At 74, the venture capitalist George Sarlo might not have seemed an obvious candidate for an ayahuasca experience. Mr. Sarlo, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1956, has had great professional success as the co-founder of Walden Venture Capital. He lives in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood, in a large house with an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate Bridge. And yet something was always lacking. Mr. Sarlo's father had disappeared from their Budapest home in 1942. He had been drafted in a forced labor battalion, an experience he did not survive. At age 4, George had told himself that it was because he was "a bad boy" that his father had left that day, early in the morning, without saying goodbye. He believes that he never recovered from that early loss. [continues 2009 words]
Decades after Canada abandoned the field, the B.C. Centre on Substance Use is investigating the benefits of drugs like MDMA and psilocybin In 2011, Gerald Thomas was invited to an Indigenous community in a remote area of British Columbia. Working for the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., he was one of a small team of scientists who observed 12 people take ayahuasca, an Amazonian mixture that induces vivid visual and auditory hallucinations as well as deep emotional and intellectual reflection. [continues 2903 words]
Metric tonne found after force tipped off The cocaine was hidden inside hollowed-out quartzite stones packed onto shipping containers coming from Argentina - the drugs were concealed so well that even police dogs couldn't detect them. It was a tip from the public that ultimately led to the largest drug seizure in the Ontario Provincial Police's history as the force carried out an investigation into an international cocaine-smuggling ring with ties to Mexican cartels. Altogether the force seized 1,062 kilograms of cocaine during a months-long investigation that culminated in July, according to OPP deputy commissioner Rick Barnum. [continues 394 words]
WASHINGTON - The Drug Enforcement Administration misled the public, Congress and the Justice Department about a 2012 operation in which commando-style squads of American agents sent to Honduras to disrupt drug smuggling became involved in three deadly shootings, two inspectors general said Wednesday. The D.E.A. said in response that it had shut down the program, the Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team. Under the program, known as FAST, squads received military-style training to combat Taliban-linked opium traffickers in the Afghanistan war zone. It was expanded to Latin America in 2008 to help fight transnational drug smugglers, leading to the series of violent encounters in Honduras in 2012. [continues 1060 words]
For years the government's "war on drugs" focused on stopping the production of illegal drugs in countries like Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and Afghanistan. While that effort was pretty much a failure, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, the tobacco industry and the alcohol industry were producing record numbers of their products at home. As a result, more Americans now die from tobacco, alcohol and prescription drugs than all illegal drugs combined. There is no doubt that drug companies and physicians share responsibility for the current opiate and heroin epidemic. The primary cause of the current drug epidemic is the overprescribing of prescription pain medications by physicians, who get very little training regarding the disease of addiction but are often the salespeople for new medications. [continues 221 words]
Government No Longer Conducting Aerial Eradication Efforts With Glyphosate ESPINAL, Colombia (AP) - Explosives experts wearing heavy body armor light a fuse and take cover behind a concrete-reinforced trench. "Fire in the area!" a commando shouts before a deafening blast ricochets across the Andean foothills and sends a plume of brown smoke 100 feet high. Such drills have intensified for Colombia's military, one of the most battle-tested in the world, as it tries to control skyrocketing cocaine production that has fueled a half-century of war with leftist guerrillas. [continues 522 words]
Shift to Legalization Big Change in Area That Includes Big Producers of Marijuana, Opium MEXICO CITY - With a swipe of his pen last week, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto proposed that Mexican citizens could legally possess up to an ounce of pot. The day before, Canada's health minister stood at a United Nations podium and said her country would introduce new federal legislation to make cannabis legal by next year. Already, people are free to smoke marijuana in four U.S. states, including Washington, and the District of Columbia, and medical marijuana is allowed in almost half the country. Uruguay has fully legalized weed for sale. And a large chunk of South and Central America, including Brazil, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica, has made marijuana more available in varying ways, whether it is for medicinal or recreational use. [continues 763 words]
MEXICO CITY - With a swipe of his pen last week, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto proposed that Mexican citizens could legally possess up to an ounce of marijuana. The day before, Canada's health minister stood at a United Nations podium and announced that her country would introduce new federal legislation to make cannabis legal by next year. Already, people are free to smoke marijuana in four US states and the District of Columbia, and medical marijuana is allowed in almost half the country. Uruguay has fully legalized weed for sale. And a large chunk of South and Central America, including Brazil, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica, has made marijuana more available in varying ways, whether it is for medicinal or recreational use. [continues 324 words]
Mexico City - With a swipe of his pent his week, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto proposed that Mexican citizens could legally possess up to an ounce of pot. The day before, Canada's health minister stood on a United Nations podium and announced that her country would introduce new federal legislation to make cannabis legal by next year. Already, people are free to smoke marijuana in four U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and medical marijuana is allowed in almost half the country. Uruguay has fully legalized weed for sale. And a large chunk of South and Central America, including Brazil, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica, has made marijuana more available in varying ways, whether it is for medicinal or recreational use. [continues 1046 words]
Experts Urge Reversal of Policies That Have Driven Violence and Deaths An international commission of medical experts is calling for global drug decriminalisation, arguing that current policies lead to violence, deaths and the spread of disease, harming health and human rights. The commission, set up by the Lancet medical journal and Johns Hopkins University in the US, finds that tough drugs laws have caused misery, failed to curb drug use, fuelled violent crime and spread the epidemics of HIV and hepatitis C through unsafe injecting. Publishing its report on the eve of a special session of the United Nations devoted to illegal narcotics, it urges a reversal of the repressive policies imposed by most governments. [continues 709 words]
WASHINGTON - In what law enforcement officials describe as a new front in international smuggling, global traffickers and cartels are increasingly turning to a new source for couriers to smuggle drugs across international borders: vulnerable American older adults. The traffickers deceive seniors with promises of prizes or relationships, setting them up to unknowingly try to carry luggage filled with cocaine or other items through customs, hoping they will not arouse suspicions. Such cases have been seen in nearly a dozen foreign countries, officials say. Details of the smuggling and a counteroperation that officials called Operation Cocoon were disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security during a hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. [continues 515 words]
Roberto Saviano is determined to uncover capitalism's complicity with the narcolords of South America, writes Ed Vulliamy Pablo Escobar was "the first to understand that it's not the world of cocaine that must orbit around the markets, but the markets that must rotate around cocaine". Of course, Escobar didn't put it that way: this heretical truth was posited by Roberto Saviano in his latest book Zero Zero Zero , the most important of the year and the most cogent ever written on how narco-traffic works. It speaks what must be told at the end of another year of drug war spreading further and deeper, that tells what you will not learn from Narcos , Breaking Bad or the countless official reports. [continues 1225 words]
As a Western-trained doctor, I have long been aware of modern medicine's limitations in handling chronic conditions of mind and body. For all our achievements, there are ailments whose ravages we physicians can at best alleviate. In our narrow pursuit of cure, we fail to comprehend the essence of healing. Thus the popularity of ayahuasca, the Amazonian plant medicine that many Westerners seek out for the healing of physical illness or mental anguish or for a sense of meaning amid the growing alienation in our culture. [continues 464 words]
Fight Breaks Out After Pair Who Were 'Like Brothers' Reportedly Took Psychedelic Drug Ayahuasca A spiritual retreat in Peru turned deadly when a 29-year-old Canadian allegedly stabbed a British man after the pair took a hallucinogenic brew. Local police allege Canadian Joshua Andrew Freeman Stevens killed Unais Gomes, 26, after Gomes attacked him with a knife Wednesday night. The incident occurred during a retreat near the city of Iquitos in the Peruvian jungle where the pair - who were reportedly "like brothers" - both ingested ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic drug also known as "the vine of the soul." [continues 615 words]
Despite U.S. Efforts to Cut Off the Drug at the Source, Colombia Is Again the World's Top Coca Producer Tierradentro, Colombia - Illegal coca cultivation is surging in Colombia, erasing one of the showcase achievements of U.S. counternarcotics policy and threatening to send a burst of cheap cocaine through the smuggling pipeline to the United States. Just two years after it ceased to be the world's largest producer, falling behind Peru, Colombia now grows more illegal coca than Peru and third-place Bolivia combined. In 2014, the last year for which statistics are available, Colombians planted 44 percent more coca than in 2013, and U.S. drug agents say this year's crop is probably even larger. [continues 1487 words]
Anti-Drug Money Blocked Over Human Rights Concerns MEXICO CITY - In a setback for its multibillion-dollar effort to help Mexico fight its drug war, the State Department has decided that Mexico failed to reach some human rights goals, triggering a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid. The move, which has not been reported previously, affects a small portion of the annual anti-drug funds given to Mexico. But it is a clear sign of U.S. frustration. It comes as Mexico has been roiled by several cases of alleged abuses by security forces, including the disappearance of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero last year. [continues 1018 words]
Loss of $5 Million for Drug War Move Comes Amid Numerous Abuse Cases MEXICO CITY - In a setback for its multibillion-dollar effort to help Mexico fight its drug war, the U.S. State Department has decided that Mexico failed to reach some human rights goals, triggering a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid. The move, which has not been reported previously, affects a small portion of the annual antidrug funds given to Mexico. But it is a clear sign of U.S. frustration. It comes as Mexico has been roiled by several cases of alleged abuses by security forces, including the disappearance of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero last year. [continues 1047 words]
How many wars can we fight? Our presidential candidates demand "stronger action" against both illegal immigration and illegal drugs. But those goals conflict. The War on Drugs makes border enforcement much harder! America's 44-year-long Drug War hasn't made a dent in American drug use or the supply of illegal drugs. If it had some positive effect, prices of drugs would have increased, but they haven't. American authorities say drugs are more available than ever. Drug prohibition, like alcohol prohibition, creates fat profits that invite law-breaking. [continues 437 words]
How many wars can we fight? Our presidential candidates demand "stronger action" against both illegal immigration and illegal drugs. But those goals conflict. The War on Drugs makes border enforcement much harder! America's 44-year-long Drug War hasn't made a dent in American drug use or the supply of illegal drugs. If it had some positive effect, prices of drugs would have increased, but they haven't. American authorities say drugs are more available than ever. Drug prohibition, like alcohol prohibition, creates fat profits that invite law-breaking. [continues 621 words]
Activists Plan 'Mushroom Day' In Support of Psychedelic Drugs The first and, thus far, only time I did magic mushrooms, I did not have any epiphanies about my life, my spiritual existence or the universe as a whole. I did, however, develop a fascination with the carpet and wallpaper of the Amsterdam cafe where I was sitting. And eight years later, I can vividly recall the feeling of pure joy that lasted throughout the night, with its soundtrack of early Jimi Hendrix. [continues 1058 words]
