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Vultures face extinction as gamblers seek visions of the future

January 2, 2010 / Klint Finley

It’s a tiny organ that, the superstition goes, holds the secrets of the future. When smoked and inhaled, the brain of a vulture is said to confer the gift of premonition. To put it bluntly, most users hope to sneak a look at next week’s national lottery numbers.

Such is the demand for vulture brains to use in muti – traditional medicine – that wildlife experts fear the birds could be driven to extinction within two or three decades. They also warn that hunting could intensify as gamblers seek an advantage when betting on the football World Cup in South Africa.

Vultures’ acute vision, and ability to find prey, has kindled a belief that they possess clairvoyant powers. Their brains are dried and rolled into a cigarette or inhaled as vapours in the hope they will bring a vision of the future – including lottery numbers and sports results.

Guardian: Vultures face extinction as gamblers seek visions of the future

(Thanks Paul)

The next big drug: designer neurostim

December 24, 2009 / Klint Finley

James Kent from Dose Nation writes:

The same neurostim device that uses electric impulses from a brain implant to treat people with Parkinson‘s Disease can be tweaked by a few millimeters and pulse rates to make cocaine addicts feel like they are high all the time. Neurostim isn‘t a cheap commodity yet, but in the future it could be. The “off label” demand for designer neurostim does not exist today, but if the implant procedure was automated and the price was reduced, it could be a very marketable alternative to long-term drug therapy. Cheap neurostim would then fuel an off-label market for cosmetic and personal use with subsidiary markets for designer software upgrades, patches, and applets to customize functionality. But first there needs to be consumer demand for the product, and that has yet to materialize.

h+: Cognitive Commodities in the Neuro Marketplace

(via Disinfo)

Seattle mayor-elect calls for marijuana legalization

December 21, 2009 / Klint Finley

And Washington state legislature is considering a legalization bill as well:

e hasn’t even taken office yet, but the words of Mayor-Elect Mike McGinn have already perked some citizens’ ears.

McGinn believes pot should not only be legal, but also taxed.

“We recognize that, you know, like alcohol, it’s something that should be regulated, not treated as a criminal activity. And I think that’s where the citizens of Seattle want us to go,” said McGinn on a public radio show on Friday. […]

And the state could be one step closer to legalizing marijuana. State Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, is sponsoring a bill that would do just that. […]

Under the state bill, marijuana would be sold in state liquor stores, and the drug tax would be used for drug and alcohol abuse prevention.

KOMO News:
The ‘green’ mayor? McGinn wants to legalize pot and tax it, too

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

December 14, 2009 / Klint Finley

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. “In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor,” he said.

Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

Guardian: Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

(via Global Guerrillas and Cryptogon)

The legal high industry goes pro

December 5, 2009 / Klint Finley

Now this is where it gets interesting because the researchers note that a new product appeared on the market, containing JWH-073 – another synthetic cannabinoid, within four weeks of the ban. JWH-073 has similar similar effects, but isn’t covered by the law and so remains legal.

The speed at which it appeared suggests that it had been selected and synthesised in advance, in anticipation of the ban […]

In other words, the legal high industry is packing neuroscientists and heavyweight lab pharmacologists. It is no longer just head-shop hippies repackaging obscure psychoactive and barely recreational plants as a poor substitute for street drugs. The legal high industry has become professionalised.

Seemingly based on the model of the pharmaceutical industry, it is becoming science-led, regulation savvy and is out-manoeuvring the authorities well before they catch up.

Mind Hacks: Spice flow: the new street drug pharmacology

Obama LSD blotter art

December 3, 2009 / Klint Finley

lsd blotter obama

(via Erowid)

Do blind people hallucinate on LSD?

November 21, 2009 / Klint Finley

I’ve just found a remarkable 1963 study [pdf] from the Archives of Opthalmology in which 24 blind participants took LSD to see if they could experience visual hallucinations.

It turns out, they can, although this seems largely to be the case in blind people who had several years of sight to begin with, but who later lost their vision.

Those blind from a very early age (younger than two years-old) did not report visual hallucinations, probably because they never had enough visual experience to shape a fully-functioning visual system when their brain was still developing.

Mind Hacks: Do blind people hallucinate on LSD?

(via Paul Bingman)

Just 15 Minutes of Sensory Deprivation Triggers Hallucinations

October 26, 2009 / Klint Finley

You don’t need psychedelic drugs to start seeing colors and objects that aren’t really there. Just 15 minutes of near-total sensory deprivation can bring on hallucinations in many otherwise sane individuals.

Psychologists stuck 19 healthy volunteers into a sensory-deprivation room, completely devoid of light and sound, for 15 minutes. Without the normal barrage of sensory information flooding their brains, many people reported experiencing visual hallucinations, paranoia and a depressed mood.

“This is a pretty robust finding,” wrote psychiatrist Paul Fletcher of the University of Cambridge, who studies psychosis but was not involved in the study. “It appears that, when confronted by lack of sensory patterns in our environment, we have a natural tendency to superimpose our own patterns.”

Wired: Just 15 Minutes of Sensory Deprivation Triggers Hallucinations

Obama administration issues new policy on medical marijuana

October 19, 2009 / Klint Finley

Holder has formalized the policy previously mentioned of ending federal drug raids against sick people:

The Obama administration delivered new guidance on medical marijuana to federal prosecutors Monday, signaling a broad policy shift that will mean fewer crackdowns against dispensaries and the people who use them.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. instructed government lawyers that in 14 states where medical marijuana use is legal, federal prosecutors should focus only on cases involving higher level drug traffickers or people who use the state laws as a cover story.

“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal,” Holder said. “This balanced policy formalizes a sensible approach that the Department has been following since January: effectively focus our resources on serious drug traffickers while taking into account state and local laws.”

Washington Post: Obama administration issues new policy on medical marijuana

LSD research resurgence

September 28, 2009 / Klint Finley

Nearly 40 years after widespread fear over recreational abuse of LSD and other hallucinogens forced dozens of scientists to abandon their work, researchers at a handful of major institutions – including UCSF and Harvard University – are reigniting studies. Scientists started looking at less controversial drugs, like ecstasy and magic mushrooms, in the late 1990s, but LSD studies only began about a year ago and are still rare.

The study at UCSF, which is being run by a UC Berkeley graduate student, is looking into the mechanisms of LSD and how it works in the brain. The hope is that such research might support further studies into medical applications of LSD – for chronic headaches, for example – or psychiatric uses. […]

In 1966, the federal government made LSD illegal, and by the early 1970s, research into all psychedelic drugs in humans had come to a halt, although some scientists continued to study the drugs in animals.

SF Gate: LSD’s long, strange trip back into the lab

(What a Wonderful Place to Be)

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