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The Politics of Pot
(Editorial, New York Times, April 22, 2006)
The Bush administration's habit of politicizing its scientific agencies was on display again this week when the Food and Drug Administration, for no compelling reason, unexpectedly issued a brief, poorly documented statement disputing the therapeutic value of marijuana. The statement was described as a response to numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill, but its likely intent was to buttress a crackdown on people who smoke marijuana for medical purposes and to counteract state efforts to legalize the practice. . . . Ordinarily, when the F.D.A. addresses a thorny issue, it convenes a panel of experts who wade through the latest evidence and then render an opinion as to whether a substance is safe and effective to use. This time the agency simply issued a skimpy one-page statement asserting that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of marijuana. . . . That assertion is based on an evaluation by federal agencies in 2001 that justified the government's decision to tightly regulate marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. But it appears to flout the spirit of a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine, a unit of the National Academy of Sciences. . . . The institute was appropriately cautious in its endorsement of marijuana. It said the active ingredients of marijuana appeared useful for treating pain, nausea and the severe weight loss associated with AIDS. It warned that these potential benefits were undermined by inhaling smoke that is more toxic than tobacco smoke. So marijuana smoking should be limited, it said, to those who are terminally ill or don't respond to other therapies. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: HELLO! Have any of you screwheads at the FDA ever heard of a vaporizor (I reccomend the Volcano myself, unfortunately it's too expensive for me to own one), and then there are always brownies. Smoking is so 20th century.] . . . Yet the F.D.A. statement, which was drafted with the help of other federal agencies that focus on drug abuse, does not allow even that much leeway. It argues that state laws permitting the smoking of marijuana with a doctor's recommendation are inconsistent with ensuring that all medications undergo rigorous scrutiny in the drug approval process. . . . That seems disingenuous. The government is actively discouraging relevant research, according to scientists quoted by Gardiner Harris in yesterday's Times. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: My podcast #014 from the Psychedelic Salon covers this issue in great detail. The title of that program is "Medical Marijuana On The Offensive" and it features Dr. Rick Doblin speaking at the National Press Club on the day of a court hearing in which MAPS was suing the Federal Government to allow them to obtain the marijuana required for a research study that has been approved for years by the FDA and DEA. It's Catch 22. The government can say they have approved a marijuana safety study, but another branch is preventing the study from taking place.] It's obviously easier and safer to issue a brief, dismissive statement than to back research that might undermine the administration's inflexible opposition to the medical use of marijuana.


ALSO SEE: The Drug War and the Nazi Comparison "The exponent of democracy had fallen on hard times. America was treading the same path as Nazi Germany. The War on Drugs and Hitler's war on anyone he took exception to, the symptoms in the two cases were identical."

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 2:03 PM

 

Conviction of "ganja guru" overturned
(Reuters, April 26, 2006)
A federal appeals court on Wednesday overturned the conviction of "ganja guru" Ed Rosenthal and ordered a new trial, saying a juror had tainted the case by seeking the advice of a lawyer before the verdict. . . . Rosenthal, the author of many books on marijuana, was sentenced in 2003 to a single day in prison -- the minimum possible in the case -- after a jury found him guilty of growing the plant in violation of federal law. . . . Rosenthal appealed the felony conviction on several grounds, including that the district court had acted improperly by not ordering a retrial after one of the jurors asked an attorney friend about the case. . . . It was on that point that Rosenthal won the backing of a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. . . . "The district court, upon conducting a hearing into the matter, concluded that Rosenthal failed to demonstrate prejudice and denied the motion for a new trial," Judge Betty Fletcher wrote for the panel. . . . "We find that the district court applied an overly burdensome standard of proof and that, under the appropriate standard of review, prejudice is evident." . . . Prosecutors had sought a 6-1/2 year sentence in a case that attracted wide publicity in the San Francisco area where many people believe that marijuana should be allowed for medicinal purposes. . . . Medical marijuana is voter-approved in California but barred by federal law. . . . The judge who sentenced Rosenthal said the one-day prison term was appropriate because the pot advocate believed its cultivation for medical purposes was allowed under state law.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 8:25 AM

 

Top UK medical journal calls for more LSD in labs
(James Randerson, The Guardian, April 14, 2006)
"Use more psychedelic drugs," is not advice you would expect from your GP, but that is the call from an influential UK medical journal to researchers. . . . An editorial in the Lancet says that the "demonisation of psychedelic drugs as a social evil" has stifled vital medical research that would lead to a better understanding of the brain and better treatments for conditions such as depression. . . . The journal's editor Richard Horton said he was not advocating recreational drug use, but championed the benefits of researchers studying the effects of drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy by using them themselves in the lab. . . . The blanket ban on psychedelic drugs enforced in many countries continues to hinder safe and controlled investigation, in a medical environment, of their potential benefits," said the editorial, "...criminalisation of these agents has also led to an excessively cautious approach to further research into their therapeutic benefits." . . . Dr Horton told Guardian Unlimited that important advances were made by researchers using psychedelic drugs on themselves, but that these studies were stifled by the post-1960s anti-drug backlash. "Our very earliest understanding of the neurochemistry of the brain came from studying LSD-like compounds. Those same researchers were also taking those drugs, not recreationally, but as experiments on themselves. This was immensely important work." . . . "The whole taboo around recreational drug use can make the study of these drugs very difficult," he said, "We need to get a balance between these social taboos and what's best for patients." . . . Dr Horton's comments echo those from psychiatrist Ben Sessa on the 100th birthday of Albert Hoffmann, who discovered LSD. "It is as if a whole generation of psychiatrists have had this systematically erased from their education," he told the Guardian in January. . . . "But for the generation who trained in the 50s and 60s, this really was going to be the next big thing. Thousands of books and papers were written, but then it all went silent. My generation has never heard of it. It's almost as if there has been an active demonisation." Some anti-drug charities and politicians argue that medical research on illegal drugs should remain taboo because it risks sending a confused message to potential users. Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in Sarasota, Florida rejects this argument. "The idea that by contradicting the exaggerated propaganda you are somehow sending the wrong message is false," he said, "Kids know when they are being told something that is way exaggerated, but then they don't know what is the truth." . . . The journal's call comes at a crucial moment, he said, because several small studies of the medicinal effects of illegal drugs are under way. "I think it is a tremendously courageous step." . . . MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, has shown promise in treating post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety in cancer patients, while LSD and psylocibin - the active ingredient in magic mushrooms - are being investigated as treatments from cluster headaches. Sativex, a treatment for multiple sclerosis derived from cannabis, is already available in Canada.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 2:46 AM

 

Chineese researchers show cannabis promotes neurogenesis
(Wen Jiang, Yun Zhang, Lan Xiao, Jamie Van Cleemput, Shao-Ping Ji1, Guang Bai3 and Xia Zhang, August 9, 2005)
The effects of HU210 on adult hippocampal neurogenesis were quantified in freely moving rats and were correlated with behavioral testing. We show that 1 month after chronic HU210 treatment, rats display increased newborn neurons in the hippocampal dentate gyrus and significantly reduced measures of anxiety- and depression-like behavior. Thus, cannabinoids appear to be the only illicit drug whose capacity to produce increased hippocampal newborn neurons is positively correlated with its anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects. . . . Increased newborn hippocampal neurons following chronic HU210 treatment in adult rats. A recent study has demonstrated that newborn neurons in the dentate granule cell layer that had survived 4 weeks were stably integrated into the granule cell layer . . . Natural selection has conserved cannabinoid receptors in various vertebrates and invertebrates that have been evolutionarily separate for 500 million years (33), indicating the importance of cannabinoid receptors to life. . . . Accordingly, we hypothesized that cannabinoids could regulate proliferation of hippocampal NS/PCs by acting on CB1 receptors. This hypothesis is supported by our subsequent findings that both the synthetic cannabinoid HU210 and endocannabinoid AEA profoundly promoted embryonic hippocampal NS/PC proliferation, and the effects of HU210 could be blocked by the selective CB1 receptor antagonist AM281. . . . Our findings of cannabinoid-induced increase in hippocampal neurogenesis are in agreement with the recent observation that CB1 receptor–knockout mice display profound suppression of hippocampal neurogenesis . . . In summary, since adult hippocampal neurogenesis is suppressed following chronic administration of opiates, alcohol, nicotine, and cocaine, the present study suggests that cannabinoids are the only illicit drug that can promote adult hippocampal neurogenesis following chronic administration. Increased hippocampal neurogenesis appears to underlie the mechanism of anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects produced by a high dose of chronic HU210 treatment. The opposing effects of high doses of acute and chronic cannabinoids, together with the anxiolytic-like effects caused by a low dose of cannabinoids, may finally explain discrepancies in the clinical study literature regarding the effects of cannabinoid on anxiety and depression.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 2:25 AM

 

The Stunning Art of Michael Brown
After spending some time on Robert Venosa's site today I had the urge to check out some of the Web sites of other psychedelic artists, and I found the art of Michael Brown to be particularly compelling.

In addition to his personal work, Michael has teamed up with Conscious Alliance to create several benefit posters. Conscious Alliance is a non-profit that feeds the hungry in cities and Indian Reservations across the nation by conducting food drives. They are also a major promoter of organic farming.

Recently Michael's work has been featured in Shamans' Drum in the Artist's Gallery, in Dreamweaver Magazine in Ohio, coupled with an interview with Dr. Fred Allan Wolf (of What the Bleep Do We Know fame), on the cover of the Messenger Magazine in Southern California and on the April and May covers of the Sedona Journal of Emergence.

The following are thumbnail images of the posters:

And here are three of my favorites from Michael's new gallery:

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 5:35 PM

 

Psychedelic Art
I'm sure most of you are familar with the work of Robert Venosa. And if you aren't, you owe it to yourself to check it out. His splash screen alone is worth the trip. . . . I think you might also enjoy reading a blog about John Perry Barlow's great essay, Liberty & LSD on the Earthrites.org site. It's an interesting read and is also accompanied by several works of art by Robert Venosa.

Here is a sample of Robert Venosa's work. It is called Ayahuasca Dream.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 12:42 PM

 

NEW BOOK- "Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason"
By James Kent

If you aren't familar with the work of James Kent and his Tripzine.com site, you are really missing out on some great information and some teriffic writing. The link above will take you to his site where you can take a first look at this revolutionary book. . . .

Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason is a landmark text in the field of psychedelic study. Written by James Kent, former Editor of Psychedelic Illuminations and Publisher of Trip Magazine, Psychedelic Information Theory spans the chasm between science and mysticsm and fully deconstructs the magic of the psychedelic experience in a way that promises to satisfy both skeptics and true believers alike. James Kent has been studying psychedelics, mysticism, neuroscience, and psychedelic culture for over 15 years, and now presents the culmination of his research in one epic volume. In addition to the most complete neurologic deconstruction of various psychedelic mind states ever compiled, Kent also provides an exhaustive analysis of the way information is generated within the psychedelic state, and how that information transcends the personal mind and influences human culture at large. Finally, Psychedelic Information Theory examines the scientific basis of traditional shamanic powers and techniques, and frames a new model for shamanic practice and clinical therapy in the modern world. Destined to become a classic within the field, Psychedelic Information Theory blows the lid off the psychedelic experience and demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt the impact pscyhedelics continue to have on global culture. If you ever wished for a single book that described exactly how psychedelics worked and just why they are so important, then this is the book you have been waiting for!


Preview of Table of Contents and Alpha Edition Chapters
[From the Preface] . . . This is not a book about drugs, it is about experience, for what are drugs if not a means to experience? Each encounter with a psychoactive substance is a gateway into another world of unique moods, thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions that would be otherwise inaccessible along this strange and twisted journey we call life. Much has been written about the many types of experiences one might encounter under the influence of a psychedelic drug, but very little has been written about how these drugs actually produce the phenomena they do, or why we react so strongly to them at such deep emotional levels. This is the primary reason I have written this book, to address the issue of how psychedelic drugs work, and why the affect us the way they do.


Donate to the PIT Publishing Fund
[NOTE from Lorenzo: If you hurry, you can reserve one of the first 100 numbered and signed copies of what is sure to become a collector's item . . . at least IMHO.]

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 6:34 AM