CLICKHEREx

17-03-2014, 20:14 Docta Palladium Member Join Date: 19-12-2005 Male from Australia Posts: 2,023 Blog Entries: 8 Silk Road: Customers Targeted -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A MAN who bought tens of thousands of dollars of drugs through a notorious website faces up to 25 years in jail. Luke James Hanley, 20, of Daisy Hill, ordered the LCD-substitute tablets from underground website Silk Road just months before it was closed down late last year. Known among its users as the Amazon or eBay of illegal drugs, Hanley ordered 2700 of the tablets to be delivered to his Melton West home under a false name. The Victorian County Court heard the drugs, valued at about $20,000 on the street, were intercepted by customs officials at Melbourne Airport. A search of Hanley's premises later found the drugs in his wardrobe along with false documents he used to open dodgy bank accounts three years earlier. Just under five grams of amphetamines were also mailed to Hanley via a false name in Sydney, but he never took delivery. Hanley pleaded guilty to a rolled-up charge of importing marketable quantities of amphetamines and the LSD substitute and two other charges of making false documents. The court heard Hanley was just 15 when he opened his first dodgy bank account using falsified documents, which were later discovered by the bank's security experts. His mother, Julie Gilbertson, told the court her son had never been in trouble with the law and had been encouraged to participate in the importation by her estranged partner. The court heard Hanley's biological father had spent five years in jail for armed robbery and had only recently resumed contact with his son when the purchase was made. Text messages read to the court captured the pair talking about the delivery of pills, but he has not been charged. Mrs Gilbertson, who remarried several years ago, said she begged her son to come and stay with them at their farm, but he refused until it was too late. ``It's been a huge wake-up call. He's extremely frightened,'' she told the court. Judge Frank Gucciardo was critical of Hanley's behaviour and said there was evidence to suggest he'd done a certain amount of planning. ``This isn't just `let me order something over the internet and see what happens','' he said. Hanley will be sentenced on Friday. WAYNE FLOWER NEWS LIMITED MARCH 11, 2014 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law...-1226851736371 __________________ If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. ************************ Docta View Public Profile Send a direct message to Docta Find all posts by Docta Add Docta to Your Contacts View Blog #2 19-03-2014, 13:50 CLICKHEREx Mercury Member Join Date: 28-09-2012 Male from Australia Posts: 60 Infractions: 0/1 (20) Re: Silk Road: Customers Targeted -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I strongly suspect that the amphetamines were detected by sniffer dogs, trained for amphetamines, opiates, cannabis, and MDMA, and his name and address were then placed on an Alert List, which may (or may not; I have no information, but it seems likely) also apply to future international travel. Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=240137#ixzz2wNMO1m4r ------------------------------------------------------------- Also view: "Victorian man avoids jail for ordering drugs on Silk Road website" at http://www.legalhighsforum.com.au/showthread.php?6457-Victorian-man-avoids-jail-for-ordering-drugs-on-Silk-Road-website with this article being posted as it contains some different info.

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/drones-skys-the-limit-for-airborne-snoopers-20140315-34tvt.html March 16, 2014 Ben Grubb Deputy technology editor Is a drone-cam watching you? Drones fitted with video cameras are now affordable, available in many stores and simple to use. Video reporter Tim Doldissen explores how issues of privacy could easily arise. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... a drug mule? Last week, police intercepted a drone allegedly trying to deliver drugs over the wall of a Victorian remand centre. What do these robots mean for our safety, security, privacy - and the remote delivery of pizza? How widespread have drones become in civilian industries and among consumers? In Australia, drones increasingly are being used by emergency services, photography, surveying and agricultural industries, with more than 81 operators licensed to fly them, according to aviation regulator CASA. Drones have also become popular among hobbyists, thanks to companies such as Parrot, which sells a Wi-Fi controlled quad-copter for about $350 online and in retail stores. Retailers speculated last year that about 100 new multi-rotor drones and fixed-wing drones take to Australian skies each week. It is feared drones will be used to spy on the public from above. Photo: Jason South What kind of things are they being used for? Commercially, drones are often used instead of helicopters to shoot TV ads, inspect infrastructure, such as power lines, monitor livestock, and assess emergency situations such as bushfires. Animal welfare groups are also using them to conduct covert operations above free-range egg, sheep and cattle farms to gather evidence of alleged abuse, causing some controversy. Melbourne's Metropolitan Fire Brigade and the Queensland Police also use drones. The MFB used one last year to assess a truck dangling off the Bolte Bridge. What kind of loads can they carry? A flying drone took this image above Sydney Harbour. Photo: Simon Jardine/Flickr It depends on the type but some quad-copters, such as the Australian-built Coptercam, which costs $13,000, can carry loads up to two kilos. Other fixed-wing drones, such as ScanEagle, which costs about $100,000, can carry up to six kilos. Cheaper drones on sale in retail stores generally have cameras attached to them that can be viewed remotely and are not designed to carry additional payload. If drones could carry drugs into a prison, could they also carry a gun or a bomb? It's entirely possible but there are no known cases of this occurring; drone drug delivery to jails, however, have also reportedly been achieved, attempted or foiled in Brazil (250 grams of cocaine), Georgia (500-900 grams of tobacco) and Russia (700 grams of heroin). What do they cost and do you need a licence to buy or fly them? Australia was the first country in the world to introduce legislation covering civilian use of drones in 2002. It requires operators to be licensed to use a drone commercially; to qualify, operators need to undertake training and register their drones with CASA. Recreational operators, however, don't need to be licensed or register their drones. Regardless of whether a drone is used for commercial or recreational purposes, the law stipulates a pilot must be in command at all times via remote control and keep the drone within his or her line of sight. The rules also require the drone be kept below 122 metres, operated only in daylight, and kept away from populous areas, airports and people unless a special licence has been issued. Infringement notices of up to $8000 can be issued if the rules are broken. Are they hard to fly? Consumer drones on sale at retail stores are relatively easy to fly but commercial ones require operators to sit a private pilot theory exam and conduct a number of hours of experience with an instructor before being allowed to fly alone. How far and high can they fly? There's virtually no altitude limit. The law, however, prevents most drones going above 122 metres without a special licence. Some fixed-wing drones used by the military fly at 16,800 metres to avoid planes flying at 9100 metres. Civilians' quad-copters need to be visible to the pilot and while their remotes can work over two to three kilometres, operators generally use them within a range of 500 metres so they can see and operate them safely. What are the regulatory limits on their use for filming and surveillance? There are no specific rules around filming and using drones for surveillance. Despite this, operators of drones are still subject to privacy laws and council bylaws. If a council didn't want a drone to fly at a local park or beach, for example, it could draft a law preventing their use and erect a ''Drones prohibited'' sign. CASA's director of aviation safety, John McCormick, this month told a parliamentary inquiry looking into drones' privacy implications that the regulator had no interest in being responsible for policing any new privacy laws because it did not have the resources or budget. What are the regulatory limits on their use for other activities? Some companies, such as Sydney-based Flirtey and US-based Amazon, want to use drones to deliver goods. Flirtey wants to start off by delivering textbooks to university students while Amazon wants to deliver goods that are bought online from its website. Companies have also teased customers with the idea of being able to deliver pizza by drone. Many commercial operators are sceptical the current technology makes such pilotless delivery feasible. Should I be worried? The federal Privacy Commissioner raised concerns about drones last year, sparking the parliamentary inquiry that is due to report to government later this month. It was largely focused on the privacy aspects of drones. Concerns about air safety and terrestrial crashes are still unresolved. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/drones-skys-the-limit-for-airborne-snoopers-20140315-34tvt.html#ixzz2wC508PTM ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FYI, Sydney Morning Herald, a drone has already been used in an attempt to smuggle drugs into a Melbourne prison. See: "Australian Charged After Trying to Drop Drugs Into Prison by Drone", at http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/715461-Australian-Charged-After-Trying-to-Drop-Drugs-Into-Prison-by-Drone So, what if your neighbours are perving on you, or your daughter / wife / girlfriend sunbathing nude by the pool, or crims are checking out neighbourhoods, looking for small MJ crops to rip off? I can't help but wonder how vulnerable they would be to birdshot, and just how long it will be until some paranoid person starts taking pot shots. Will organised crime put a bounty on them, in areas where they have large crops, to protect them from law enforcement? Any other scenarios you guys can think of?

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=240043 16-03-2014, 18:37 ZenobiaSky Queen of ZEN Join Date: 10-04-2012 45 y/o Female from United States Posts: 655 Blog Entries: 29 New Study Shows That Magic Mushrooms Can Cause Positive Personality Changes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Hopkins University School of Medicine has released a study which concluded that magic mushrooms can cause positive personality changes. Isn't this the best news you've received all week? For us it is! Its not a gag, the research was partially funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and it appeared in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. Shocking new studies appear every day, such as the one that discovered that there is a link between obesity and lo academic performance in teenagers, but this one really takes the cake. Apparently, a single dose of psilocybin (the ingredient that makes the mushrooms magic) was enough to make lasting personality changes in almost 60% of 50 participants in the study. The people were more open, more positive; they were more imaginative and more broad-minded. Magic Mushrooms Can Cause Positive Personality Changes The subjects personality was assessed at the beginning, then two months after each of the five drug sessions which lasted for eight hours and then 14 months after the last session. The sessions were separated by at least three weeks. During the intense drug-session, the subjects were invited to lie down, wear headphones through which music was played and an eye mask to block external visual distractions. They were asked to focus on their inner experiences and relax. The assessment that magic mushrooms can cause positive personality changes is a mind-blowing fact. The changes are also permanent because they were sustained for more than a year by almost all of the participants. Almost all of the subjects considered themselves spiritual, which was defined in this study by participating in religious services, meditation or prayer. Half of them had postgraduate degrees and were psychologically healthy. The researches cant yet say if the results can be generalized to the entire population, as further studies are needed, but so far, the results seem encouraging. Some degree of caution is needed, because some of the participants to the study reported fear and anxiety for a part of their drug session, but none had any lingering effects. This study was performed in a controlled environment. By Alan Compton Posted March 13, 2014 States Chronicles http://stateschronicle.com/new-study...nges-6442.html The Newhawks Crew   __________________ "It's never to late to be what you might have been!" "What is, IS. What is not, IS NOT. No amount of wishing or wanting can change that simple fact." ZenobiaSky View Public Profile Send a direct message to ZenobiaSky Find all posts by ZenobiaSky Add ZenobiaSky to Your Contacts View Blog #2 16-03-2014, 21:37 Alfa Productive insomniac Administrator Join Date: 14-01-2003 98 y/o Male from Netherlands Posts: 27,312 Blog Entries: 3 Re: New Study Shows That Magic Mushrooms Can Cause Positive Personality Changes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- this fact needs to be added to the magic mushroom wiki Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=240043#ixzz2wCDb3Ekf

16-03-2014, 04:39 ZenobiaSky Queen of ZEN Join Date: 10-04-2012 45 y/o Female from United States Posts: 655 Blog Entries: 29 Government approves medical marijuana research -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WASHINGTON The Obama administration handed backers of medical marijuana a significant victory Friday, opening the way for a University of Arizona researcher to examine whether pot can help veterans cope with post-traumatic stress, a move that could lead to broader studies into potential benefits of the drug. For years, scientists who have wanted to study how marijuana might be used to treat illness say they have been stymied by resistance from federal drug officials. The Arizona study had long ago been sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration, but under federal rules, such experiments can use marijuana only from a single, government-run farm in Mississippi. Researchers say the agency that oversees the farm, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has long been hostile to proposals aimed at examining possible benefits of the drug. "This is a great day," said the Arizona researcher, Suzanne A. Sisley, clinical assistant professor of psychology at the university's medical school, who has been trying to get the green light for her study for three years. "The merits of a rigorous scientific trial have finally trumped politics. "We never relented," Sisley said. "But most other scientists have chosen not to even apply. The process is so onerous. With the implementation of this study and the data generated, this could lead to other crucial research projects." Backers of medical marijuana hailed the news as an indication that the government had started coming to terms with one of the more striking paradoxes of federal drug policy: Even as about 1 million Americans are using marijuana legally to treat ailments, scientists have had difficulty getting approval to study how the drug might be employed more effectively. "The political dynamics are shifting," said Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Assn. for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, a group based in Santa Cruz that is raising money to help fund studies such as Sisley's. The group counts several prominent philanthropists among its backers, including two Pritzkers and a Rockefeller. Government officials said the approval did not represent a change in underlying policy just a recognition that Sisley's proposal meets official standards for research using illegal drugs. The research still requires approval of one more agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, but Sisley and Doblin expressed confidence that that would prove a lesser hurdle. In its letter approving the application, a government review panel noted what it called "significant changes" in the study that justified approving it now. Doblin said the changes did not affect the "core design" of the study. Federal restrictions on pot research have been a source of tension for years. Researchers, marijuana advocates and some members of Congress have accused the National Institute on Drug Abuse of hoarding the nation's only sanctioned research pot for studies aimed at highlighting the drug's ill effects. They had pointed to Sisley's experience as a prime example of what they called an irrational and disjointed federal policy. "You have impossible burdens," said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who has enlisted other members of Congress to lobby the administration to give researchers more access to the drug. "These are not people who are going to be involved with some clandestine production of the drug or do something nefarious. They are trying to do scientific research that will add to the body of knowledge and safety," he said. Blumenauer likes to recount the story of a doctor who works with children who have violent epileptic seizures. The children's parents "have found that the use of marijuana has reduced the frequency and intensity of these horrific episodes. But because of our stupid research policies, it is easier for the parent to get medical marijuana than for a researcher," he said. Scientists say more research could help determine more precisely which ailments the drug can treat and could eventually lead to regulation by the FDA as a prescription drug. That would allow patients to know what they are consuming. Currently, users of medical marijuana often have little information about the potency and purity of the pot they buy. Physicians who prescribe the drug do so on the basis of evidence that is largely anecdotal. At the core of the debate is an issue that has implications for both research and the movement to legalize marijuana for recreational use, as Colorado and Washington have done. Currently, federal law classifies pot as more dangerous than cocaine and methamphetamine. As a "Schedule 1" drug, marijuana is designated as having "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse," as well as being a drug that puts users at risk of "severe psychological or physical dependence." Researchers say that classification needs to change for science to proceed uninhibited. Making the change, though, would be a retreat in the war on drugs. The Obama administration could reschedule the drug without congressional action, but has shown no inclination to wade into that fight. In the last 10 years, the government had approved just one U.S. research center to conduct clinical trials involving marijuana use for medical purposes a UC San Diego facility created by the California Legislature. The scientist who runs that center, Igor Grant, said his success in getting Washington's sign-off was due in large part to something other scientists do not have: the full force of the state. Blocking his work would have been a direct affront to lawmakers in Sacramento, he noted. Grant's studies looked at such questions as whether pot could help ease the nausea and vomiting associated with cancer treatment or the severe appetite suppression experienced by those with HIV, which causes AIDS. "Every one of those studies showed, in the short term, a beneficial effect," Grant said. "There is very good evidence cannabis is helpful." By Evan Halper and Cindy Carcamo March 14, 2014, 5:00 p.m. LA Times http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...#axzz2w3Czb0T1 The Newhawks Crew Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=239989#ixzz2w8Nvubdv

15-03-2014, 07:39 5-HT2A Titanium Member Join Date: 13-01-2011 Male from Earth Posts: 128 Teacher Uses Students to Try to Uncover Drugs on Campus -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A high school counselor enlisted two students to uncover drug sales on campus by buying marijuana, and when one of the students was arrested, school officials tried to cover up the boneheaded sting operation, the students claim in court. Plaintiff students John Doe and Mary Roe sued Clovis Unified School District and its counselor Kelly Racca in Superior Court, asserting civil rights violations, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Racca, a counselor at Clovis North High School with no law enforcement background, developed a plan to uncover the sale of marijuana on campus by using students in a sting operation, the lawsuit states. Racca befriended Mary, a student at the school, to assist her by finding out the identity of the student selling the pot. Racca gave Mary money and told her to buy marijuana from the student dealer and bring it back to her, Mary says in the complaint. Mary claims she was hesitant, but she and John, also a student at the school, agreed to help in return for Racca's help in trying to reinstate a student who had been expelled. "Racca reported to plaintiffs her job situation was precarious, whether true or not, to elicit their sympathy and cooperation. She also induced their participation in her sting by promising favors that she may or may not as an employee of CUSD and Student Services counselor have been able to accomplish regarding allowing the readmission of an expelled student. She encouraged plaintiffs to assist her in a scheme that had plaintiffs violating the law and violating the CUSD zero tolerance policy regarding drug possession on campus," the lawsuit states. Racca did not involve or notify the Police Department about the sting operation and did not get permission from Mary's or John's parents for the students to participate, the students say in the complaint. "Racca did not inform Mary or John that they would be committing a crime if they purchased marijuana and then would have had this illegal drug in their possession, also a crime," the complaint states. The students say they took the cash from Racca, and John bought marijuana from a student on campus. "Mary took photographs of the transaction to implicate the student from whom John had purchased the marijuana. John and Mary then transported the marijuana across campus with the photograph and turned the narcotics and the photograph over to Racca," the complaint states. The next day, Mary was called out of class for a conference with the school principal, another school administrator and two Clovis police officers. "Without any due process and without notifying Mary's mother or father that Mary was being interrogated, Mary was instructed to describe what had occurred. Mary described the facts as to what occurred. Thereafter, the police officers arrested her," the complaint states. Mary claims she was not told that she had the right to an attorney and that she did not have to answer questions that could incriminate her. While school officials tried to explain to the officers what had happened, Mary says, she was left in the Student Services office for hours "under apparent arrest without any explanation of what was happening and without contact with her parents." The school officials and officers called John into a conference room and advised him of his Miranda rights. John's requests to call his father were ignored and he was questioned at length regarding the incident, the complaint states. A few days later, Mary was called out of class again, this time to prepare an incident report about the drug buy. She wrote the report while locked in an office by herself, she says. Later that day, Student Services counselor Wesley Flowers brought Mary to his office along with Racca, who "pleaded with Mary to retract the statements that Racca had orchestrated the sting operation. After Racca left the office, Mr. Flowers also encouraged Mary to essentially lie about the event so that Racca would not be subject to criticism by her superiors, suggesting Mary would be burdened by guilt if she did not do so, and further discouraging Mary from getting legal advice and representation," the complaint states. Flowers is not a party to the complaint. Mary says she was told to retract her report that Racca had masterminded the sting and provided the money to buy the drugs, and to say that it was her own idea to buy the marijuana on campus. School officials "assisted Racca's attempt to try to cover up the incident, assisted Racca to try to influence Mary to retract her story of the marijuana sting, directly encouraged Mary to retract her statements, and discouraged Mary from seeking legal advice," the lawsuit states. Racca was never disciplined for her actions and still works for the school district, according to the complaint. The student responsible for selling the marijuana was apprehended and expelled, and accusations by other students about there being "snitches" at school were directed at Mary and John, the complaint states. "Racca failed to consider that coercing students to buy controlled substances from another student would potentially expose Mary and John as witnesses to prove a crime, subjecting them to ridicule and harassment by other students and potential physical harm by drug-related gang actions," the complaint states. Mary and John seek punitive damages. They are represented by Stephen R. Cornwell with Cornwell & Sample. The school district did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. By Elizabeth Warmerdam March 14, 2014 Source: http://www.alternet.org/teacher-uses...age=1#bookmark Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=239920#ixzz2vzZYnJf4

She was a school counselor, though, and not only breached her duty of care, exposing students to criminal charges which, in the US, may preclude them from a university education, and overseas travel, as well as a criminal records, fines, and imprisonment, but also to retribution from the dealer, and persecution by the general student population, many of whom hate "snitches" ("dobbers" in Australia). Her position as a counselor is now untenable; who would trust such a person? I hope both she, and the school are prosecuted to the full extent of the law, that she is summarily dismissed from her position, and never permitted to resume employment in an educational institution, and that punitive damages are awarded in an amount sufficient to deter and other counsellors considering such an ill advised course of action. Too harsh? I don't think so!

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/716004-Potcoin-A-New-Cryptocurrency-To-Help-Ease-The-War-On-Drugs Potcoin, A New Cryptocurrency To Help Ease The War On Drugs #1 neversickanymore View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Moderator Recovery Support -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2013 Location babysitting the argument in my head Posts 7,785 Today 02:58 Potcoin, A New Cryptocurrency To Help Ease The War On Drugs by Roger Huang It started with one evocative name shouted into the phone from one developer to another: “Potcoin!” The Founding Fathers had to work for years to craft a Constitution that would grant the government the power to “coin money.” However, three developers in the frozen north, who were only able to provide me with pseudonyms because the businesses and investors they’re associated with would frown upon their new venture, had, within weeks, gone from uttering that single word to creating a cryptocurrency. Hasoshi, Mr. Jones, and Smokemon 514 (“gotta smoke em all!” he shouts) united online to develop Potcoin, an online Bitcoin-like currency that can be used to store value. It launched on January 21, 2014 — at 4:20 p.m. The Potcoin team is defying conventional banks, money laundering authorities, and the DEA in order to build out a safer way for marijuana dispensaries to deal with daily transactions. MT.Gox and Bitcoin might have had their problems, but that hasn’t stopped a bunch of alternative cryptocurrencies from trying to steal the spotlight. In this brave new world, Internet trends have become a viable means of supporting real-world causes. It was dogecoins that sent the Jamaican bobsled team to Sochi, Auroracoins that helped the Icelandic people escape from economic disruption, and if the trio of Potcoin developers has its way, it’ll be Potcoins that will help you buy the recently legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington. The Potcoin team is defying conventional banks, money laundering authorities, and the DEA in order to build out a safer way for marijuana dispensaries to deal with daily transactions. Why not use good old Constitution-coined money? The problem, as Smokemon points out to me, is that the conventional financial systems in those states are slow to deal with change. With federal law and the prohibitive Controlled Substances Act still technically hanging over state law, conventional businesses view marijuana as something to be distrusted. Dispensaries that make their living growing and selling a now-legal product are confronted with the reality that the system in place is treating them the same way it always has: with apathy at best, and with malice at worse. While a fair amount of skepticism regarding a new line of legitimate business may be warranted, the degree to which marijuana dispensaries are effectively cut off from banking services forces them into desperate situations. Ironically, a ballot measure intended to reduce violence over the illegal drug trade may be resulting in more because of this gray line, as robbers stream into legal dispensaries that they know must be carrying a large amount of cash on hand. A digital age requires digital solutions. Potcoin can act as a proxy for the banking system that has abandoned marijuana dispensaries. Knowing that most of their cash reserves will be digitized, robbers may be less inclined to visit dispensaries, and a safer, more prosperous, and more credible marijuana trade will be able to benefit both growers and consumers. That is, if you believe in the magic ingredient holding the system together — trust. As we saw with Mt.Gox, novel innovations sometimes have a way of going askew. Pressed on this point, the Potcoin team assures me that “whenever there is money involved, there is a higher level of accountability.” They hasten to point out that they are not the only ones in the trade of crafting cryptocurrencies for marijuana, but that they are the only ones making an extensive effort to create a public community of users, including their own custom subreddit. They believe that exposing themselves to public censure, and having a strong community with diverse views, holds them in check. The team itself is an odd but likeable bunch. They’re all startup entrepreneurs who have crafted several successful businesses. For example, Mr. Jones went through a series of personal struggles, at one point almost losing everything, but is now the founder behind a multi-million-dollar company. Together, the team helped raise money for Snoop Lion’s charity for kids: he’s giving them a video shout-out. Smokemon hastens to point out that they all defy the living stereotype of the lazy pothead: Everybody on the team smokes, and everybody on the team builds lots of cool new stuff. He himself is a “high-functioning pothead. Their contribution to the pet cause of many technologists may ultimately go beyond defying authorities. Smokemon starts getting to the larger point of the possibility of destigmatizing hemp products. At this point, I push him for the larger picture behind Potcoin — the “why” that defines its ideals. Do they want to end the war on drugs? The answer comes quickly: “Yes” says Smokemon. http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/14/hel...ryptocurrency/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CLICKHERExView Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Bluelighter Join Date Sep 2012 Posts 58 Today 16:56 Note the 23 stars - Illuminati associations? All hail Discordia! Can some computer geek deign to inform us lesser mortals of the significance of the digital number.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-14/melbourne-man-avoids-jail-for-ordering-drugs-on-silk-road-websi/5321098?section=vic By court reporter Sarah Farnsworth Updated Fri 14 Mar 2014, 2:21pm AEDT Map: Maryborough 3465 A Victorian man who imported drugs bought off the UK website Silk Road has avoided a jail term after pleading guilty in the Victorian County Court. Luke Hanley, 20, from Maryborough, in central Victoria, admitted to using a fake name and bank account to buy a substance like LSD over the internet last year. Judge Frank Gucciardo said customs officials in Melbourne intercepted two parcels from the UK addressed to the false name used by Henley. They contained 153 grams of the illicit substance 25c and 25i, a psycho-stimulant with a hallucinogenic affect. A police raid on his home later uncovered 800 tablets of the drug which sell for up to $15 each. The court heard the drugs had a total street value of between $23,000 and $53,000. Judge Gucciardo said police found mobile text messages from Hanley to his father, who is a truck driver with a criminal history, about the drug orders. He said hallucinogenic drugs were relatively new to the recreational drug market and had been linked to fatal overdoses. It is expected to be categorised as a drug of dependence in the near future. Hanley also pleaded guilty to importing 24 grams of amphetamines mailed from South Africa. The drugs were intercepted in Sydney. The judge accepted Hanley had shown remorse and had a "frightening experience and massive wake up call" when he spent four days in custody. He said while Hanley had been motivated by profit, it was a simplistic crime and he had good prospects of rehabilitation. Hanley was fined $5,500 and sentenced to 9 months jail. The sentence was wholly suspended for two years on a $4,000 good behaviour bond.

24-02-2014, 02:26 Phungushead Twisted Depiction Super Moderator Join Date: 21-01-2005 Male from United States Posts: 3,257 Blog Entries: 3 Beyond the Machine Elves: On DMT Culture, Visionary Plants and Entheodelic Storytelli -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Mind-altering substances are usually left out of the culture-building paradigm, either through following incomplete data, or because of political correctness, and it has distorted our interpretation regarding beliefs and rituals and decision making, not only by our ancient ancestors, but in more modern times as well." -John A. Rush[1] DMT Culture With the alien-like(?) technologies of the tryptamine family, the 21st century person has the chance for a cyberpunk method of self defense against info-overload. In fact, hitting the reset button on the nervous system and blipping out of the hyper mediated matrix war on consciousness that is post-modern life, and instead being melded seamlessly into the realm of shamanic self-initiation that lies beyond the imagistic astral plane has never been quite so easy. This timeless entheogenic technology has long been latent in indigenous cultures in acacia trees[2] and elsewhere abundant in nature[3] since time immemorial. Access to the infinite metaphysical bliss glitter of the tryptamine palace is often considered an entirely modern chemical/synthetic invention, a still taboo shortcut that goes against "natural" entheogens, (such as the DMT containing ayahuasca, but also datura, iboga, peyote, psilocybin, salvia, and syrian rue) not to mention the staunch yogic asceticism[4] popular with New Age types. But cutting edge research post Terence McKenna has boldly declared these ancient tryptamine snuff techniques[5] as being reserved for the shamanic elite of elder shamanic cultures, and, controversially, possibly even in use before some of the above mentioned entheogens[6]. Entheogen use in traditional cultures centered around healing and divinatory purposes, and even the great Mircea Eliade[7] infamously recounted his omission of visionary plant tools in the context of the academic study of shamanism[8] towards the end of his life. Of course, once the spirit returns to the body, these natural forms of altering consciousness (along with more mild doses of etheogens) can also help to stabilize and ground oneself after the cosmically daunting supersensory Sound-Light of the infamous hyperspace journey, so that the DMT-lag doesn't disrupt the harmony of the pristine astral body. Part of the reason for what is the undoubtedly the most outrageous religious history cover up of the our time is due to these methods being previously barred to the common spiritual seeker, as these tryptamine sacraments were not given until those seekers who bled, sweat, and cried on the moss covered temple walls were approved by the pyramid structure of shamanic-priest elite. In traditional shamanic cultures, cosmic transport systems that immediately provide consistent out of body and near death experiences (such as DMT/5-MeO-DMT and salvia) are simply reserved for those who have already proved mastery with the more gentle and slower acting entheo-technology found in the global visionary plant family. For one must die in order to truly live. In the far out hyperspace modality of the tryptamine consciousness, the clattering whispers of dark entities are forever blocked out by the bliss-love dazzle of the Divine Mind. Thus, the paradoxical power of entheogens is to verify the ontological status of the Gods as distinct entities with separate supersensory agendas, rather than just the fleeting archetypes of our mind--while also allowing those who follow the path of light to vanquish said nefarious entities, who may serve as stumbling blocks to the path the central goal of any self-respecting mystic; Union with the eternal Godhead. The current DMT culture (at least as it stands online) is thus in stark contrast to the ever present machine elf meme located in Terrence McKenna's work (and to a lesser extent, Rick Strassman's pioneering research)--both of whom seem to inadvertently promote a sort of a sci-fi alien reductionism[9] located in the mysterious tryptamine phenomena, to the point of forgetting that there is a whole non-linear holographic world waiting beyond the dreaded elf guardians of the white void. A world that, moreover, benevolently points to a dynamic and organic interaction with supernatural spirits who teach about metaphysical mysteries according to the specific readiness of each individual seeker. Visionary Plants and Entheodelic Storytelling Strassman's new book, DMT and the Soul of Prophecy[10], however, serves to redeem his early sci-fi focus by broadening the approach to spiritual revelation found in religious mythology itself. This is a perfect entry point to what Rak Razam, Jeremy Johnson and I have deemed Entheodelic Storytelling[11], a contemporary cultural mythology that emphasizes the non-linear metaphysical worlds opened up by visionary plants and other forms of consciousness altering techniques. This art movement is perhaps best represented in visual form by Rak Razam's film Aya Awakenings. In fiction, Graham Hancock's ayahuasca influenced novel trilogy beginning with Entangled, John David Ebert's metaphysical interpretation of Sandman, and also my own genre-hopping graphic novel trilogy KALI-YUGA are some recent examples. KALI-YUGA concerns the infamous wizard Abaraiis, who smokes 5-MeO-DMT and is trained by the elemental spirits to attain the wisdom of profound metaphysical magic in order to defeat the Gnostic archon-esque lizard kings--Kaos sorcery masters who can manipulate the fabric of space-time itself. This, and my forthcoming transhumanism influenced meta-entheogenic narrative The Xenark Trilogy, starring the last cyborg wizard who uses glitch magick, the most sought after alien drug DMZ, and the runes to bring kaos to the Order of Gods--are the most recent entries into this newly budding genre. Using the term entheodelic (God/divine manifesting) is also in direct philosophical contrast to the earlier psychedelic literature (mind manifesting). The synthetic lab creations MDMA and LSD need not be included in a literary genre that hopes to give proper credence to elder shamanic cultures who focused on union with the Godhead, rather than just tripping out and having a grand ol' time. Even experienced psychonaut James Oroc has noted that LSD provides a kind of scientific "true hallucination" instead of throwing one into the metaphysical world itself, as the visionary plant family does, in moderate to high doses. Author Simon G. Powell[12] has also noted that one of the primary features of entheogens is to discover the voice of the Other, or the hyper-dimensional living wisdom of the Gods that speaks through the user of entheogens. This new wave "gonzo" journalism best represented by Rak Razam is organic in it's selective diet, and unlike Morrison's Invisibles and the character Spider in Warren Ellis's admittedly brilliant cyberpunk comic Transmetropolitan (a literary wink at Hunter S. Thompson, but really a representation of Ellis' own alter ego) alcohol and other synthetic drugs that do not include the sacred intent of the plant guardians need not apply. While much has been said in the so called New Aeon about positive intent and the "creation of your own reality", (brought into popular consciousness by Aleister Crowley and Morrison's infamous use of magick to bring upon the desire or Will of the magician), this philosophy still seems to indicate emphasis on the illusory ego and the notion of a "doer" who is separate from the Divine Will itself. But the artist in the shamanic tradition was not creating without the approval of the holographic spirit guardians latent in visionary plants like genies waiting to be freed, who go past the individual ego to provide a sacred intent, one that manifests from the will of spirits themselves. While Alex Grey has covered this framework admirably for the visionary art spectrum[13], sacred intent should also be equally as important for future storytellers who wish to heal themselves and their culture by realizing that everything in the history of consciousness is in fact a story, and if we can rediscover storytelling as a bonafide healing modality and Narrative Medicine, as the ancients shamans once did[14], then there may be some hope for the West, still suffocated in the antiquated Cult of Self that lies at the heart of Satanic Hollywood. Underground cyberpunk shamans that grow by number everyday and thrive on the bleeding edge of psychedelic news as the internet brings entheodelic culture to the mainstream (and how the mainstream will in turn distort it, such as in Gaspar Noe's experimental Enter the Void or the ayahuasca influenced Avatar) will of course already have access to the main thrust of this information without having to reference literature through translinguistic visionary art and entheodelic storytelling, but it's still helpful to have it around as art therapy for those who haven't caught up with the main current. Filtering the latest word encased info-drips of entheogenic research into typically the wordless visionary art/music sector is impossible, but the contemporary storytelling and mythologizing found in literature, comics and film remains ripe for what will undoubtedly be an explosion in a novel form of 21st century myth that is directly informed by the spirit of the Gods themselves. *** [1] Entheogens and the Development of Culture: The Anthropology and Neurobiology of Ecstatic Experience pp. x-xi. [2] Ethnobotonist Giorgio Samorini argues that the desire to experience altered states of consciousness is a natural drive shared by all living beings and that animals engage in these behaviors deliberately. The post Terrence Mckenna argument for psychoactive plants being at the forefront of the evolution of culture and art is perhaps most clearly argued for by Paul Devereux, Christian Rätsch, and Carl Ruck, and also in the recent anthology Entheogens and the Development of Culture: The Anthropology and Neurobiology of Ecstatic Experience where we find that psychoactivity is not only found in plants but also fish, milk, and (more speculatively) deer. For DMT specific information on this topic see DMT Nexus forum moderator Nen888's 80+ page indexed acacia and religion manifesto here, as well as a podcast between Rak Razam and Nen: The DreaMTime Invasion-DMT and the Roots of Religion. [3] See James Oroc's Tryptamine Palace for information on how 5-MeO-DMT is secreted from the venom glands of Bufo Alvarius. [4] However, Yoga/meditation can work as supplementary path, in order to stabilize and integrate the visions or NDE one may encounter with entheogens. Practitioners of Surat Shabd Yoga, in particular, reports of peak experiences strikingly similar to DMT/5-MeO-DMT in it's central goal of uniting with the sound/light of God, the creative force of the universe itself. [5] http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dmt/dmt_culture1.shtml [6] Oroc provides evidence that 5-MeO-DMT may date back to ancient antiquity, highlighting the artistic depictions of venomous glands found on the sacred bufo alvarius and it's popularity in Mayan and Inca art, which stretches back to the conservative estimate of 2,000 BCE. Tryptamine Palace p. 108. [7] For shamanic themes in mythology that may also inspire future entheodelic literature see the three volume History of Religious Ideas, The Eliade Guide to World Religions and Eliade's disciple Ioan P. Culianu's Out of this World: Otherworldly Journeys from Gilgamesh to Albert Einstein. [8] For lesser known sources of how visionary plants inform shamanic states of consciousness see Cactus of Mystery: The Shamanic Powers of the Peruvian San Pedro Cactus and Shamanic Quest for the Spirit of Salvia by Ross Heaven, Stephan V. Beyer's Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, Rak Razam's Aya Awakenings: A Shamanic Odyssey, Jim Dekorme's Psychedelic Shamanism, Michael Harner's Hallucinogens and Shamanism, Metzner's Hallucinogenic Drugs and Plants in Psychotherapy and Shamanism, and "The Deer-Maize-Peyote Symbol Complex among the Huichol Indians of Mexico" by Barbara Myerhoff. For the ancient context see Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck's The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. See also Robert Forte's anthology Entheogens and the Future of Religion. [9] For more information on the value of post-McKenna DMT research see Martin Ball's Terence on Dmt and the reply by Peter Meyer. A forthcoming title from North Atlantic books Xenolinguistics: Psychedelics and Language at the Edge of the Unspeakable by Diana Slattery also focuses on the alien glyphs commonly found by psychonauts in the tryptamine palace. Alien reductionism is most explicit in the anthology edited by Strassman Inner Paths to Outer Space, and while there is no doubt evidence for this phenomenon in DMT experience, it is in no way the most interesting or penetrating part of the new research with tryptamines, especially in light of how 5-MeO-DMT seems to bypass this astral space entirely. I agree with the author Ayes: "DMT is not a re-run of X-files". [10] Rick Strassman Old Testament Prophecy A Western Model of the Psychedelic Experience [11] Early entries that hint at the future direction of entheodelic storytelling can be found as early as Herbert's 1965 Dune, where spice is essentially the direct literary equivalent of DMT, as it aids in faster-than-light navigation. A more recent film entry is Darren Aronofskys The Fountain. In a deleted scene found on the DVD the character Tom partakes of a mushroom sacrament before meditating and undergoing tai-chi type rituals in the floating space bubble. [12] See Powell's The Psilocybin Solution: The Role of Sacred Mushrooms in the Quest for Meaning. [13] See Grey's The Mission of Art. For an alternative perspective on sacred art from the standpoint of the Perennial Philosophy, see Traditionalisn: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy by Harry Oldmeadow. [14] Arguments for sacred narrative as a form of therapy can be found in Lewis Mehl-Madrona's work. Entheogens as a form of therapy is perhaps best Neal M. Goldsmith's Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development. January 2014 Benton Rooks Reality Sandwich http://realitysandwich.com/216190/be...-storytelling/ Attached Thumbnails Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=238322#ixzz2uJUhJ7hc

Figures for the number of deaths caused by legal highs are misleading and hampering attempts to formulate a sensible drugs policy in the UK, former government advisers warn on Friday. Prof David Nutt and Dr Les King say that the number of deaths, recorded as having risen 600% between 2009 and 2012, have been inflated by the inclusion of fatalities linked to substances that do not meet the definition of legal highs, or "new psychoactive substances". In a letter published in the Lancet, the scientists from the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs say that the figure of at least 68 deaths recorded by the National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths (NPSAD) in 2012 included deaths from substances that are already illegal, not new and/or not psychoactive. Writing in the Guardian, they claim that just 11 of the 68 deaths cited by NPSAD were from current legal highs. "What is certain is that if the current government review of legal highs is to be taken seriously and lead to health improvements then there must be a proper definition of terms and improved data collection," they say. "Moreover the data must be properly and independently audited so the effects of any change in the law can be properly evaluated." They attribute 20 of the deaths in the NPSAD figures to p-methoxyamphetamine (PMA) and p-methoxymethyl- amphetamine (PMMA), which have been controlled drugs in the UK since 1977. Other substances implicated in deaths that the scientists say do not meet the definition of "legal high" include khat, which is not new, and anabolic steroids, which are not psychoactive. They also claim that there are problems in data published by the Office for National Statistics on deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales. These included 52 deaths associated with new psychoactive substances in 2012, with 13 of them linked to γ-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), which was made illegal in 2003. Nutt was sacked as the government's senior drugs adviser in 2009 after criticising its decision to toughen the law on cannabis, and King resigned his role as a government expert in protest at the treatment of his colleague. They have set themselves up for another clash over drugs policy by questioning whether the published figures represent "sloppy science or whether there has been some attempt to massage figures to justify the current political focus and new review on legal highs". NPSAD accepted some of the criticism and said it welcomed contributions to help improve its data, but it maintained that legal highs were a legitimate concern because more people are dying "than ever before". "Unfortunately, there is neither a universal definition of novel psychoactive substances (NPS) nor publicly available list of such drugs for researchers to work from," a spokesman said. "We would agree that there is an urgent need for a debate on this issue and clear definitions established and formally adopted." "The section on NPS in our recent annual report describes trends over the period 2009 to 2012 in a range of emerging substances including former pharmaceutical or therapeutic drugs which could be misused and substances which have subsequently become controlled drugs." An spokesman for the Office for National Statistics said: "ONS does not classify any drugs as 'legal highs'. The ONS annual bulletin makes this clear … ONS has not 'massaged' the figures for political purposes. It is an impartial organisation and subject to a strict code of practice." Haroon Siddique Friday 14 March 2014 03.00*EDT http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...ghs-david-nutt Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=239922#ixzz2vzXFtPoO

"But how do you put together all these pieces of information, of evidence, that a child is or isn't safe?" The answers can be as variable as the homes where medical marijuana is used. Piraino says issues related to medical marijuana use and parenthood have started to come up for his agency, but not yet in a significant way. He notes that any drug in the home carries risks, including potential lack of attention to children's needs and physical danger stemming from possible ingestion, but that the extent of those risks with medical marijuana is not clear. Aaron and Shawnee bristle at the ongoing debate about their parenting, and worse, the notion that their use of cannabis could raise concerns about abuse or neglect of their child. They say their son is healthy, happy and nurtured. What brought police officers to their home in early January, they say, was an anomaly -- a loud argument. The clamor was heard by a neighbor, who called the police. When officers later entered their home to investigate, they discovered loose marijuana, cannabis oil, and marijuana cigarettes strewn on the desk in the couple's living room. The living room smelled like marijuana. (Aaron says the smell was lingering from the couple medicating the night before, after their son fell asleep.) "What I want you to understand is your baby doesn't need to be subject to marijuana," said one officer in the police video. Shawnee responds, "What makes you think he is?" "Because your house really smelled bad of marijuana," said the officer. The smell of marijuana, a home in a disarray, medical cannabis that was visible -- albeit out of the boy's reach -- are the roots of the ongoing case against them. "We would never allow our children to get into our medical marijuana," said Aaron, adding that he believes stigma against the plant is at the heart of his and other cases. "If (law enforcement and CPS) had come in, even if it was a couple of empty beer bottles or a wine bottle, I don't think anybody would have raised an eyebrow. "I had the impression that we had turned this corner," he added. "That we had moved past that stigma." "Is the child happy? Is the child loved? Is the child well cared for?" said Arnold, who stressed that she has no specific information about Shawnee and Aaron's case, but views it through the lens of countless other families she's counseled. "Marijuana on a desk does not mean they're abusing or neglecting the child." Nor does growing and using marijuana, said Green, the Michigan mother whose 6-month-old daughter was removed from her custody for two months last September. According to Michigan law, both Green and her husband, Steve, are allowed to use cannabis medically -- she to treat multiple sclerosis, her husband to treat epilepsy. And she is allowed to grow a certain number of plants to supply to other patients. Green says the plants were grown behind a locked door -- the children never had access to them -- and the couple never medicated in front of the children. They kept the marijuana they used locked up. She says a custody battle with her ex-husband, involving a son from a previous marriage, led CPS to her door, and she says despite the pains they had taken to shield their children from the marijuana, Bree was removed from the home and assigned to protective custody. A major issue debated during the case: whether marijuana plants grown in the Green home increased the danger of armed robbery and thus posed a serious safety issue for children in the home -- in other words, whether theoretical risk of harm to a child constitutes a serious safety concern. Green and other advocates say that theoretical, potential risk is not enough. "I find it very scary that parents can have children taken away for something that's a potential," said Arnold. As a consequence of Bree's removal, Maria and Steve Green were ordered to stop using medical cannabis. She says she suffered some pain and had to use a walker at intervals, but Steve was worse off. He suffered nine or 10 seizures during the two months Bree spent in foster care. "You've got these parents having to choose between their medicine and their family," said Arnold. "That's an impossible choice, especially if your medicine makes you functional enough to parent." Green says that medical marijuana patients may not realize the risk of a run-in with CPS. She advises patients not to become too lax, and to realize that not everyone -- including law enforcement, CPS, and the judicial system -- views the marijuana plant through the same lens. "Think about what are you doing with the meds, where are you smoking, who is watching your kids when you're smoking or under the influence?" said Green. "Have those things in place." "My advice to parents is to really go out of your way to make sure (your children) are not exposed to it." After spending a few days in jail -- and their son spending 12 days in foster care -- Aaron and Shawnee say they now understand. They are setting aside their views about marijuana as a medical treatment, and view it -- at least temporarily -- as a potential barrier to maintaining their family unit. That does not ease their confusion about the law, or their conviction that the plant has medicinal value. "There are families out there ... destroyed over a medicinal plant," said Aaron. "It's baffling." By Stephanie Smith, Updated 8:29 AM EDT, Thu March 13, 2014 CNN http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/health...juana-parents/ The Newhawks Crew Post Quality Evaluations: A valuable article for this section; of particular interest to those legally prescribed MM with children. Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=239860#ixzz2vuQX9h8i

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/58378/tac-targets-drug-drivers-in-victoria-with-new-road-safety-campaign Trevor Collett | Mar 7, 2014 Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC) has launched a new road safety campaign, reminding drivers of the dangers - and consequences - of drug driving. Monday marks a public holiday in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, and the TAC says drug driving will be a particular focus for police during the long weekend. The campaign features a young man sitting in a jail cell reflecting on a tragic night out, serving as a reminder of the consequences of driving while drug-impaired. The TAC says that drug driving is on the rise, with one in ten drivers tested by Victoria Police over the recently-departed summer returning a positive result. The latest data suggests up to 43 percent of motorists killed during 2012 had some kind of drug in their system at the time, including legal, prescription and illegal drugs. Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner for Road Policing, Robert Hill, said he was disappointed by the number of people driving on illicit drugs, particularly amphetamines. “These people are taking huge risks on the road, endangering their own lives and the lives of others - don’t take the risk this long weekend,” Assistant Commissioner Hill said. “Victoria Police will be out there and we will catch you if you are drink or drug driving this weekend.” A poster from the latest TAC anti-drug driving campaign The most common effects of drugs on driving ability include reduced peripheral vision (tunnel vision), dizziness, blurred vision and loss of concentration. Drug driving can also lead to a false sense of alertness, making drivers over-confident while concurrently reducing reaction time. The TAC will use some ‘left field’ locations to spread the anti-drug driving message, including 24 service stations across Melbourne and regional Victoria, 200 pubs and clubs and selected university campuses.

My apologies; somehow I've not only double posted, but also unwittingly included an ad, and in mitigation, all I can state is that it was probably from having to resort to using a laptop, rather than the desktop and separate keyboard that I was used to, but things have returned to normal now, and in future I'll try to be more wary of such websites, and post first to Notepad, then edit before posting here.

08-03-2014, 03:38 Phungushead Twisted Depiction Super Moderator Join Date: 21-01-2005 Male from United States Posts: 3,280 Blog Entries: 3 Scientists unlock mystery of out-of-body experiences (aka astral trips) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some people claim that they have experienced out-of-body experiences—aka "astral trips"—floating outside of their bodies and watching themselves from the outside. A team of scientists found someone who says she can do this at will and put her into a brain scanner. What they discovered was surprisingly strange. Andra M. Smith and Claude Messierwere from the University of Ottawa described this subject's ability in their paper, published in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience: She was able to see herself rotating in the air above her body, lying flat, and rolling along with the horizontal plane. She reported sometimes watching herself move from above but remained aware of her unmoving "real" body. The participant reported no particular emotions linked to the experience. How the hell is this possible? Can it be real? The researchers found that something dramatic, and consistent with her account, was happening in her brain: The fMRI showed a "strong deactivation of the visual cortex" while "activating the left side of several areas associated with kinesthetic imagery," which includes mental imagery of bodily movement. This is the part of the brain that makes it possible for us to interact with the world. It's what makes you feel where your body is in relation to the world. This is the very first time that this type of experience has been analyzed and documented scientifically. Researchers know that out-of-body experiences can be induced "by brain traumas, sensory deprivation, near-death experiences, dissociative and psychedelic drugs, dehydration, sleep, and electrical stimulation of the brain, among others. It can also be deliberately induced by some." But this may be the first documented case of someone who can get into this state at will. So is it real or not? It is real in the sense that she's actually experiencing it. The brain scans show that she's going through what she's claiming. But that doesn't mean that her "soul" is getting out of her body. This is not an astral trip, like those described by mystics. There's no paranormal activity of any kind. The fact is that, even while there aren't a lot of solid experiments on this subject except this research paper and a few others, scientists believe that these out-of-body experiences are a type of hallucination triggered by some neurological mechanism. The researchers of this paper speculate that this neurological mechanism may be present in other people too and that some people—like this woman—may train themselves to activate it. She told them that she first noticed this happening when she was a little kid, while taking naps. Perhaps out-of-body experiences may end up being like synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon that was largely ignored during the mid-20th century. Synesthesia—which makes some people to automatically see colors in their brain when they read or hear letters, numbers and words—is now accepted, studied and understood. Top image: Significantly activated regions of the brain while the participant was having extra-corporeal experiences. Most significantly activated regions are lateralized to the left side and include the supplementary motor area (F), the cerebellum (B,D,E), the supramarginal gyrus (D,F), the inferior temporal gyrus (B,D,F), the middle and superior orbitofrontal gyri (A,C,D,E). 7 March 2014 Jordan Kushins Gizmodo Attached Thumbnails __________________ Prison Industrial Complex Phungushead View Public Profile Send a direct message to Phungushead Find all posts by Phungushead Add Phungushead to Your Contacts View Blog #2 08-03-2014, 13:45 CLICKHEREx Newbie Join Date: 28-09-2012 Male from Australia Posts: 52 Infractions: 0/1 (20) Re: Scientists unlock mystery of out-of-body experiences (aka astral trips) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While it may seem real to the person experiencing it (as do hallucinations to those tripping) they would not be able to tell what object was on top of a tall wardrobe in that room, which someone who was actually "hovering", or "floating" above their body would. Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=239290#ixzz2vKzHghuE

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/58378/tac-targets-drug-drivers-in-victoria-with-new-road-safety-campaign Trevor Collett | Mar 7, 2014 Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC) has launched a new road safety campaign, reminding drivers of the dangers - and consequences - of drug driving. Monday marks a public holiday in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, and the TAC says drug driving will be a particular focus for police during the long weekend. The campaign features a young man sitting in a jail cell reflecting on a tragic night out, serving as a reminder of the consequences of driving while drug-impaired. The TAC says that drug driving is on the rise, with one in ten drivers tested by Victoria Police over the recently-departed summer returning a positive result. The latest data suggests up to 43 percent of motorists killed during 2012 had some kind of drug in their system at the time, including legal, prescription and illegal drugs. Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner for Road Policing, Robert Hill, said he was disappointed by the number of people driving on illicit drugs, particularly amphetamines. “These people are taking huge risks on the road, endangering their own lives and the lives of others - don’t take the risk this long weekend,” Assistant Commissioner Hill said. “Victoria Police will be out there and we will catch you if you are drink or drug driving this weekend.” A poster from the latest TAC anti-drug driving campaign The most common effects of drugs on driving ability include reduced peripheral vision (tunnel vision), dizziness, blurred vision and loss of concentration. Drug driving can also lead to a false sense of alertness, making drivers over-confident while concurrently reducing reaction time. The TAC will use some ‘left field’ locations to spread the anti-drug driving message, including 24 service stations across Melbourne and regional Victoria, 200 pubs and clubs and selected university campuses.

http://www.legalhighsforum.com.au/showthread.php?6386-March-10-ban-for-Victoria Today, 07:21 AM #1Anchor leeroy View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Articles Add as Contact leeroy is online now Legal High Connoisseur Join Date Sep 2012 Posts 135 Thanks 13 Thanked 18 Times in 13 Posts Mentioned 1 Post(s) Tagged 1 Thread(s) March 10 ban for Victoria? Quote Club X have told me of a March 10 ban for Vic . Anything that mimics the effects of pot, psuedonyms ???? Any one got more info on this?

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=237948 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The death of actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman from an apparent heroin overdose has triggered an interesting debate as to whether the individuals who sold Mr. Hoffman the drugs should be criminally liable for his death. Presently, however, New York State has no crime on its books that specifically addresses this issue. Should an overzealous district attorney seek to explore any potential crimes, the charges would most likely have to fit into some aspect of the homicide statutes. Given that this is clearly not an intentional act, the DA would have argue that the drug dealers acted recklessly or grossly negligent when they sold the drugs that were the source of the overdose. Needless to say, this is a very tall order for any prosecutor. What is confusing the matter is the fact that the NYPD, no doubt as a result of the high profile nature of the case, arrested 4 individuals that they claim sold heroin to Mr. Hoffman. Putting aside the idea that the NYPD routinely come across OD cases and are nowhere near as interested in finding the drug sellers who actually supplied the drugs to the OD victim (we'll save that discussion for another Sullivan Brill blog post), one is left to believe that the DA is considering charging these alleged drug sellers with being responsible for Mr. Hoffman's death. Again, New York State Penal Law does not address this scenario in its drug statutes so the DA would need to look elsewhere. Now, although New York does not specifically criminalize a drug seller's conduct if the drugs buyer/user ODs as a result of the drugs sold, United States Code -- the federal criminal statutes -- address this issue in its sentencing laws specifically. Under the penalty enhancement provision of the Controlled Substances Act in 21 U.S.C. §841( (1)©, a defendant is subjected to a 20 year mandatory minimum sentence when he unlawfully distributes a Schedule I or II drug and death or serious bodily injury results from the use of that substance. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court recently rendered a decision in U.S. v. Burrage (No. 12-7515) in which Justice Scalia discusses, in detail, what the phrase from the use of actually means. In Burrage, Joshua Banka, a long time drug user died on April 14, 2010, following an extended drug binge. During that binge, the Mr. Banka used marijuana in the morning of the 14th followed by the crushing, cooking and injecting of oxycodone pills. Later in the day, he met with the defendant, Mr. Burrage and purchase one gram of heroin which he injected throughout the night and into the morning of the 15th. In the early morning hours of the 15th, Mr. Banka's girlfriend found him dead in the bathroom. A search of his Mr. Banka's home uncovered several syringes, over a half a gram of heroin, and various prescription drugs and tablets. Mr. Burrage was charged with two counts of distributing heroin in violation of §841(a)(1) and the government provided notice that it would seek the "death results" enhancement under §841( (1)©, exposing Mr. Burrage to a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence. At trial, the government successfully convinced a jury that because the drugs distributed by the defendant need only contribute to an aggregate force that lead to death. The jury agreed with the government and Mr. Burrage was sentenced in line with this mandatory minimum sentence. Mr. Burrage exhausted his appellate rights -- unsuccessfully -- and ultimately filed a Writ of Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, which was granted. The question the Supreme Court set out to answer whether a defendant can be convicted under the "death results" provision of §841 when the use of the controlled substance was a contributing cause of the death. Justice Scalia answered the question in the negative and reversed the conviction holding that a defendant cannot be held liable for the penalty enhancement (20 year mandatory minimum) unless such use is a but-for cause of the death or injury. In other words, unless a jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that the drug user would have lived but for his heroin use, the sentencing enhancement is not applicable. In a nutshell, the drug distributed by the defendant must be an independently sufficient cause of the victim's death for a defendant to be liable under the sentencing enhancement provision. Whether or not a seller should ever be responsible for the user's death is a interesting question. Surely if a seller knows of a "beat" or tainted product, the case could be a bit easier for a prosecutor. But in viewing both arguments, I tend to lean towards the underlying concept we are all personally responsible for our actions and that a user's decision to use, which might tragically lead to an overdose, should not in any way be attributed to, or worsen the conduct, of the drug seller. 2/18/2014 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4789637 Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=237948#ixzz2tkyRDAd8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Various viewer comments onsite

http://www.naturalnews.com/044090_bitcoins_MtGox_currency_collapse.html * As bitcoin exchange MtGox collapses, man who predicted the crash implores bitcoin holders to stop being suckered into a digital Ponzi scheme Thursday, February 27, 2014 by Mike Adams (NaturalNews) In April of 2013, I warned Natural News readers about investing in Bitcoin, saying on the record: The bitcoin infrastructure is subject to the whims of just one person running MTGox who can arbitrarily decide to shut it down whenever he thinks the market needs a "cooling period." This is nearly equivalent to a financial dictatorship where one person calls the shots. Just two days ago, the largest bitcoin exchange MTGox suddenly and without warning shuttered its doors, blocking all customers from accessing their accounts which are collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The entire MTGox website now reads: Dear MtGox Customers, In light of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on MtGox's operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users. We will be closely monitoring the situation and will react accordingly. Best regards, MtGox Team Here's the screen shot of the message: [onsite*] Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044090_bitcoins_MtGox_currency_collapse.html#ixzz2uV6qMU4p Health Ranger calls Bitcoin crash... again! I'm on the record as the one person who accurately and publicly predicted the massive 2013 bitcoin crash just 24 hours before it happened. That story is covered in detail in this Natural News article. After predicting this crash which saw a billion-dollar drop in bitcoin values, I was of course attacked by a full complement of bitcoin pushers who are just as deluded about bitcoin as the average American is about federal reserve notes. According to bitcoin enthusiasts, some of whom have long abandoned any attachment to actual reality, bitcoin will save human economies from collapse, bitcoin can always be trusted because it's anonymous, bitcoin is going to rise to $100,000 per bitcoin, and so on ad nauseum. That's why on April 11, 2013, I wrote: Keep in mind that MtGox makes money off bitcoin transactions, meaning the organization has every reason to spin bad news (just like Wall Street) and keep the market "churning" so that more transactions are taking place. Listening to bitcoin advice from people who are making money off bitcoin transactions is a lot like listening to Obama promise you how he'll protect your liberty. You are a fool if you believe anything now coming out of the "bitcoin cult." MtGox crash makes total fools - again! - out of bitcoin apologists As is now obvious from recent events, my foreboding words were right on the money. Or in this case, the loss of money. When MtGox decided to close its doors and disappear over the weekend, hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of accounts vanished with it. For all we know, the very founders of MtGox simply swiped everybody's bitcoins and fled to Japan en route to the Cayman Islands where they will now enjoy a life of luxury, laughing it up at all the gullible suckers who bought into the bitcoin Ponzi scheme in the first place. And yes, bitcoin looks a whole lot more like a Ponzi scheme than a legitimate currency at this point. The only reason bitcoin valuation rose over the last year is because more and more fools were suckered into spending "real" money to buy a virtual currency protected by absolutely nothing. They were baited and reeled in by a deceptive MtGox which tried to spin every major red flag failure as yet another "success." As I wrote about MtGox a year ago: Every piece of bad news will be "spun" by exchanges like MtGox into good-sounding news. As bitcoin was crashing yesterday by 60% in value in mere hours, MtGox announced it was a "victim of our own success!" So while bitcoin holders watched $1 billion in market valuation evaporate, MtGox called it a success. Gee, then what would you call it when bitcoin loses 99%? A "raging" success? How to avoid being victimized by bitcoin schemes Tempted by greed, nearly every human being will predictably abandon all rationality and dive headfirst into almost any scheme that looks likely to produce financial gain without effort. Honestly stated, most people got into bitcoin for the simple, raw reason that it was a "get rich quick" opportunity. Buy low, sell high. It's the same scam repeated throughout the history of financial markets and made famous by people like Ponzi and Bernie Madoff. As much as I try to warn people here on Natural News about financial schemes, inexperienced minds are nonetheless easily influenced by seductive promises of riches without effort. It's the oldest investment scheme in the book: "Buy now and you'll be rich! You're smart to buy now!" The hype that propelled bitcoin's initial rise was of course chock full of seductive messages and tempting promises. But in retrospect, nearly all the bitcoin buzz was generated entirely by the very people who stood to benefit from a rise in bitcoin's value. Bitcoin was, essentially, a multi-level marketing currency Ponzi scheme where every person who bought in wanted to convince yet more people to buy in so that their own buy-ins would rise in value as heightened demand collided with limited supply. In this greed-driven quest, true believers shamelessly attacked anyone who asked intelligent questions or exhibited even the least bit of skepticism about the long-term stability of the bitcoin currency. Rationality was entirely abandoned, largely by people who technically should know better, because "bitcoin-type" people tend to be among the highest IQ people in society. Yet even they lose massive IQ points when tempted by greed. My best advice? Buy a farm with a water supply and grow your own food So once again, I implore all Natural News readers and fans to get out of bitcoin and don't get suckered by it. But don't dump your money into greenbacks, either, because that's just another scheme of a different type: a global debt scheme structured on deliberate currency debasement engineered by the Fed: a slow, deliberate theft of economic productivity by those who control the world's money supply. You want to invest in something of real value? Buy an actual farm with good soil and a sustainable water supply. That's worth more than all the bitcoins in the world, if you ask me. Bitcoins are fleeting. They can -- and do -- disappear in the blink of an eye. But if you own farm land with clean water and good soil, you're sitting on a gold mine of food production, and a piece of land is significantly more difficult to take away from someone than a bunch of encrypted digital files. It's food that's going to soon become the new currency for a society in collapse, after all. Mark my words on this prediction: A food apocalypse is coming. Those who cannot produce their own food in a decentralized, secure manner -- which curiously reflects some of the properties of a virtual currency -- will sooner or later find themselves subjugated and powerless. Personally, I'd rather have a secure farm, a locker full of heirloom seeds and a working aquaponics food production system than a hard drive full of bitcoins. Long after both bitcoins and federal reserve notes have crashed into oblivion, I'll have living fruit, vegetables, medicinal herbs and clean fish protein to barter with. The question for you is: What will you have of value to barter in exchange? A pathetic thumb drive that "used to have a million dollars worth of bitcoins on it?" Reconsider that strategy while you still have time. Watch my full explanation here: [onsite*] Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044090_bitcoins_MtGox_currency_collapse.html#ixzz2uV8FiIMH Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044090_bitcoins_MtGox_currency_collapse.html#ixzz2uV6OnjTA

24-02-2014, 13:20 Rob Cypher Silver Member Join Date: 31-05-2010 Male from United States Posts: 1,730 From Colorado (The State That Legalized Weed) Comes the World's Strongest Drug Test -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The security guard is young, maybe mid-twenties, tall and wiry and armed. Hes friendly. He asks, Good morning, sir. Recreational? Can I see your ID? and directs me to the left, into a zig-zag of retractable belt barriers terminating at a long, well-lit counter. Along the wall behind the counter is a grid of peg hooks not unlike those suspending Combos and corn nuts in roadside convenience stores. The bags here are transparent, their contents green, white-labelled with names like Blue Dream, Ghost Train Haze, Kool-Aid Kush and Industrial Paint. There are orange and red liquids in clear bottles; there are foodstuffs with names like Fantastic Brownie and Cheeba Chews; there are t-shirts, hoodies and beanies monogrammed with the Medicine Man logo. When its my turn, Armando Rios greets me. He has short hair, a plaid button-down and a close-cropped goatee. Until recently he was a trimmer, he tells me, but is now a budtender. I grasp this slowly, only after mentally switching out the word bud for bar. I tell him Id like buy maybe a sixteenth of something with a crazy name, for a story Im writing. He asks what its about. I tell him its about a drug test developed by CU Toxicology, a University of Colorado non-profit spinoff just down the road. I tell him that, in a single nine-minute run, it can test for 112 compounds in 500 drugs with ridiculous accuracy, and that its cheap. I tell him that the test can detect metabolites of THC, the active ingredient in all these bags of dope, with 20 times the sensitivity of the typical pee cup, turning negatives into positives for days post-toke. I dont tell him the test could reveal to your employer much more than a smoke sesh, that it produces an itemized grocery list of every chemical that entered your body, or that it could change the doctor-patient relationship for good. Rios nods. How about Ogre? A few of the budtenders highly recommend it. Its more of a body high. Ogre. Perfect. Its $16 for the gram, $21.79 with tax. I pay in cash, and Rios seals the marijuana into a white, plastic mailing envelope, in a capped container that might otherwise hold takeout salad dressing. Behind me, a line of eight people has formed. Its 11 a.m. on a Wednesday. America is a nation of druggies. Comprising about 5% of the planets population, Americans smoke, pop, shoot and otherwise absorb 80% of the global opioid supply, 99% of the worlds hydrocodone (think Vicodin, Percocet, Percodan and Oxycontin) and two-thirds of the worlds illegal drugs. The personal costs can be immeasurable (see Hoffman, Seymour Philip); the economic ones borderline unfathomable, approaching $200 billion a year, according to a 2011 U.S. Justice Department report. Thats about the Czech Republics GDP, up in smoke, down the hatch. Among the major types of drug testing, the first and most familiar relates to pre-employment and employment-related testing. The second has to do with addiction and recovery, and the third with helping patients manage chronic pain. The fourth category, whose profile vastly exceeds its prevalence, has to do with sports-related drug testing of the sort happening before, during and after the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Precisely 4,906 drug tests were projected for the Sochi games, according to organizers. Compare that to the estimated 486 million tests in the other three categories done in the United States alone in 2011, according to the Venture Planning Group a number the firm expects to climb to 592 million by 2016. And depending on a drug test's invasiveness and the person or company requesting it, medical privacy hangs in the balance. Drug use can be tested in a few ways, most directly via the blood. But besides the issue of having to stab someone with a needle, drugs tend to leave the blood quickly within a few hours. Hair testing is the opposite: A 1.5-inch-long snip of about 100 hairs can spot drugs taken in the last 90 days, but it doesnt capture anything from the past week to 10 days. Spit testing is gaining traction, but like hair, oral fluids capture a limited number of compounds at detectable levels, and they move out of the mouth in 24 to 48 hours. That leaves urine, the industry standard now and for the foreseeable future. Most urine tests involve the pee cup or, more technically, a urine immunoassay using thin-layer chromatography, a technology that dates from the 1970s the same used in pregnancy tests. Theyre cheap $5 wholesale and $20-$40 at retail drugstores (look for names like TeenSaver). Theyre also relatively non-invasive, with no hair-snipping or blood-tapping needed, and they provide immediate feedback. They generally test for between 3 and 14 drugs, in other words, for smoking pot or blowing lines of cocaine. But pee cups have their limits. Drug detection depends on the antibodies being the right shape to lock in a narrow set of antigens in this case, drugs. Often, they sweep up a wider variety of molecules than intended, resulting in false positives and cross-reactions. The antidepressant trazodone or even vapor sprays like Vicks can trigger a positive for amphetamines; naproxen, ibuprofen and riboflavin can masquerade as marijuanas cannabinoids. The technical term here is specificity, which refers to the ability of a drug test to discern whats what in a sample. For pee cups, specificity isnt great: a 14-panel cup has just one stripe for opiates, but there are dozens of very different opiates, from heroin to oxycodone. The stripe catches some and misses others. Another pee cup weakness has to do with its sensitivity, or ability to detect tiny amounts of drug. Often, the cutoffs are high enough that drug users can take a couple of days off and pass a pee cup test. On top of the shaky science, pee cup drug tests lack legal punch. If the little line marked BZO (for benzodiazepines) disappears, its merely a presumptive positive. In order to fire you, bust you or throw you out of a pain management program, testers will send your pee to a laboratory, where its run through a machine costing several hundred thousand dollars. The machine puts the urine through two gauntlets. The first uses either liquid or gas chromatography to separate compounds based on the drug molecules shape and reactivity. Then the compounds are ushered into a mass spectrometer, which blows them apart with ions and samples the colors of light emerging from their death throes. The colors divulge their precise nature and with far more sensitivity than that of the initial pee cup. On the other hand, pee cups wont tell your employer about the prescription medications in your medicine cabinet. CU Toxicology is technically a one-person operation, a virtual company, as Blair Whitaker describes it. But Whitaker, 52, operates as more than one person. He talks excitedly and grasps the essence of questions before I'm completely clear on them myself. He has been a computer engineer, software engineer and venture capitalist. Whitaker has multiple titles even now: director of business operations for the non-profit CU Toxicology and CEO of the for-profit Claro Scientific Laboratories. His successes bought a big house near the Denver Country Club, where he and his wife moved from California a decade ago to raise the three kids. In 2009, he started looking for his next thing. He met people, went to conferences, considered pitches and projects: How about an ultrasound system designed to look at glycogen levels in athletes? Presurgical nutritional supplements? Cat food infused with mouse pheromones? And so on. Whitaker, a cyclist, had been thinking about developing a way to test nutritional supplements for a large number of potential adulterants hidden steroids, say, or hormones or narcotics that could get an elite athlete inadvertently busted. Then he came across Uwe Christians. Christians, 51, an M.D. as well as a Ph.D. pharmacologist/toxicologist, has been doing mass spectrometry since the mid-1980s, when in his native Germany he used a version of the technique for his M.D. thesis on the metabolism of cyclosporine in liver transplant patients. He runs a lab called iC42 in a building called Biosciences East, a former Air Force optics factory. The lab down the hall from his office hosts 14 high-end mass-spec machines and a team heavy on hand-picked Germans. Christians had the knowledge and equipment to develop Whitakers sports supplement test. Using the mass-spec machines they created a single test spanning 150 compounds in a single run. It worked. But the sports market didnt pan out. Whitaker began to realize that World Anti-Doping Agency-type testing is a small niche. Instead, he changed course and focused on toxicology screening (drug testing), a much larger market, which happens in every pediatric and adult pain clinic, methadone clinic and addiction center. Not to mention at thousands of employment-related drug testing locations across the country. Whitaker and Christians removed steroids and other compounds from the list and, after consulting with addiction recovery and pain management experts, added other drugs. They arrived at 112 compounds in 16 classes spanning 500 prescription, illicit and over-the-counter drugs. They arrived at 112 compounds in 16 classes spanning 500 prescription, illicit and over-the-counter drugs. It was as sensitive as typical confirmatory tests but as wide as the sea. For example, if a pee cups marijuana stripe triggered a presumptive positive at 50 nanograms per milliliter of THC metabolite, this test would detect down to 2.5 ng/ml. It amounted to what looked like an unbeatable drug screen. But it didnt quite work. The problem wasnt with the chemistry; Christians had nailed that. It was the software. In early 2011, Whitaker signed up a first customer who sent in 89 urine samples, but the reams of data that came out of the mass-spec team quickly overwhelmed his lab team. Whitaker, who has a degree in electrical engineering, saw the mountain of data as a math problem. He spent six months trying to untangle the data using Excel spreadsheets and Visual Basic code. The result was ugly, but it worked. As a bonus, this odd marriage of analytical chemistry and signal processing also automated much of the testing effort, making the whole thing cheap and scalable. He convinced the University of Colorado School of Medicine to launch CU Toxicology as a non-profit to host the work and provide public face for the effort that way his for-profit Claro Labs could stay in the background, taking a royalty for every test performed and owning the software Whitaker created. By January 2014, he was running hundreds of samples a week. Seven of them were mine. Since recreational marijuana became legal in Colorado Jan. 1, 2014, having a bit of weed available for special occasions has been like having a decent pilsner or single-malt scotch on hand. Guests dont usually bring it up, but are most enthusiastic when you do. On Friday, Jan. 24 at about 10 p.m., I lit up with a friend. I hadnt really known what Rios the budtender had meant by Ogre being a body high. A friend of mine who runs a medical marijuana dispensary in Boulder, though, called Ogre a heavy indica and described its aftermath as more of a couch-lock, more a foggy sort of high. I smoke rarely, but enough to have learned to stop at about six meaty hits from the glass pipe. The body did tingle, but the head seemed above it all trains of thought merely derailed as opposed to disappearing into dark tunnels, as if they had never existed in the first place. At about 3:30 p.m. the next day, I filled two of several cups Whitaker had supplied. One was an Insta-Screen 14-panel pee cup immunoassay; the other was destined for a AB Sciex 5500 tandem mass spectrometer at Whitaker and Christians' CU Toxicology lab. I put that one in the garage freezer, advising my wife to avoid using it to chill her sparkling water. The Insta-Screens lower THC line faded in a couple of minutes. Positive, as expected. Until I ran out of CU Toxicology cups, which would happen on Wednesday, I would dutifully fill those once a day, seal their orange lids tight, and pile them on top of a bag of Ling Ling Mini Spring Rolls until taking them to CU Toxicology in bulk. The following Monday, 2.5 days post-Ogre, I drove a couple of miles in light snow to a strip mall on Chambers Road in Aurora to a place called Wiz-Quiz, a contract employment-related sample collector for testing giants such as Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp. The franchisee proprietor, Ben Duka, was unlocking again after grabbing takeout for lunch. He had a sparse moustache and thin, gray-speckled hair. He wore a red Jeff Gordon NASCAR jacket and, on the middle finger of his right hand, a large ring with a BMW logo. He told me business is up and down depending on hiring around town. On Dukas walls hung 13 diplomas with citations such as DOT Urine Drug Testing Course. I would do a five-panel cup amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, opiates for $25. In small room with a toilet, a sink, a short counter and no obvious means of drying ones hands, I warmed the cup. Duka came in, pulled on latex gloves, checked the mood ring-like temperature readings, tore open a metallic wrapper to produce a sort of immunoassay dipstick, and dipped it in my piss. All negative. Back in his office, he swiped my credit card through an iPhone attachment and printed me a certificate saying as much. Three days later, on Thursday, I delivered the frozen blocks urine for testing at iC42. Id soon see how much marijuana metabolite was really in my system. I had little doubt. The development of technology like mass-spec drug tests has people both excited about its potential for addition recovery and senior care, for example, but at the same time nervous about the ethical dilemmas that involve this vast trove of personal data. One of the primary hurdles is cost. CU Toxicology generally charges between $100 and $200 per test, depending on the arrangement and volume. Even costs associated with basic pee cup tests can add up. For example, doctors often outsource mass-spec analysis for urine samples, racking up additional costs of $50 to $250 per drug, says Tony Smith, lead lab technician for Childrens Hospital Colorado. So that $50 drug screen became a $700 analysis by the time its complete, Smith says. At Northstar Transitions, an addiction recovery program in Boulder, they run CU Toxicologys test with each new arrival and then once each week theyre in the program, says Mike Ferrell, the organizations executive director. The test has spotted cocaine in clients bloodstreams two weeks out, much longer than the typical three to four days the pee cup detects. The tests breadth means Ferrell and colleagues know if someones been drinking, taking Xanax, spice (synthetic marijuana) and so on, without ordering costly separate tests for confirmation. It even spots nicotine. It takes the guesswork out, Ferrell says. We might see buprenorphine in a heroin addict trying to self-medicate off the street, or cocaine if theyve been using speedballs. And that sets the tempo for how were going to proceed in treatment. Its been very informative. University of Colorado Hospitals Center for Addiction Recovery and Rehabilitation (CeDAR) does the test on every new patient and then again when they leave. It can make all the difference, says Michael Dinneen, who leads CeDARs extended-care treatment. One client, a nurse by profession, combined Benadryl and several other drugs to produce a particular high. The test spotted them. It would have gone under the radar of all of the other tests that we do, Dinneen says. In addition to addiction and recovery, the test has found adherents in UCHs pain management and chronic pain ranks. Jason Krutsch, M.D., a CU School of Medicine anesthesiologist who directs the university hospitals interventional pain clinic, says the test helps confirm and quantify not only metabolites of drugs of abuse, but also those prescribed in pain management. Its useful to us to see if patients are taking the meds we prescribe for them. Consider also that the same capabilities enabling multiplexing drug assays can and are used to assess the chemical markers of all variety of activity in the human body. Christians has a 50-compound panel that tests for the overall health of the kidneys and blood vessel linings. It includes amino acid profiles, oxidative stress markers, lipids, blood sugars and more. The CU Toxicology test is ultimately a new sort of medical tool, and so its impact could reach into realms as diverse as primary care to obstetrics. A broad-spectrum test could establish what medications a given elderly patient is actually taking as opposed to what they say theyre taking, says Kennon Heard, M.D., a CU School of Medicine toxicology specialist and emergency physician. My goal in 10 years is that were not going to bother asking what theyre taking, he says. Were going to take a urine sample. Those ordering urine tests can now affordably plunge into the private habits and inner bodily workings of their targets like never before. It's akin to NSA spying, but for tapping into bloodstreams rather than data center lines. It's akin to NSA spying, but for tapping into bloodstreams rather than data center lines. Within the HIPAA-protected physician-patient relationship, that could well be a good thing, providing a snapshot of bodily function and pharmacological influence, nipping adverse drug interactions in the bud. But even so, the technology raises ethical and legal questions, says Ben Rich, chairman of the Department of Bioethics at the University of California Davis. Will physicians face malpractice suits for missing some tangential finding of a broad multiplexing assay? Will the payer (an insurance company, say) insist on access to the results, too? Will there be complete disclosure to the patient of the full scope of these tests and informed consent by the patient before the drug test is given? Will patients on long-term opiate therapy really have an option to decline the test? What are the implications for me, vis-à-vis our relationship, if I say no? Rich asks. The questions become even more poignant and far-reaching with respect to employment-related drug testing. Should employers know if youre taking blood pressure or anti-seizure meds? If youre on antidepressants? Should employers know if youre taking blood pressure or anti-seizure meds? If youre on antidepressants? If youre taking low doses of prescribed painkillers because you pulled a muscle in your back? If you have prediabetes? Should they know if you need a little blue pill to get it up? The technology is there now, and the hundred or so bucks is a drop in the bucket compared to the $4,000 it costs, on average, to replace a U.S. worker. Fortunately, some safeguards are in place. The Division of Workplace Programs for the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) officially sets the standards for employment-related drug testing across executive branch entities. Unofficially, it sets the tone for broad swath of federal, state and private sector drug testing. Ron Flegel, the divisions director, says the mandatory guidelines are very clear both on how one can test (the standard pee cup is still the required first step, with mass-spec confirmation) and what one can test for. Though private sector employers are not required by law to follow the SAMHSA guidelines, they may find themselves on shaky legal ground if they dont. Its very strict in the sense that its only tested for the drugs of abuse we have in the guidelines, Flegel says. You cant do DNA testing, pregnancy testing, clinical testing, genome testing that sample is specifically authorized only for the drugs of abuse testing within our program. Things do change, though. Designer drugs like spice have been added to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration list of controlled substances, he says, and an advisory board has suggested adding synthetic opiates (oxymorphone, oxycodone, hydrocodone, hydromorphone) to SAMHSAs mandatory guidelines list. Theyre considering adding oral fluid testing and, perhaps sometime later, hair testing to the menu. Would they consider scrapping the immunoassay and going straight to a broad-based mass spectrometry test? You have to allow technology to move you forward, Flegel says. You could, possibly, have a screening instrument that could do it all-in-one. Existing employment-related law could provide a firmer backstop, says Matt Elliott, a labor law specialist and partner with Beckman Lawson in Fort Wayne, Ind. The Genetic Information and Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) of 2008 prohibits discrimination based on someones genes or genetic history, so employers are not allowed to even obtain that information except under limited circumstances, and if they do obtain it, theyre not allowed to use it to hire, fire or determine benefits, Elliott says. Also, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is broad enough that abnormal cell growth or even past drug addiction are covered under the act, and employers can be liable if they discriminate on such bases, he says. The same goes for prescription drugs. How do you tell if its illicit? Elliott asks. Its probably one of those things that you as an employer dont want to know, because youre opening your doors to liability if you do test for it. For his part, Whitaker is willing to let giants like LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics battle for the employment market. We can do employment stuff, but you know, philosophically, Id much rather be in trying to help people than bust em, he says. But its naive to believe that multiplexing drug-screening assays wont soon be in the testing giants and their many clients hands. CU Toxicology may be ahead of the pack, but its scientists arent the only ones capable of making this goal a reality. ARUP Laboratories already has a mass-spec blood test covering 67 compounds, and a urine test covering 37. Nearly a week after delivering my samples to CU Toxicology, Blair Whitaker called. Youre not going to believe this, he said. You were negative. He emailed me the .pdf of my drug test results my pre- and post-smoking tests on Friday, Jan. 24 and daily follow-ups through the following Wednesday, seven in all. The Friday afternoon pre-test picked up the remnants of the 100 mg naproxen pill I had popped that morning and the single beer I had sipped after my Thursday night indoor soccer game. But there was no hint of THC in my system, despite the lowly pee cup positive. Whitaker, seemingly much more intrigued and excited than worried, came by to pick up a bud of Ogre for chemical analysis over at CannLabs. He wondered if the Ogre was all non-psychoactive CBD, a.k.a. cannabidiol, a slightly different chemical. The mass-spec, tuned for THC, would have been blind to it. The less-choosy pee cup immunoassay could have just piled CBD in with other cannabinoids of its general shape and come out positive. But CannLabs found almost no CBD in the bud. There was precious little THC, either about 5%, as compared to the 15-20% in most strains they test. Heather Despres, who directs the lab, said the Ogre sample was a somewhat smaller than the 180 mgs they usually set as a minimum for analysis, but that the results were probably solid. Whitaker says 9% of CU Toxicologys most recent 3,058 tests came back positive for THC carboxy, one of two metabolites (the other being a hydroxy) that his and other marijuana mass-spec tests look for. His test has passed every quarterly federal proficiency screen (the feds send urine) for the drug. The implication could be that casual users everywhere fail their pee cup immunoassays but then pass the legally binding mass-spec tests, he said. Are we missing them? I do know we have the most sensitive test for THC carboxy, Whitaker says. The question for us is, if we get this many and we dont get them all, what are we missing? Its going to be tough to find out. Efforts to map out the metabolic pathways of meandering cannabinoids are hamstrung by their banishment to the DEAs schedule I list, with rogues like LSD and heroin. Winning federal funding the lifeblood of basic medical research to study schedule I drugs the DEA describes as having no currently accepted medical use is exceedingly difficult, Whitaker says. The irony that medical marijuana is legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia is hard to miss. Crystal meth and cocaine, schedule II drugs, are easier to study. No doubt an upcoming version of the CU Toxicology screen will include CBD metabolites, prednisone and other drugs. Probably, other companies will follow. How far will this new urine-scouring technology take us? How far will we let it take us? Regardless, the people who order these tests are going to know an awful lot about us. Todd Neff Mashable February 23, 2014 http://mashable.com/2014/02/23/drug-...m-fb-main-link __________________ -- Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=238364#ixzz2uJcYtICH

And exactly who determines what constitutes "reasonable fear"? the police - HA! Vic seems to me to be on the verge of joining the fascist states up North.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/713729-Laughed-himself-to-death-after-overdosing-on-nitrous-oxide Yesterday 14:29 Chef Jordan Guise laughed himself to death after overdosing on nitrous oxide A YOUNG British chef died of a laughing gas overdose soon after learning he was going to become a father for the first time, it has been revealed. Jordan Guise was found dead by his boss former England 7s rugby international Johnny Howard at his French apartment on February 6. It later emerged that Mr Guise has been experimenting with nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, just before he died. The 21-year-old had been working as head chef at La Charnière in Beziers in the south of France. He had just told his mother, Leesa Malpas, the news that his girlfriend was expecting in September. We were laughing and joking with him, she told The Kidderminster Shuttle. He phoned and told us on the Tuesday and died on the Thursday. We do know that he died painlessly. He was very relaxed. The talented cook had cut his teeth at The Granary Hotel in Shenstone, Worcestershire, before Mr Howard offered him a job at La Charnière. He was promoted to head chef within a fortnight of arriving last August. (Jordan) lived his dream to be a head chef in France, Ms Malpas said. He was passionate about his work and was very proud of himself, as were his family, friends and work colleagues. A French coroner returned a verdict of accidental death caused by an overdose of nitrous oxide but an inquest in England has since been opened and adjourned. The mother of Mr Guises unborn baby has reportedly returned to Britain. http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/hea...-1226833846691

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2014/feb/21/chronicle_amfebruary_21_2014 www.epilepsy.com/newsfeeds/press_release/1002788 Access and Research Published on: Thu, Feb 20 2014 By Philip M. Gattone, President & CEO, Epilepsy Foundation, and Warren Lammert, Chair, Epilepsy Foundation Board of Directors With Commentary from Orrin Devinsky, M.D., Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, Director, NYU Comprehensive Epilepsy Center Member of Epilepsy Foundation National Board of Directors As parents and as advocates, we feel an urgency to respond and take action on an issue that has been brought to the Epilepsy Foundation from individuals we serve across the country-- the use of marijuana to treat epilepsy. We write this with advice and support from Nathan Fountain, Chairman of our Professional Advisory Board, and with advice and support from a range of other leading epilepsy professionals and board members. 2.3 million Americans live with epilepsy, a neurological condition that includes recurring seizures. More than 1 million of them live with uncontrolled seizures. Some of these people may be helped by surgery or other non-drug treatments, but for many, no answers have been found yet. People with uncontrolled seizures live with the continual risk of serious injuries and loss of life. The Epilepsy Foundation supports the rights of patients and families living with seizures and epilepsy to access physician directed care, including medical marijuana. Nothing should stand in the way of patients gaining access to potentially life-saving treatment. If a patient and their healthcare professionals feel that the potential benefits of medical marijuana for uncontrolled epilepsy outweigh the risks, then families need to have that legal option now -- not in five years or ten years. For people living with severe uncontrolled epilepsy, time is not on their side. This is a very important, difficult, and personal decision that should be made by a patient and family working with their healthcare team. Treatments for epilepsy with any form of marijuana come with risks, as there is much that is not known about its effects. The consistency of available formulations also needs to be addressed. Caution is appropriate, and we strongly recommend that patients with uncontrolled seizures seek out an epilepsy specialist. However, existing therapies have real side-effects both known and unknown, and, just as there are risks with any treatment, every day without seizure control is a risk to life. Every seizure is a possible opportunity lost to live, learn, and grow. The Epilepsy Foundation calls for an end to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) restrictions that limit clinical trials and research into medical marijuana for epilepsy. We applaud recent decisions that have allowed clinical trials of Cannabidiol (CBD) oil, to begin in several states. Certain components of medical marijuana, including CBD, have shown effectiveness in animal studies, and there have been encouraging anecdotal reports from patients. But further research and unbiased clinical trials are needed to establish whether and in what forms medical marijuana is or is not effective and safe. Restrictions on the use of medical marijuana continue to stand in the way of this research. The Epilepsy Foundation believes that an end to seizures should not be determined by ones zip code. Our current situation as an epilepsy community is not acceptable. Families looking to access medical marijuana as a treatment are facing terrible decisions. One parent may move across the country to live with a child to seek this treatment. Other families may uproot entirely, including leaving their job, to move where they can access CBD oil. In the past, when therapies not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were available abroad and left only to those who could afford to travel, we fought for compassionate access. We are here to continue the fight. The Epilepsy Foundation will be doing the following to support improved access and research into medical marijuana: 1. Calling on the Drug Enforcement Administration to implement a lesser schedule for marijuana so that it can be more easily accessible for medical research. 2. Supporting appropriate changes to state laws to increase access to medical marijuana as a treatment option for epilepsy, including pediatric use as supported by a treating physician. 3. Supporting the inclusion of epilepsy as a condition that uses medical marijuana as a treatment option where it is currently available. 4. Supporting research on multiple forms of cannabis and seizures. What can you do to help? Advocate for increased access and for the freedom to conduct medical research on a potentially effective treatment against seizures and epilepsy. Join with us at http://capwiz.com/efa/mlm/signup. Heres Our Story: As the President & CEO and as the Chair of the Board of the Epilepsy Foundation, we are privileged to lead a nationwide network of caring volunteers and staff who work tirelessly to improve lives of individuals living with epilepsy. We are also fathers of individuals living with epilepsy. Phils son has had thousands of seizures in his life and has endured two brain surgeries to stop his seizures. Warrens daughter has a genetic form of epilepsy that is marked by severe seizures and, despite an implanted medical device and three different epilepsy medicines, endures daily waves of seizures. Some individuals, specifically families of children with uncontrolled seizures, are using what is called cannabidiol oil, or CBD oil, and anecdotally a few are seeing remarkable results. This is truly spectacular -- anytime someone finds a treatment that stops seizures, there is cause for celebration because seizure freedom for one person means hope of seizure freedom for others. There is still a lot we dont know about the medical use of marijuana for epilepsy. Until clinical trials are completed, doctors and patients will not know whether medical marijuana or CBD will on balance harm someone or help someone with epilepsy. We are advocating for the rights of patients and families to determine with their doctor if this is an appropriate therapy for them, but we recognize the unknowns and the difficulty of this decision for an individual patient. There is an obvious and urgent need for research. The Epilepsy Foundation is proud that we are currently funding an important research study to learn more about the effect of a form of cannabis on individuals living with uncontrolled epilepsy. As fathers, we know the pain of watching our children experience uncontrolled seizures. We know how epilepsy impacts development in children for whom no available current treatment has been successful. We know about the dangers that can occur when families are forced to leave medical systems and physicians they know to move to other states. We know seizures not only affect the individual enduring seizures, it also impacts siblings, parents, grandparents, kids and grandchildren, other loved ones and friends. We know the difference between having recurring seizures and not having seizures can mean the difference between life and death. Warrens daughter is fortunate to be enrolled in a clinical trial of CBD. We do not know if this will help Sylvie but know the cost of her unrelenting seizures. Weighing the issue with her doctor, we decided the potential benefits outweigh the risks. Other parents and other individuals living with potentially devastating seizures should have the same opportunity to make that determination. If an epilepsy patient and their doctor feel that marijuana is their best treatment option then they need to have safe, legal access to medical marijuana and they need that access now.

I'll try to spread the word in the legal highs forums.

10-02-2014, 11:12 Fiery_Zen Silver Member Join Date: 11-12-2009 Male from South Africa Posts: 14 Drugs of Abuse and the Aging Brain Substance abuse among older adults has received little attention in the past, presumably because this population has traditionally accounted for only a small percentage of the drug abuse problem in the United States. The aging of the baby boomer generation (born 1946–1964), however, will soon swell the ranks of older adults and dramatically alter the demography of American society. Several observations suggest that this expansion will likely be accompanied by a precipitous increase in the abuse of drugs, including prescription medications and illicit substances, among older adults. While it is now evident that the brain changes continuously across life, how drugs of abuse interact with these age-related changes remains unclear. The dynamic nature of brain function, however, suggests that substance abuse during older age may augment the risks and require unique considerations for diagnosis and treatment. In addition to describing current and projected prevalence estimates of substance abuse among older adults, the present review discusses how aging affects brain systems involved in drug abuse, and explores the potential impact of drug abuse on the aging brain. Future directions for substance abuse research among older adults will also be considered. Substance abuse among older adults (ie, aged 50 years and older) has received little attention in the recent past presumably because it has traditionally represented a relatively small percentage of the substance abuse problem in the United States, which has been viewed as primarily a problem of youth. Indeed, based on data from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics indicating a sharp decline in opiate abuse after the age of 36, Winick (1962) hypothesized that a substantial majority of opiate addicts ‘mature out' of their addiction as a result of the normal aging process (Winick, 1962). Subsequent findings, however, have not supported a cause-and-effect relationship between chronological age and the cessation of addiction (Rosenberg, 1995). Instead, it is now evident that addiction initiated in youth often persists into advanced age (Anderson and Levy, 2003; Rosenberg, 1995). Several lines of evidence suggest that substance abuse among older adults is on the rise. The aging of the baby boomer generation, comprised of those born from 1946 to 1964, will soon swell the ranks of older adults to unprecedented numbers. Even if the proportion of older adults abusing drugs in coming years were to hold steady at current levels, the dramatic increase in the size of this population would produce an equally dramatic increase in the absolute number of older individuals with substance abuse disorders. Given several reasons, however, it appears that the proportion of older adults abusing drugs is increasing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. With major advances in medicine over the last several decades, Americans are not only living longer, but are living healthier; longer; ironically, this laudable trend is weakening one of the strongest motivations for changing addictive behavior among older adults: the declining health and increasing frailty that have typically accompanied aging. Thus, individuals advancing into their later years may feel less compelled to alter their substance abuse practices and, as a result, may prolong their drug abuse careers. Substance abuse in older adults may be further facilitated by the alleviation of longstanding family responsibilities and the availability of greater disposable income. Additionally, substance abuse may be continued or even initiated in later years as a means of coping with the profound sense of loss many older adults experience as they retire, their children leave home, and they lose loved ones. The baby boomers have also been the first generation indoctrinated with the views, values, and expectations of the ‘quick-fix’ culture. Part and parcel of this indoctrination has been the rise in the promise, awareness, and dispensation of prescription medications. The widespread use and effectiveness of many prescription medications has endorsed the view that many problems, medical and otherwise, have a quick and simple fix, and that rapid remedies frequently come in the form of a medication. There are now more medications available to treat more maladies than ever before, and increased awareness of these medications appears to be driving increased use. For example, in 2001, 30% of Americans spoke with their physicians about medications they saw advertised, and 44% of these patients received the prescription medications they inquired about (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2003). Indeed, from 1992 to 2002 the number of prescriptions filled increased 154% (National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), 2005). Alarmingly, there have also been large increases in the number of emergency department (ED) mentions of nonmedical use of prescription medications. For example, the number of ED mentions for abuse of hydrocodone more than doubled from 1994 to 2001 (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2002), possibly reflecting its greater availability. Illicit substance abuse among older adults is also likely to increase as suggested by an apparent increase in the number of ED mentions for illicit drugs among this population (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2002). This interpretation is consistent with projections of past year illicit drug abuse among older adults in the year 2020 (Colliver et al, 2006) and is further supported by an overall increased prevalence of illicit drug abuse among baby boomers that is persisting as this generation ages (Gfroerer et al, 2003). And while we now have evidence that the brain continues to change throughout life, there is little understanding of how drugs of abuse interact with these age-related changes. The dynamic nature of the brain, however, suggests that substance abuse in older adults may have unique consequences that influence drugs' effects in the brain and the treatment of substance abuse in this population. The present review will describe the current and projected prevalence estimates of substance abuse in older adults, as well as the current understanding of how aging affects the predominant neural pathways involved in drug abuse. The potential impact of drug abuse on the aging brain will also be explored. The implications of age-related pharmacokinetic/dynamic changes and comorbid physical and mental health conditions will be considered and followed by a discussion of the unique considerations influencing the development of effective substance abuse screening and treatment programs targeted at older adults. As this is an emerging field of research, we conclude by discussing future directions for substance abuse research in this population. Source: Neuropsychopharmacology (2008) 33, 209–218 __________________ "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway." Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=237218#ixzz2st3ZaNv0

So, what did they do in the times before alcotest kits, or breathalyser vans? They could revert to former procedures if suspecting drunken drivers, and having a faulty kit, or abandon RBT tests. What if they detain a type 1 diabetic who need insulin, has run out of supplies, and is on the way to a pharmacy, or doctor/hospital? In the US recently, a woman died in jail because she tested positive for cannabis, on the road trip to her interstate home, after a trip to Colorado, and was unable to access her medication. I foresee huge law suits, with sympathetic juries, and massive payouts.