Yeti101

Good idea, but political donations are hit and miss - ask the Hotels Association. And we'd need a lot more than a few thousand to get the ear of a single Labour or Liberal pollie. But other business, community and religious groups lobby in this manner, so we should at least consider giving it a go. I think it goes without saying that the person(s) administering this collection/donation would have to be squeaky clean, as would anyone publicly linked with it.

I agree with Vert, the more tedious and expensive you make the enforcement of these laws, the closer you get to having them ammended. Maybe

Just make sure that they really can't get anything on you before indulging in that sort of mischief. I say go nuts and encrypt fiction in the form of insanely complex but totally impossible designer drug recipes using turnips or lawn clippings. Then at least you will make some more work for them while they are working out that you are full of shit. Claim you are a writer and say it's not your fault they can't spot real creativity when they read it.

I was just thinking this morning how handy a really secure chat would be and then this article appears. I say encrypt the living daylights out of everything so they at least have to work hard to steal your secrets.

Whats an emo's favorite chat command? v v v v v / wrists

I'm with Twix on this. Free will is such a big question that it it's not going to be settled this way, if it is possible to settle it at all. Scientists seem fond of redefining a philosophical problem so it looks like they can solve it ( I recall someone doing something similar with creativity once). I suspect that the redefining of Free Will to something weaker than our intuitive sense is symptomatic of our psychological or societal need to retain a belief in it. We are raised and therefore determined (ironically) to believe that if we don't have free will we are lacking something good. So we move the goal-posts to make ourselves feel better (and get published in the process). It's a great article with lots of interesting implications, just not for Free Will. Thanks for posting it Nabraxas.

Thanks t ( and apologies for the stupid question ). PEA being pharmacologically similar is indeed a matter of degree. But in reality (with regard to scheduling) I would have thought that it is also a matter of perspective and bias in reporting/documenting it's use and assesing the danger it poses to the community.

With regard to the analogue laws in QLD for something to be considered an analogue does it have to be both structurally similar and similar in action or just one or the other? How wide is the net cast for stuctural similarity? eg is PEA (and therefore chocolate ) structurally similar enough to the naughty PEA's to come under this legislation?

"And now bills were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt." Tacitus, Annals Book III, 27

Now-days just Brahmi & Caffeine. But I did try Lecithin (in big doses) to boost acetylcholine levels, which seemed to improve recall for rote learning type tasks.

I take Brahmi in my morning tea (or just break a bit off and eat it) pretty much every day, and it seems to help my memory - doesn't make me smart so much as it seems to counteract some of the damage I've done over the years A while back I took a lot of concentrated lecithin because the choline in it is needed to make Acetylcholine. Anyway, that seemed to enhance my recall greatly, but only if I took a lot and took it consistently.

I noticed tht the breakdown was roughly: $31.5 billion Tobacco $15 billion Alcohol $8 billion "Illicit" drugs (This doesn't add up to $56 billion, where is the rest?) Under the circumstances perhaps politicians need to refocus their moral panic from people in QLD growing Lophs (which hasn't cost the nation much at all I'd bet) to tobacco which cost more than everything else combined, or Alcohol which cost more than all so-called illicit drugs combined. When I see these figures and think about how plants we use have been banned I am more convinced than ever before that drug policy is about money and power, not rationality. Could SD or peyote ever cost the nation billions of $ a year? I seriously doubt it. Fuck Big Commercial Tobacco, fuck Big Commercial Booze and fuck the politicians who support them by putting the boot into us!

Yeah I saw that too, pretty good setup, will be fantastic when it grows in a bit.

I've seen a few YouTube vids of late showing people tripping on SD and the like, and last week one of the commercial current affairs shows did an 'expose' on DXM - complete with YouTube clips of staggering, drooling bug-eyed teens. Here is the original CBS story that they recycled: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/21/...in3959347.shtml It got me to thinking about discussions we have had here regarding how damaging trip vids on public forums are to the public image of entheogens, alternative recreational substances and the like. I generally thought that these clips are pretty bad news for us because of the negative attention they generate and that people should not post them, and that the existing vids should be removed. What I did assume was there must have been a lot of these vids posted to generate such a fuss. But there are not that many and the reaction in the media shows how we are disproportionately targeted compared with alcohol. If a few hundred robotripping vids warrants a current affairs piece along with the requisite moral panic, then why not a proportional reaction to the vids that show people in states of alcohol intoxication? If I had to guess, there are at least 100,000 of these, so where are all the expose's on this? That a small amount of exposure on Youtube can generate negative media attention (for anything other than booze) shows how tenuous our position really is. What I'm wondering is what do we do now? Would it help if we hacked every tripping teen off Youtube? Or will these clips eventually desensitise the populace so that they will leave us alone? Any thoughts?

People haven't argued about this for months - you trying to rekindle the flames Marsha? Nice pic BTW.

I agree that we need to think about what the best plan of action is. The trouble is that it's very rare to have the decision to make something illegal reversed - I'm pretty sure most politicians only know and understand the process of making more things illegal. If I had to guess, I'd say you would have to argue that a given plant has a low abuse potential (in its unprocessed form) and its active has similaraly low abuse potential and that it is such a small problem that it is a waste of time and resources to police it. In the past I might have said also that the plant has a similar abuse potential to things that are legal such as alcohol, but that seeing as KRudd is outwardly down on booze it probably wouln't help much. In the meantime we need to seriously need to look at what is said (and where/how) to avoid bad publicity or official attention. But we also need to balance the secrecy against our ability to educate the community - you can't 'saturate' the community if they don't know you exist (But moving towards the critical mass is the quickest way to get the powers that be breathing down your neck). Either way - now is not the time to name things that have so far avoided the the fate of the Lophs by asking stupid questions.

Given what was said about L.williamsii and the "any substance that contains a scheduled drug is deemed to be that drug' laws", doesn't this mean that anything which contains a certain PEA is illegal to possess in QLD?

I haven't noticed them going to seed either which makes me wonder if we both don't have Artemisia verlotiorum because it reproduces mainly by stolons rather than seeds. There is an article on it indicating that it certainly has plenty of alpha-thujone: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa40...09/ai_n17197149 So I don't think it is a great loss if it turns out to be verlotiorum rather than vulgaris (other than the fact that it makes posting the seeds hard as there won't be any ).

I found some growing in my backyard of the place I'm renting but it hasn't gone to seed yet. Remind me later in Autum and I'll send you some seeds or I can try to dig up a small plant (harder to post than seeds though).

You are right if course, no herb is better than actual psychological treatment/counselling in the daytime. I don't think any hallucinogen would be a good way to treat any anxiety disorder so I'm definitely with Zeke on avoiding the tryptaminic brew. PTSD can be very hard to treat - someone very close to me was (and maybe always will be) a sufferer, and all I can recommend is that you encourage them to get help from a good psychologist. Herbs might be good for the symptoms, but they are not a cure by themselves.

What kind of dreams are they having? Are their nightmares in REM or are they hypnogogic imagery in slow-wave sleep? I had heard that the latter kind of nightmare (or night terror) can be caused by too rapid a change between deep slow-wave sleep and more wakeful states, at least that is how it (maybe) works in children having night terrors. So even though I don't know what suppresses dreams of either kind, something that helps you sleep more deeply might help or it might not if it stops you from dreaming altogether! Personally I'd avoid things to make you sleep and go for anti-anxiety effects: I prefer Salvia Splendens + small amount of Pineapple Sage + a pinch of Mugwort. If they are really agitated you might add something sedating. Mulungu bark might be worth a try also, but I don't have any experience with it personally.

I find (for small quantities only) a zip-lock bag in my jeans pocket for a few days produces superior results to jar fermentation - so long as the bag stays closed.

Bugger

Dukes entry for T. minuta http://sun.ars-grin.gov:8080/npgspub/xsql/....xsql?taxon=990