abusing and using many drugs but having little or no big direct negative impacts caused by the drugs themselves. To in less than nine months to signing myself up and paying for a trip to rehab, a place I said I would never need to go.. as it escalated so fast and came with so much negative aspect and this coupled with the inability (or at least no knowledge on how) not to use the drug and the frequency and scale the addiction drove me to use after just a short time.. worked me like a little bitch. That being said guess the ten years of hard partying still preceded that addiction. But I remember the rush of that dose like it was yesterday and there is little doubt in my mind that it is possible for a person to become addicted after just one really fast strong rush. May take awhile for the ugliness to show up, but that doesn't mean the addiction wasn't created right then. Interesting about the addiction story, nsa. I knew a guy who swore up and down that he became addicted to crack after his 2nd hit. So, maybe the article got that wrong, but otherwise it was really a great piece of writing. DiTM Guidelines DiTM Videos Thread BLUA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #7 ComfortablyNumb95 View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact BL Ambassador -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2012 Location "When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky" Posts 2,328 Blog Entries2 15-04-2014 20:58 why does the title use the past tense? lol -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #8 Waffle Sock View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Feb 2014 Location Planet Nibiru Posts 1,318 Yesterday 18:31 “This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and others.” “You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.” “Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality and death.” “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men” “Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.” -Harry Anslinger, 1st Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, United States of Amerikkka -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #9 ro4eva View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2004 Location Aiding my comrades in mythbusting prohibitionist propaganda - one cliche at a time. Posts 2,743 Blog Entries8 Today 04:46 Surprisingly well-written article. And somewhat witty at times. Originally Posted by Waffle Sock “This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and others.” “You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.” “Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality and death.” “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men” “Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.” -Harry Anslinger, 1st Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, United States of Amerikkka The damage that this man's opinions and interests has caused (and continues to do) - in relation to certain mind-alerting substances - to ordinary law-abiding human beings all over the world; and the unthinkable amount of resources which have been utterly wasted on a crooked and futile attempt to meet his impossible agenda cannot be understated. It makes me wonder just how different our drug laws might be today if Harry Anslinger wasn't born. He sure sounds like he was a piece of work... Originally Posted by Hypocrite? Harry Anslinger claimed that he had witnessed a scene that affected his life. When he was 12, he heard the screams of a morphine addict that were silenced only by a boy returning from a pharmacist to supply the addict with more morphine. Anslinger was appalled that the drug was so powerful and that children had ready access to such drugs. However, the experience did not stop Anslinger, while acting as the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, from authorizing a druggist near the White House to fill a morphine prescription for an addicted Senator Joseph McCarthy as part of an effort to help the Senator end his heroin addiction. Originally Posted by Racist? Jealousy? In Anslinger's own words regarding marijuana use: "Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy." Originally Posted by Hidden Agenda? Some of his critics allege that Anslinger and the campaign against marijuana had a hidden agenda, DuPont petrochemical interests and William Randolph Hearst together created the highly sensational anti-marijuana campaign to eliminate hemp as an industrial competitor. Indeed, Anslinger did not himself consider marijuana a serious threat to American society until in the fourth year of his tenure (1934), at which point an anti-marijuana campaign, aimed at alarming the public, became his primary focus as part of the government's broader push to outlaw all recreational drugs. Originally Posted by Propaganda According To Anslinger The La Guardia Committee, promoted in 1939 by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was the first in depth study into the effects of smoking marijuana. It systematically contradicted claims made by the U.S. Treasury Department that smoking marijuana results in insanity, and determined that the practice of smoking marihuana does not lead to addiction in the medical sense of the word. Released in 1944, the report infuriated Harry Anslinger who was campaigning against marijuana and he condemned it as unscientific. Originally Posted by Fact According To Anslinger In Anslinger's own words regarding a tragic incident which he blamed on marijuana use: "An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana." Too bad it's not possible from a practical standpoint to go back in time, because I'm sure many people would love to get a chance to undo some of this man's drug-related work. And I know I'd love to make 'undo' the ratification of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs treaty from '61. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #10 CLICKHEREx View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join DateSep 2012 Posts107Today 19:12 Thanks for the above, guys. Check out: "Debunking the Hemp Conspiracy Theory", at http://www.alternet.org/story/77339/...spiracy_theory Now I have multiple versions to choose from, but at the moment, am tending to favour the "Alternet version".

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/business/international/tasmania-big-supplier-to-drug-companies-faces-changes.html?_r=0 * Tasmania, Big Supplier to Drug Companies, Faces Changes By KEITH BRADSHERJULY 19, 2014 Slide Show* Now is the sowing season for opium poppies in the Australian state of Tasmania. Tractors chug up and down paddocks, pulling elaborate machinery that drills pairs of adjacent, miniature holes in the dirt, and then drops a dozen tiny kernels of fertilizer in one of the holes and a tiny poppy seed in the other. By November, the fields will be carpeted in pink flowers with an occasional splash of white or mauve. Then the flowers will drop away, leaving behind distinctive, cup-shaped pods packed with tiny poppy seeds along with the opium latex that surrounds them. When the latex dries two months later, the pods are harvested and hauled to factories, where machinery separates the seeds and grinds up the rest to extract the valuable narcotic alkaloids. Tasmania, an island off Australia’s southern coast, is the start of a global supply chain that encompasses the biggest drug companies and produces $12 billion a year of opiate painkillers. Nearly a half-century of assiduous plant breeding, a gentle climate and tight regulations have given Tasmania a hammerlock on production of one of the pharmaceutical industry’s most important raw materials. Tasmania, which is about the size of West Virginia, grows about 85 percent of the world’s thebaine, an opium poppy extract used to make OxyContin and a family of similarly powerful prescription drugs that have transformed pain management over the last two decades. It produces all of the world’s oripavine, another extract, which is used to treat heroin overdoses and shows promise in controlling other addictions. Tasmania also accounts for a quarter of the world’s morphine and codeine, two older painkillers from opium poppies that are still widely used, particularly outside North America. But the global pharmaceutical industry is increasingly worried that it is hooked on the island’s opium poppy supplies. The two manufacturers that dominate Tasmanian opium extract production have begun twin battles to diversify supply sources and alter the plant’s genome to produce a stronger, more productive crop. The manufacturers, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson, provide narcotic alkaloids to their own painkiller units and to other companies worldwide, which have started demanding that the two giants act to ensure reliable supplies. “They look at the map of the world, see Tasmania at the bottom, and say, ‘Are we taking a hemispheric risk, and putting all our eggs in one basket?’ ” said Steve Morris, the general manager of opiates for GlaxoSmithKline. The drug companies are pushing for regulatory approval to cultivate opium poppies for export on the Australian mainland near Melbourne. The two companies are also trying to persuade the Tasmanian government to legalize genetic engineering for poppies, to develop varieties that produce more concentrated narcotics and are less vulnerable to storms or diseases. Tasmanian farmers have had a mixed response. They strongly oppose production on the Australian mainland and want to hold on to the poppy business, which accounts for nearly one-tenth of the farm revenue in Tasmania, or roughly $80 million a year. But they know they can’t keep the industry if they can’t ensure supply, and they are enthusiastic supporters of genetic engineering. Environmentalists and, so far, the Tasmanian government favor keeping the Australian state clean of genetically manipulated organisms, a goal that growers dismiss. “We grow narcotic drugs — by definition they’re not clean,” said Glynn Williams, the president of Poppy Growers Tasmania, a trade group. Cockatoos and Poppies Rohan Kile, the poppy crop supply manager for Glaxo, knows Tasmania well. As a child there, he moved from town to town every three years because his father was a state forests manager. Now, Mr. Kile, a lanky outdoorsman, travels from farm to farm to assess opium production. On a recent crystalline morning, overlooking a valley with a wide, meandering stream, he gave advice on loading the fertilizer and seeds behind the tractor for planting. Later in the season, he will discuss harvesting. The pods need to be dry enough for processing, but if left too long, they may be eaten by hungry, sulphur-crested cockatoos and other birds that roost in eucalyptus trees or the golden-flowering gorse bushes that hug the low hills. Mr. Kile recommends strong fences to prevent wallabies — close relatives of kangaroos — and people from hopping or walking into fields, eating the poppies and suffering narcotic effects. Stoned wallabies “can become disoriented and lose their ability to find water,” he said. Humans who ingest Tasmanian poppies can die. After harvest in February, farmers deliver the cups to two main factories, Johnson & Johnson’s green-walled complex in Westbury and Glaxo’s smaller operation in Latrobe, a Tasmanian river town that calls itself the “platypus capital of the world.” The bulk of the opium poppy extract produced in Tasmania is shipped to pharmaceutical factories in the Northeastern United States. With its wealth and a largely private health care system willing to pay up for drugs, the United States accounts for three-quarters of global opiate painkiller sales by tonnage and five-sixths by value. The entire process is tightly monitored by a United Nations-authorized board, which tracks production and requires strict security. This body, the International Narcotics Control Board, discourages holding big stockpiles for fear that they might be diverted into the production of heroin, whose market is more than four times the size of the opiate painkillers market. But without excess stockpiles, the industry can get caught flat-footed in a bad year. Mr. Kile recalls the torrential downpours in northern Tasmania three years ago that devastated the morphine poppy crop just as it was flowering. Although Glaxo said it met all existing orders, pharmaceutical companies and health agencies around the world suddenly found themselves watching their stocks and hoping that they would last until the next harvest. The industry is quietly increasing its reserves of raw thebaine. It had only an eight-month supply on hand at the start of last year — not enough to cover the total loss of one harvest — but it now appears to have the recommended one-year supply, according to the narcotics board. “The likelihood of complete failure of the Tasmanian crop is extremely remote,” said Rachel David, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson. But “more and more, our customers are asking for a plan in case of a dramatic catastrophe in Tasmania.” The Road to Tasmania The modern poppy industry can be traced to the early 1950s, when Stephen King, an agricultural scientist for what was then the Glaxo Group, tried in Britain to find a better way to harvest the seed pods. During World War II, morphine was widely used to care for wounded soldiers and civilians but was sometimes in short supply. Building on the findings of a Hungarian scientist in the 1920s, Mr. King looked to commercialize a labor-efficient process to extract opium from poppies — by using machinery to grind up dried pods instead of making tiny incisions by hand to drain pods that were still green. In the initial phase, he discovered that poppies grown in Britain had too little opium because of frequent rain, and he began searching for a better climate in a secure location. He wanted to start production on the southern coast of Australia, near Melbourne. But his work coincided with the rise of heroin. As heroin poured into Europe and the United States, world leaders struggled to respond. International pacts in 1961 and 1972 called for limiting production to heavily regulated areas, notably Australia, France, Hungary, India, Spain and Turkey. The United States also decided to buy 80 percent of its morphine from Turkey and India, a rule that remains in place today. Turkey was given particular preference, as a bulwark to halt the spread of communism and as a heavily Muslim country that had warm relations with Israel. With concerns increasing over heroin, Australian officials rebuffed Mr. King’s plan to grow poppies on the mainland. Instead, they sent him to start poppy farms on an island that the rest of the world barely remembered: Tasmania. The isolation proved an advantage. Towns like Launceston, Longford, Evandale and other current-day hubs of poppy production in north and central Tasmania had been settled by tens of thousands of British and Irish convicts transported here in the early 19th century as a cheap alternative to prisons in the British Isles. They were followed by thousands of so-called free settlers, who built communities with main streets still lined by two- and three-story pink sandstone buildings. Then people largely stopped moving there. With 500,000 people, Tasmania now rivals Iceland in having one of the world’s least mobile populations, with little immigration or emigration. Particularly in rural Tasmania, people do not just know everyone in their towns — their families tend to have known one another for at least four generations, and often five or six. Secrets are few, helping to keep drug use in check. While marijuana and methamphetamines have sometimes been a problem in Tasmania, heroin production has been virtually nonexistent despite all the raw opium grown and collected each year. Arriving aircraft and ships are closely watched. “You won’t see many tie-dyed shirts in Longford,” said Mr. Kile, the Glaxo manager, as he drove past Longford’s brick Anglican church, which dates to 1839. More Than Morphine Moving to Tasmania in 1965, Mr. King set up a laboratory and a plant-breeding program that would transform poppy production, turning each flower into a tiny factory churning out a range of highly specialized narcotic alkaloids suited to pharmaceutical manufacturing. His team, soon followed to Tasmania by Johnson & Johnson scientists, began breeding different strains tailored to each of the island’s seven microclimates and figuring out the right combination of fertilizers for each variety. As the breeding program developed, drug researchers in Europe and the United States figured out that morphine was not the only alkaloid narcotic of value in opium poppies. They experimented with thebaine, oripavine and other chemicals in opium, finding important uses. In 1998, scientists at Johnson & Johnson commercialized “Norman,” a variety that produced a much higher concentration of thebaine. They followed in 2009 with “Ted,” a variety that made mostly thebaine. Glaxo developed its own varieties. Tasmania’s dominance of poppy production emerged with the rapid rise of OxyContin and other thebaine-based drugs in the 1990s. Thebaine, unlike morphine, was not included in the American government’s policy of buying 80 percent of opiate raw material from Turkey and India. That allowed Glaxo and Johnson & Johnson, as well as the drug companies that bought from them, to turn almost entirely to Tasmania for the raw materials needed for newer painkillers and addiction treatments. Few medicines in the past quarter-century have made as big a difference in treatment as thebaine-based painkillers — and few have been as quickly profitable for the pharmaceutical industry. OxyContin, which is made by Purdue Pharma and produces $2 billion a year in retail sales, is derived mainly from Tasmania-grown thebaine. Rival makers have introduced more than 40 other chemically similar opiate painkillers, like Roxicodone and Percocet. The worldwide sales boom for OxyContin and its siblings has resulted in a tripling of Tasmania’s poppy acreage since the late 1990s, to nearly 30,000 hectares, or 74,000 acres. Poppies tailored for thebaine production now are about two-thirds of Tasmania’s crop, with morphine poppies making up an additional quarter and codeine and a few other alkaloids the rest. The Mainland Threat Charlie Mackinnon, a square-shouldered, fifth-generation farmer, takes pride in his family’s attachment to the land. He is even a little embarrassed when he says his ancestors didn’t build his 1832 homestead themselves — his great-great-grandfather bought it from another farmer. Standing beside his field, Mr. Mackinnon, 35, ticked off the concerns for poppy farmers. Downy mildew, a plant pest, is a constant fear. The big worry is rain. He recounted how a friend planted almost 300 acres of opium poppies last year, only to lose the entire crop when a heavy rain left his fields so soggy that the plants’ roots died. “They don’t like wet feet,” he said. “They don’t like too much moisture.” Tasmania’s climate has become a little less gentle lately, for reasons not well understood. An increasingly severe drought from 2006 to 2010 ended in northern Tasmania only with rains and flooding that devastated the 2011 crop, though central Tasmania had a bumper crop that year. Tasmanian farmers can sell their poppy harvests for at least $1,600 an acre, significantly more than other crops. But Mr. Mackinnon and other farmers said herbicide and fungicide costs were high. Poppies also deplete beneficial bacteria and fungi in the soil. So they can be grown only once every third year in fertile northern Tasmania, alternating with potatoes, and as little as once every seventh year in drier areas farther south, where they alternate with sheep pastures. Poppies have become Tasmania’s third-largest farm sector by revenue, after dairy and beef. “If it’s done correctly, it can give a good return,” said Mr. Williams, the president of Poppy Growers Tasmania, who is a longtime farmer. Tasmanian farmers are fighting to preserve their role. France and Spain are looking at ways to expand the tiny, heavily regulated production of state-affiliated companies that run their modest opium poppy fields. Britain and Portugal have unilaterally approved legalizing regulated opium production, but they don’t have the backing of the United Nations-authorized board. The bigger threat for Tasmanian farmers is closer to home. Hidden deep inside a few farms on the Australian mainland, and not visible from any road, are the secret opium gardens of Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline. The locations are known only to the farmers, a few state and federal Australian regulators and some managers from the two pharmaceutical giants. Neither company will provide any details except that the fields are near Melbourne in the Australian state of Victoria. After months of debate, the state Parliament in Victoria voted in March to authorize commercial growing of opium poppies. Tasmanian farmers and politicians are now lobbying the national government not to issue export permits for opiate material grown in Victoria. The drug companies contend that export permits are a national prerogative not linked to the states where crops are grown. The national health ministry declined to comment except to say: “Export approval is granted by the federal government, subject to legislation and international obligations.” One possible solution under discussion has been to limit poppies on the mainland to thebaine varieties, because it is nearly impossible to convert them into heroin. But the drug companies have been wary of any limits. And requiring thebaine varieties on the mainland could intensify another problem: illegal poppy tea. At least three people have died in the last four years in Tasmania after stealing poppy seed pods and trying to make them into tea. More deaths could occur if poppies are grown on the mainland, where the drug culture is stronger and not everyone understands the dangers. (Raw thebaine can cause convulsions when consumed.) Tasmanian officials have been replacing warning signs at poppy fields. The old ones said illegal use “may cause death.” The new warning says, “Has caused deaths.” ‘You Can Pop a Gene In’ While walking along the edge of Mr. Mackinnon’s field, Mr. Kile noticed a plant a few inches high growing in an adjacent area of untilled dirt. He bent down and ripped it out, tap root and all. Poppies that grow from stray seeds on unlicensed land, he said, have to be sprayed or plowed under, a task overseen by a special Tasmanian state agency. He also keeps a wary eye out for pests like downy mildew. The drug companies say they have the answer to plant pests: the tools of genetic engineering. “If a disease comes along, you can pop a gene in,” Mr. Kile said. Agronomists have already mapped much of the opium poppy’s genome. But Tasmania has had two consecutive five-year bans on genetic engineering in agriculture. The second will expire in November, and Jeremy Rockliff, Tasmania’s minister for primary industries, said the state government plans to introduce legislation to extend a broad ban for another five years. Poppy farmers and the pharmaceutical companies want an exemption. Surprisingly little consensus exists on what kind of genetic engineering would be done, if authorized. During a recent dinner interview in Canberra after a day of lobbying national officials, Keith Rice, the chief executive of Poppy Growers Tasmania, and Mr. Williams, the same group’s president, sharply disagreed with each other on whether the industry should genetically modify poppies to add resistance to Roundup, a Monsanto product that is one of the world’s most widely used herbicides. Mr. Williams said that introducing Roundup resistance was a bad idea because it would make it harder to spray and kill poppies like the one Mr. Kile had found. If herbicide resistance spread, drug-control officials elsewhere might struggle to kill illegal opium plants. But Mr. Rice strongly disagreed, saying Tasmanian farmers should be able to spray their fields with Roundup to kill all the weeds, leaving only the resistant poppy plants alive. That would sharply reduce costs and help eliminate the need for growing poppies in other, less secure locations. Either way, farmers here say that if Tasmania does not allow genetic engineering, it will probably happen elsewhere, including around Melbourne, where there is no comparable ban. Their worry is that this scenic island of historic towns and bucolic hills may become little more than another quaint farming area if it does not act. “If Tasmania continues with a ban on it,” said Michael Badcock, another longtime farmer, “Tasmania may get left behind.” ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Either way, farmers here say that if Tasmania does not allow genetic engineering, it will probably happen elsewhere, including around Melbourne, where there is no comparable ban. Their worry is that this scenic island of historic towns and bucolic hills may become little more than another quaint farming area if it does not act." - I read this as being tantamount to stating that Victoria is likely to license Genetically Modified poppies. I believe that forum members, and the anti GM movement should be made aware of this, so that they can act now.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2014/jul/19/us_drug_policy_and_border_immigration by Phillip Smith, July 19, 2014 The mass migration of tens of thousands of children and adolescents from Central America festered for months before exploding into a full-blown border refugee/immigration crisis in the last few weeks, as images of hundreds of children warehoused in temporary holding facilities competed with equally compelling images of crowds of angry Americans loudly protesting their presence. At the border. (COHA) The finger-pointing is in full swing. Much of it centers on the need to "secure the border" and the Obama administration's alleged failure to do so. Other Republican critics blame the administration's alleged "softness" on child immigrants as a factor pulling the kids north. Democrats counter that the GOP's blockage of long-pending immigration reform is part of the problem. A lot of the discussion centers around the "pull" factors -- those policies or social or economic realities that draw these immigrants toward the US, but equally at play are "push" factors -- those policies or social or economic factors that impel these emigrants to seek new, better lives outside their homelands. And there is finger-pointing going on about that, too, with some loud and prominent voices placing a good share of the blame on prohibitionist US drug policies in Latin America -- their emphasis on law enforcement and military responses, their balloon effects, and their other unintended consequences. The majority of the child immigrants are coming from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America (also consisting of Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama). Those Northern Triangle countries suffered not only devastating civil wars in the 1980s, with the US supporting conservative, often dictatorial governments against leftist popular guerrilla movements (or, in the case of Honduras, serving as a platform for counterinsurgency against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua), as well as chronic poverty and income inequality. They are also the countries feeling the brunt of the expansion of powerful Mexican drug trafficking organizations -- the so-called cartels -- who, in response to increased pressure from the Mexican government (assisted by US aid under the Merida agreement) began pushing south into the region around 2008. And they are countries where transnational criminal gangs, such as the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) have taken on an increasingly high profile, bringing high levels of criminal violence with them. (San Pedro Sula, Honduras, wears the dubious distinction of having the highest murder rate in the world.) Honduran President Juan Fernandez is one of the prominent voices placing the blame for the crisis squarely on the war on drugs. "Honduras has been living in an emergency for a decade," Hernandez told Mexican daily newspaper Excelsior. "The root cause is that the United States and Colombia carried out big operations in the fight against drugs. Then Mexico did it. This is creating a serious problem for us that sparked this migration. A good part of (migration) has to do with the lack of opportunities in Central America, which has its origin in the climate of violence, and this violence, almost 85% of it, is related to the issue of drug trafficking," he said. Former Clinton administration labor secretary Robert Reich has been another prominent voice pointing to the role of the drug war -- and earlier militaristic US interventions in the region. He let loose in a Facebook post last weekend. "I've been watching media coverage of angry Americans at our southern border waiving signs and yelling slogans, insisting that the children -- most of whom are refugees of the drug war we've created -- 'go home' to the violence and death that war has created, and I wonder who these angry Americans are," he wrote. The "United States is not a detached, innocent bystander" when it came to the refugee crisis, he explained."For decades, US governments supported unspeakably brutal regimes and poured billions into maintaining them ($5 billion in El Salvador alone). Implacable opposition to communism -- often defined as virtually any reformer -- gave these regimes a blank check," Reich continued. "The result is a legacy of dealing with opponents through extreme violence and a culture of impunity. Judicial systems remain weak, corrupt, and often completely dysfunctional. After the cold war ended, the United States lost interest in these countries. What was left was destruction, tens of thousands dead, and massive population displacement. The percentage of people living below the poverty line is 54 % for Guatemala, 36 % for El Salvador, and 60 % for Honduras. More recently gangs, organized crime, and drug cartels feeding the US market have become part of this unholy mix." While the president of Honduras and Democrats like Reich could have political incentives in what is an increasingly ugly and partisan debate over the crisis, a number of experts on the region -- though not all of them -- agree that US drug policies in the region are playing a major role in the affair. "Although there are many factors, clearly the drug war is one of them," said John Walsh, senior associate for drug policy for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). "There can't be any doubt that drug trafficking and efforts to repress it are part of the criminality and violence in Central America," he told the Chronicle. "It's not the only explanation, of course," he added. "There are decades of weak institutions and long histories of violence in the area. But if you take into account the shifting trafficking patterns resulting from the US helping other governments in the region put pressure on the industry and shift routes through Central America, it has certainly added to the problems." "We've been engaged in a drug war for 40 years, and everywhere we put pressure, it bulges out somewhere else," said Nathan Jones, fellow in drug policy at Rice University's Baker Institute in Houston. "In the Miami Vice era, we put pressure on the Caribbean, and the trade moved to Mexico. We dismantled the Cali and Medellin cartels in the early 1990s, and in hindsight, we know that also empowered the Mexican cartels." The pattern keeps repeating, Jones said. "Through the Merida Initiative, we put more pressure on the Mexican cartels -- and for very good reasons -- but that resulted in their dispersal into Central America. The Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel established alliances and began carving out chunks of Central America. They shifted to two-state and multi-stage trafficking operations and tried to minimize their risk by having their loads stop in various countries." Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez (wikipedia.org) At the same time the Mexican cartels were pushing (and being pushed) into Central America, Central American gangs were rearing their tattooed heads. Ironically enough, gangs like Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) had their origins in another US war in the region: the Reagan-era effort to thwart the rise to power of popular leftist guerrillas. "Deportation got us into this mess in the first place," said Jones. "We had immigrants coming from Central America during the wars of the 1980s. Some of them formed their own gangs after being rejected by Mexican street gangs in places like Los Angeles, and when they showed up in the criminal justice system, we deported them back to their home countries. We transnationalized those gangs in the process, and now the violence from those very gangs is resulting in another mass migration flow. And now we are proposing the same solution of deportation. This doesn't deal with root causes." "I'm not a big proponent of the drug war as an explanation for everything," countered Eric Olson, associate director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. "We need to stop thinking about the violence in Central America as a drug problem. It's a factor in the violence but not really a primary factor. Community based criminal networks involved in extortion, kidnapping, and other forms of criminal activity -- including retail drug markets -- are more of a factor," he told the Chronicle. "There is virtually no state presence in most of the areas of highest violence so it's a little hard to blame the drug war," Olson continued. "Where the drug war has been the biggest problem has been when there are mass operations and mass detentions, but even those arrests have less and less to do with drugs and more and more to do with the criminalization of gang membership, extortion, and other things. We've got to stop seeing everything through the drug war lens." "Criminal groups have diversified their business models," WOLA's Walsh conceded. "Drug trafficking is only one aspect, but the revenues are so huge that there is more money to buy weapons and corrupt officials, so it contributes to crime and impunity. There is no doubt this is part of the problem." "This is a very complicated issue, with lots of causal factors, and blaming it solely on US policy has lots of shortcomings," said Alicia Magdalena Duda, a researcher with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). "But the drug war and the violence is a big issue." Assigning blame for the status quo is a backwards looking exercise, but what is to be done moving forward? There are divergences of opinion there, too. "We have to recognize that just equipping these countries to chase drugs around in the interest of interdicting them for our purposes isn't contributing much to reducing violence and increasing public safety," said Walsh. "Drug enforcement as measured by how much they're interdicting has no impact at best, and probably makes things worse. Rather than foster the illusion that we can eradicate the drug trade, we need to steer law enforcement there to reduce violence by going after the worst, most violent actors rather than measuring success in tons seized." "How to end the violence is a long-term issue," said COHA's Duda. "Those countries are facing extreme violence and poverty. To address this immigration crisis, we have to actively engage with them, and not just with monetary packages. One of the contributors to poverty is corruption, and corruption is rampant there. Ignoring that and just continuing with the present approach is not effective, either," she said. Duda even broached a very controversial response, one that has also been heard in regard to Mexico and the prohibition-related violence there. "Maybe they have to engage in peace talks with the gangs and cartels," she suggested. "One of the great frustrations about Central America is that we supported those right-wing regimes during the Cold War, but we didn't deal with any of the underlying conditions, the grievances, the extreme income inequality, the crushing, grinding poverty," said Jones. "We need a sustained engagement with Central America, but we also have to leverage those host governments to do the right thing. We can't have a situation where wealthy elites are not paying their fair shares of taxes. We have societies fundamentally structured along wrong principles. It will take decades to turn things around, but it needs to happen." "Our focus should be on reducing violence and addressing the factors that are actually driving the violence," said Olson. "This should include targeted law enforcement, but also prevention programs as well as gang intervention and reintegration programs. Only by reducing violence and the stranglehold criminal networks have on communities will people consider staying in place." This is a complicated problem with no easy solutions and a lot of different suggestions. Whether prohibition and US drug policies have played a key role or only a supporting one, it does seem clear that, at best, they have not helped. At worst, our drug policies in the region have increased violence and corruption in the region, enriching the worst -- on both sides of the law.

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/news/nbcri/1454474678-auckland-lawyer-struck-off-for-illicit-drug-use By: Josh White, Latest Crime News | Tuesday July 15 2014 14:09 Photo: Stock Xchng An Auckland lawyer's been struck off the Roll of Barristers and Solicitors, over his use of illicit drugs. Brent Thomson pleaded guilty in January to possessing methamphetamine and cannabis while working as a police prosecutor. The Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal's struck him from the roll, as he's been convicted of a jailable offence. But it accepts the drugs were for his personal use, and his offending occurred in his personal time. Law Society president Chris Moore says it's important lawyers maintain high standards of conduct.