Weird local news story: 'mystical drug' scourge!

There are actually so many weird things about this article, it's hard to know where to start. Let's just go from the beginning, shall we?

DRUG users will move from ecstasy towards hallucinogenic drugs in search of "spiritual enlightenment", Adelaide drug researcher David Caldicott says.

I wasn't sure what qualifies David Caldicott as an expert on this topic, and this article doesn't bother to clarify. Fortunately, Wikipedia seems to have an answer:

Dr. David Caldicott is a research fellow of the Emergency & Trauma Department of the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Adelaide, South Australia. He is the convenor of the OzTox Collaboration, an independent multidisciplinary, hospital-based research group committed to a harm minimisation approach to illicit drug use. He has been an outspoken critic of politicians supporting 'zero-tolerance' and prohibitionist drugs policy, questioning the evidence of their efficacy in preventing morbidity and mortality from illicit substances. He believes that drugs policy should not be guided by moral values, but by interventions known to have an effect on users behaviour. He has advocated a pill testing program in South Australia, as recommended by the 2002 Drugs Summit, but has yet to be granted a license by State Government.

Whew! Okay, sounds reasonable. But let's start digging into the rest of the article:

Dr Caldicott said people use drugs for specific "self-medicating" reasons and those reasons are changing.

He said while more research into shifting drug trends needed to be done, Australian users tended to follow European trends.

In Europe, they are turning off "pills" and tuning in to more "mystical" highs, he said.

People use such "hug drugs" as ecstasy – known as entactogenic drugs – to get a feeling of love and intimacy with others, he said.

Now, more people are looking for a spiritual or religious experience and are turning to such hallucinogenic drugs as LSD or others derived from plants – cacti and mushrooms – which are known as entheogenic drugs.

I would love to believe this is true, but the article doesn't bother to quote a single piece of actual research that backs this up. I certainly haven't come across any clear research that suggests the entirety of Europe is getting tired of Ecstasy; indeed, judging by the sheer volume of Ecstasy busts worldwide on a regular basis, I would say demand is as high as ever. Of course, it's always nice to see a local news article going to the trouble of educating the populace about the terms "entactogenic" and "entheogenic," but this seems like wishful thinking, especially in light of a different local news story I also just ran across which indicates, uh, Australians still like Ecstasy:

A Queensland researcher says ecstasy has become the second most popular illicit drug after cannabis over the past decade.

Greg Fowler from the Queensland Alcohol and Drug Research and Education Centre has outlined new research at a national conference on the Gold Coast in south-east Queensland.

Mr Fowler says more than 500,000 Australians use ecstasy each year.

However, let's not let facts get in the way of David Caldicott's treatise, which continues:

"Young people are looking for reason, for insight," Dr Caldicott said. "One of the things that defines generations X and Y is a lack of belief in organised or formal religion and there is a large section of the drug community looking for spiritual enlightenment.

"Entheogenic drugs are compounds, frequently biological, that create or mimic the spiritual experience."

He said many of these drugs are plants, which will create an "interesting problem" for law enforcement. Entactogenic drugs include ecstasy MDA, MDE and 2CB.

Entheogenic drugs include datura, "magic" mushrooms (psilocybin), salvia divinorum, some cacti and many other plants that various cultures have put to religious or shamanic uses.

So what "interesting problem" for law enforcement do plants actually pose? Or is David Caldicott, drugs researcher, forgetting how law enforcement deals with the "interesting problem" of marijuana (hint: by locking people up)? Secondly, what does "frequently biological" mean in reference to entheogenic compounds? Thirdly, entheogenic drugs "include datura" since fucking when? Fourthly, if people in Australia can still reliably get MDE, can someone buy me a plane ticket there?

Leave it to local law enforcement to be the voice of reason in this article:

While seizures of LSD have been up slightly, Detective Inspector Craig Patterson said police had not noticed a trend towards entheogenic drugs in SA.

"Not that we've picked up," he said. "It may be more on a national scale but we have actually noticed ecstasy seizures are up slightly".

One last weird thing about this article: it was originally published with the headline "New drug scourge to hit," and the opening line referred to "psychedelic drugs." However, several hours later the headline was amended to read "Mystical drugs to hit Adelaide" and then the opening line was amended to refer to "hallucinogenic drugs." I'm so confused! Doesn't the term "psychedelic" more closely correlate to "mystical"? Who edits this stuff? Who thought this was a reasonable story anyway without a single shred of actual data to back up David Caldicott's benign musings about drug trends? And most importantly, is it really true that they've got MDE down under? (I'm sorry, do I seem fixated?)