Smoking marijuana does help relieve a certain amount of pain, a small but well-designed Canadian study has found.

People who suffer chronic neuropathic or nerve pain from damage or dysfunction of the nervous system have few treatment options with varying degrees of effectiveness and side-effects.

Neuropathic pain is caused by damage to nerves that don't repair, which can make the skin sensitive to a light touch.

Cannabis pills have been shown to help treat some types of pain but the effects and risks from smoked cannabis were unclear.

To find out more, Dr. Mark Ware, an assistant professor in family medicine and anesthesia at Montreal's McGill University, and his colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial -- the gold standard of medical research -- of inhaled cannabis in 21 adults with chronic neuropathic pain.

Investigators used three different strengths of the active drug -- THC levels of 2.5 per cent, six per cent and 9.4 per cent, as well as a zero per cent placebo.

"We found that 25 mg herbal cannabis with 9.4 per cent THC, administered as a single smoked inhalation three times daily for five days, significantly reduces average pain intensity compared with a zero per cent THC cannabis placebo in adult subjects with chronic post traumatic/post surgical neuropathic pain," the study's authors concluded in Monday's online issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

[Thanks Jim!]

[Thanks Jim!]

Today marks the beginning of the Burning Man Festival in the wastelands of Nevada. Thousands of people will pour out into the desert, abandoning day jobs, relationships and social norms to dance around in one hundred degree heat wearing capes and glitter. For anyone unfamiliar with Burning Man, it's a weeklong event dedicated to self-expression, community reliance and sexual contact under the guise of spirituality. I know this because I went last year for the first and last time. I went seeking a utopian enclave of open-minded and accepting brothers and sisters, I followed rumors of a culture rising from the desert clay and supporting itself for seven days on nothing but love, understanding, and a little pharmaceutically induced introspection. Instead I found misguided, fat men in tie-died t-shirts with exposed genitals caked in dust. Suffice it to say, Burning Man let me down.

[Thanks Sam Hell!]

Distorted perceptions and an altered state of mind: two reasons why psychedelics have always attracted not only fascination, but also controversy for decades. A recent Perspective in Nature Reviews Neuroscience entitled "The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders", by Franz Vollenweider & Michael Kometer explores why there is a renewed interest in the clinical potential of psychedelics for treating mental disorders, after nearly a 40 year gap in clinical experimentation. Anticipating a significant interest in this topic, Nature Publishing Group has made this manuscript freely accessible for 1 month. In addition, we offer a four-part series of essays by some of the best neuroscience bloggers to help you explore the literature and discuss the most important aspects:

1.) The secret history of psychedelic psychiatry by Moheb Costandi
2.) Serotonin, Psychedelics and Depression by Neuroskeptic
3.) Ketamine for Depression: Yea or Neigh? by The Neurocritic
4.) Visions of a psychedelic future by Vaughan Bell

[Thanks Mo!]

The victims have died after falling into rocky crevasses and gorges or from similar physical mishaps, rather than from inadvertently eating poisonous fungi.

Authorities said an early and bountiful mushroom harvest in the Alpine valleys of northern Italy had attracted more people than usual to scour the woods and forests in search of succulent funghi to bring to the dinner table.

Many of them were unfit and ill-equipped, venturing into remote areas without proper footwear or rainproof clothing, and without checking weather forecasts.

Collecting wild mushrooms as autumn approaches is an extremely popular pastime in Italy.

[Thanks Dropper!]

Experiential journalist Rak Razam is interviewed by anthropologist Robin Rodd from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, on all things ayahuasca, Down Under. What are the cultural uses of ayahuasca in Australia and how does it relate to other entheo cultures in South America and elsewhere in the world? Without an unbroken shamanic lineage, Aussiehuasqueros have had to stitch their shamanic practice from multiple sources, sometimes united in a cultural synergy for group shamanizing. The hybridization of not just ayahuasca, but of Amazonian shamanism itself is potent in the Australian counterculture as it births a new hybrid modality suited to the conditions on the land. But what of the cultural archetypes, do they remain the same? How do Australian aboriginal spirits and energies affect the mix? Is there something activating in the vibrational frequency of the Australian Land itself, its songlines and energetic grid, and how does all of this tie into other indigenous prophecies of these changing times? A personal exposition from Razam on his own journey and collective journey in the culture...

The social news site Reddit staged a mini-rebellion Friday, deciding to run ads for a pro-marijuana legalization campaign for free after Conde Nast executives ruled against taking payment for the ads.

The ads from the Just Say Now group support passage of California’s Proposition 19, which would largely legalize the use of marijuana. After inquiries from the group, Conde Nast executives ruled against running the ads on the user-driven Reddit, a tiny unit of the Conde Nast publishing concern (which also owns Wired and Wired.com). Conde Nast is best known as the publisher of magazines such as the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Vogue.

Facebook has famously banned pro-pot advertisements from its service.

[Thanks Seth!]

Recently, there have been a few nasty developments in the world of legal highs. I was contacted by this week by GMTV and Radio 5 Live, asking for an interview about the 'new' legal high Ivory Wave causing a stir. Unfortunately, I couldn't give any interviews for various boring reasons and could only give a bit of advice over the phone/email, so I thought I'd write a post about it now I've got the time. Also, The UK's old friend JWH-018 seems to be causing some trouble over the pond, having been linked a couple of deaths in Indiana. Finally, our government have made some more noise about the 'problem' of legal highs which makes no difference for a good year or so and will only make matters worse when they manage to cobble some new legislation together eventually.

The latest buzz out of the automotive world is from Calgary's Motive Industries, which announced it would introduce an electric car whose bio-composite body is made from hemp.
Oh my -- looks like some engineers out there are taking a note from
Cheech and Chong:

The prototype of the four-passenger, zero-emission vehicle, known as the Kestrel, is to be unveiled at an electric mobility trade show in Vancouver in September and would be the first of its kind in Canada, the company said.

Its body is built from hemp grown in Vegreville, Alta., outside Edmonton, and processed into an impact-resistant bio-composite material produced by the Alberta Innovates Technology Futures program, the company said.

No tailgating.

[Thanks Joshua!]

This morning, employees of Amsterdam's de Dampkring ("the Smoke Ring") coffee-shop franchise have convened at the unbohemian hour of 9 a.m. for a daylong refresher course on the finer points of effective and responsible weed salesmanship. Not long from now, I'm scheduled to spend a week behind the hash bar at one of de Dampkring's two local branches, but what I know about the art of marijuana retail--not to mention Holland's perverse and hazy drug statutes--wouldn't fill a golf-ball dimple. So at the request of the shops' rightly nervous manager, I've crossed the pond early to undergo a spot of preprofessional cramming.

The seminar is taking place on the second floor of the Dampkring's forward-looking modern branch, whose decor tends toward diamond plate and brushed steel, in deliberate disdain, the owner tells me, for the hippy-shit aesthetics, smoke-browned Hendrix posters, and Jamaican tricolor of the last-gen Amsterdam dope joint. Despite the ineradicable skunk's-tail perfume leaching from the Sheetrock, the shop this morning is a pretty faithful imitation of a high school classroom--from the distracted bespectacled lecturer (a representative from a nonprofit drug-counseling agency) futzing with the overhead projector to the two icily pretty cheerleader types giggling in malicious-sounding Dutch while stocking their desktops with schoolgirl tackle (moisturizer, makeup, chocolates, tissue packets) to the rearmost dunce row, where I've been quarantined with my translator, who told me to call him Harry Resin. A merry Canadian in his midthirties who has lived in Amsterdam for the past decade or so, Harry was drafted into translation detail by Dampkring management and is not delighted about it. "I haven't been up this early in years," he says.

[Thanks Sam!]