There is a growing suspicion that the drug (cocaine) may be at least partially responsible for the perceived increase in the number of people in their 30s suffering heart problems. According to US Drug Abuse Warning System, "cocaine/ethanol abuse is a major cause of emergency medical admissions" and "the cause of increases in cocaine-related mortality".

Steven Cox, deputy head of the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young, said around 12 fit young people are recorded as dying each week in the UK from a cardiac-related illness, compared with about four a week in 1995.

But Cox said this increase might be down to a better analysis of postmortem data, which has raised awareness of cardiac-related illnesses, rather than any external factor.

However, he said that an estimated one in 300 people who have been tested by the charity is found to have an underlying heart condition. "We do know that if you have an underlying cardiac condition certain drugs can trigger an effect," Cox said. But until someone proves the link, it seems unlikely that the trend for people to mix alcohol and cocaine will show any sign of abating.

Cocaine is a central commodity of the neoliberal age; so, too, its re-processed form (“crack”) for the desperately poor in de-industrialized cities of the North and South Atlantic. First announced by Richard Nixon in 1971, the “War on Drugs” predates the rise of cocaine and crack by nearly a decade, but in the 1980s and 90s the “War on Drugs” was redoubled in response to the explosion of the cocaine business. It now ranks as the U.S.’s longest-running military-police campaign. Thus if we look at cocaine as a social hieroglyph—not as a thing, but as a complex relation between networks and organizations of people, as well as between states and bureaucracies—we may glimpse some of the distinguishing features of the contemporary world.

A semi-review of The Candy Machine (which sounds well worth a read), this is one of the most insightful policy articles I've come across.

Britain has become the online "designer drugs" capital of Europe with more than a third of all internet retailers that sell "legal highs" based in the UK, according to a report from the European Union's drug agency.

This new generation of online "head shops" is at the centre of a rapidly growing market in highly potent synthetic drugs, such as Spice, that mimic the effects of illegal substances such as cannabis and ecstasy.

European drug agency officials are also alarmed by the way the online retailers are reacting to moves to ban individual "legal highs" by rapidly marketing alternatives. Officials say it is like trying to hit a moving target.

Britain is poised to ban Spice, a cannabis substitute that can be more potent than skunk, which is sold as a "herbal smoking mixture" , but already the online head shops are selling 27 alternative "herbal smoking blends" based on the active ingredient in cannabis synthesised by chemists in Asia.

Wolfgang Gotz, the director of the European monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction, said the use of the legal highs market to circumvent controls on illicit drugs was the most challenging development over the past year.

"While this practice itself is not new, what is new is the wide range of substances now on offer, the growing use of the internet, the aggressive and sophisticated marketing of products and the very speed with which the market reacts to controls."

Dropping acid to boost the Pentagon’s psychic powers was just the start. The Men Who Stare At Goats, the upcoming movie based on Jon Ronson’s non-fiction book of the same name, has George Clooney and Jeff Bridges in a bizarre military research project involving astral projection, remote viewing, and LSD. But for the real dope on the Army’s narcotics and psychedelics tests, you have to turn to Dr. James S. Ketchum, who wrote a firsthand account of the military’s trials with these “incapacitating chemical agents.”...

But Ketchum’s report shows that the Army’s operation was a model of scientific experimentation compared to the CIA’s. In 1953, the Agency attempted to purchase ten kilograms of LSD, supposedly for testing purposes. This was enough for over a hundred million doses. They were informed that the total amount manufactured was only ten grams.

However, on a Monday morning, a rather curious incident occurred. Ketchum found that his office had acquired a new piece of furniture, a steel barrel like an oil drum in one corner of the room. At first he ignored it, but eventually curiosity got the better of him, and one evening when he was along Ketchum undid the fastenings. The barrel was packed with jars:

Neatly labeled, tightly sealed glass canisters, looking like cookie jars, filled the entire drum. I cautiously took one out and examined it. According to the label, it contained approximately three pounds of pure EA 1729 (LSD).

Ketchum estimated that the barrel contained at thirty to forty pounds of the drug, a few hundred million doses and with a street value of something like a billion dollars. The sort of amount the CIA had been after.

Ketchum was not given any explanation for the giant stash, and on the Friday morning it had disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived. It seemed like something out of fiction, and Ketchum got as far as starting a novel with the billion-dollar-barrel in the opening scene before giving up. But the barrel stuck in his mind, a disturbing presence which he likens to the black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey

“The similarity struck me as quite spooky, and remains somewhat spooky as I think about it today.”

Sen. Charles Grassley, author of the censorship amendment to the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, was asked about his anti-speech tendencies by a reporter on a conference call today. The full transcript is below, but here's the most interesting part of what Sen. Grassley said: "[T]he point is, for them to do what we tell them to do. And one of the things that I was anticipating telling them not to do is to -- to recommend or study the legalization of drugs."

Also of note,the reporter then follows up to ask if his amendment would also ban discussion of medical marijuana by the commission, and the senator says "yes."

The best part just might be where Sen. Grassley tells the reporter that, "you want everything on the table." Yeah, except for sensible policy options like legalization, right?

See, I kind of prefer it when the people attempting to run the country just stop pretending that they have any interest in democracy and just get down to admitting that they want to shut these fucking plebeians up already. It's that real sense of honesty that I appreciate.

"Combating narcotics smugglers is akin to a high-stakes chess match, and protecting our nation's citizens is the prize," said Allan Martocci, CBP Port Director for the Area Port of Philadelphia.

OH MY FREAKING GOD THAT IS GOOD!

In other news:

A U.S. warship has seized about four tons of hashish being transported aboard a boat off the Horn of Africa.... The Navy says the seizure occurred October 15, while the Anzio was leading a multinational anti-pirate task force in the region. It says the drugs have a street value of $28 million, and could have helped fund insurgents in Afghanistan.

If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion to the "CBP Port Director for the Area Port of Philadelphia," I might suggest that you SUCK ON AWESOME UNITED STATES NAVY HAWTNESS when it comes to protecting our nation's citizens, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Sincerely,
Scotto

Voters in the ski resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado legalized marijuana and marijuana paraphernalia by a nearly three-to-one margin on Tuesday.

It is the first municipality in the United States to allow paraphernalia, such as pipes, bongs and bubblers.

"[The measure] passed 73 percent to 27 percent," ABC 7 News in Denver reported.

Take that, people who... uh... don't like bubblers!

(Thanks for the tip, John.)

"The next morning I went to look over all the code I thought I had written while high..." Boy there's something I'm sure we all can sympathize with!