Dr. Psilo pointed out that it is officially time to start freaking out. You can run, you can try to fit in, but you can no longer hide.

Later this year, Philips will introduce a handheld electronic device that uses magnetic nanoparticles to screen for five major recreational drugs.

The device is intended for roadside use by law enforcement agencies and includes a disposable plastic cartridge and a handheld analyzer. The cartridge has two components: a sample collector for gathering saliva and a measurement chamber containing magnetic nanoparticles. The particles are coated with ligands that bind to one of five different drug groups: cocaine, heroin, cannabis, amphetamine, and methamphetamine...

Once the device's sample collector has absorbed enough saliva, it automatically changes color and can then be snapped into the measurement chamber, where the saliva and nanoparticles mix. An electromagnet speeds the nanoparticles to the sensor surface, different portions of which have been pretreated with one of the five target-drug molecules. If traces of any of the five drugs are present in the sample, the nanoparticles will bind to them. If the sample is drug free, the nanoparticles will bind to the drug-coated sensor surface instead...

During the analysis phase, a beam of light is bounced off the sensor. Any nanoparticles bound to the surface will change its refractive index, thereby altering the intensity of the reflected light and indicating the concentration of drugs in the sample. By immobilizing different drug molecules on different portions on the sensor surface, the analyzer is able to identify the drug traces in question. An electronic screen displays instructions and a simple color-coded readout of the results.

The test takes less than 90 seconds and can detect drugs at concentrations measured in parts-per-billion using a single microliter of saliva. The sensor is capable of even greater sensitivity--it has been used to detect cardiac troponin, a commonly used indicator of heart attack, at concentrations 1,000 times lower.

Teppy tipped us to this story of an Australian man busted for having a very large amount of marijuana and a very unusual excuse.

A CHILLAGOE man busted with 26,000 cannabis seeds and 285 plants had intended to brew up a batch of marijuana wine using a recipe he found on the internet, a court has heard.

Raymond Keith Crosthwaite, 64, who pleaded guilty in Cairns Supreme Court on Wednesday to producing and possessing a dangerous drug, had wanted to turn the drug into wine to relieve his back pain because he thought it would be better than smoking it...

Defence barrister Josh Trevino said the marijuana wine, made of cannabis, yeast, sugar, honey, lemons and oranges, called for about 250g of cannabis per batch.

Okay, so now we have to have a contest. Post your favorite marijuana wine recipe or a link to an internet marijuana wine recipe. One link per post or you'll get shut down.

Not that we particularly need gruesome reminders of how bad drug addictions can get, but I found this NYTimes article on the rise of "paco" to be a good reminder. "Paco" might ordinarily simply refer to "cocaine paste," at least according to Wikipedia, but in this case, the "paco" in question is a far deadlier concoction on the rise among the poorest neighborhoods in Buenos Aires:

For more than five years Mr. Eche has been a slave to paco, a smokable drug made from bits of cocaine residue mixed with industrial solvents and kerosene or rat poison. Labeled “the scourge of the poor” by politicians, the drug has become the greatest social challenge facing shantytowns like Oculta....

Paco began arriving in 2003 as a cheaper alternative to snortable cocaine once Argentina became a destination for the final processing of cocaine flowing in from Bolivia and Peru. The growing supplies of leftover cocaine residue made creating paco fast and cheap. It sells on the street for as little as $1.30 a dose....

Paco averages only 10 percent cocaine, with the rest being highly toxic substances, the judge said. “Doctors we have consulted say nerve cells and brain cells start dying soon after consumption begins,” he said.

Paco also wreaks havoc on the appetites of users, who literally die from not eating, Judge Torres said. The drug is so new there is no clear treatment protocol to break the addiction, he said.

The police have hid little luck stopping its spread, despite a round of recent raids targeting the low level mom-and-pop dealers who are much more often responsible for creating supply than organized operations. As long as conditions remain this ripe, law enforcement seems futile:

Beyond the police raids, Mrs. Acuna said, politicians need to get to the root of what is causing paco’s spread. Oculta’s residents are starving for jobs with decent salaries to help break the cycle of hopelessness that is creating whole families of paco addicts and dealers, she said.

She and her husband said they hoped to find the money to turn the upper floor of their diner into an integrated drug-prevention center employing psychologists and professional counselors.

Ultimately, only Oculta can save itself, Mrs. Acuna said.

“This is really up to us.”

I suppose it was inevitable that someone would eventually create an iPhone app that would help you locate medical marijuana dispensaries in California. A group called Cannabis Apps is "a software development and digital activist team focused on cultivating the most sticky, tasty, and potently useful iPhone applications for the cannabis industry and movement." Here's a preview:

I don't have an iPhone, or a medical marijuana prescription, or a home in California, so I will leave it to others to review the merit of this app. The trailer uses some slamming music, though.

A flash of brilliance. Something to enliven any office wall and improve, uh, "productivity".

More clinical evidence that marijuana is an anti-cancer plant. Of course none of the mainstream media will care, I wonder why. I think it's time people open their eyes to the most useful plant on earth.

For some 35 years the United States federal government has been well aware that cannabis possesses potent anti-cancer and anti-tumor properties. And for the past three years, government-funded researchers have speculated that these qualities may offer “protective” effects against the onset of various types of cancer in humans, including lung cancer.

Yet to date, virtually no investigators have taken the time to assess marijuana’s potential anti-cancer effects in humans — until now.

In a clinical abstract just published online on the Cancer Prevention Research website, a team of U.S. investigators report that marijuana use, even long-term, is associated with a “significantly reduced risk” of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

---

A Population-Based Case-Control Study of Marijuana Use and Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Cannabinoids, constituents of marijuana smoke, have been recognized to have potential anti-tumor properties. However, the epidemiologic evidence addressing the relationship between marijuana use and the induction of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is inconsistent and conflicting. Cases (n = 434) were patients with incident HNSCC disease from nine medical facilities in the Greater Boston, MA area between December 1999 and December 2003. Controls (n = 547) were frequency matched to cases on age (+/-3 years), gender, and town of residence, randomly selected from Massachusetts town books.

...After adjusting for potential confounders (including smoking and alcohol drinking), 10 to 20 years of marijuana use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of HNSCC [odds ratio (OR)(10-<20 years versus never users), 0.38; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.22-0.67]. Among marijuana users moderate weekly use was associated with reduced risk (OR(0.5-<1.5 times versus <0.5 time), 0.52; 95% CI, 0.32-0.85). The magnitude of reduced risk was more pronounced for those who started use at an older age (OR(15-<20 years versus never users), 0.53; 95% CI, 0.30-0.95; OR(>/=20 years versus never users), 0.39; 95% CI, 0.17-0.90; P(trend) < 0.001).

Our study suggests that moderate marijuana use is associated with reduced risk of HNSCC.

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. What possible advancements in the treatment of cancer could have been achieved over the past 35 years had U.S. government officials, or for that matter members of the mainstream media, chosen to advance — rather than to suppress — clinical research into the anti-cancer effects of cannabis? It’s a shame we have to speculate; it’s even more tragic that tens of thousands of families must needlessly suffer while we do.

Here's an interesting story on the latest LSD research from team Nichols. Charles Nichols, son of Dave Nichols (Heffter Research), was awarded a grant to study possible genetic links to schizophrenia, using LSD.

Charles Nichols is hardly a counterculture figure, but he spends lots of time around LSD. And, helped along by his father, he favors giving steady doses of the drug -- made famous during the '60s -- to a bizarre mix of creatures: rats and fruit flies.

And it's all in the pursuit of knowledge and sanity.

An assistant professor of pharmacology at LSU Health Sciences Center, Nichols wants to use evidence gathered in applying hallucinogens to rodents, and then flies, to break new ground in understanding mental disorders in humans. And his work has caught the attention of a key federal grant source.

Nichols has been awarded a $1.4 million grant to isolate novel genes involved in schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis by treating rats and fruit flies with the powerful hallucinogenic LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide.

"I'm the only person combining the flies with rats," Nichols said. "What I'm doing is using new models to look at schizophrenia and look at genes to see what is going wrong. Most models look (only) at rats, so what I'm trying to do is use fruit flies for a more efficient model of a neurochemistry that goes on in the brain."

Nichols' colleague and father, David Nichols, a professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Purdue University, for decades has been studying hallucinogens and serotonin, an organic compound that influences mood changes. He will conduct the first set of experiments in the new study at his lab in Indiana.

Check this out: Erik Davis is now hosting a radio show on the Progressive Radio Network called Expanding Mind, and podcasts are available for the first three shows as of this posting. Two of these shows would be of direct interest to DoseNation readers, but I would expect pretty much all of these programs to have a broader appeal as the series continues. Here are the most recent two:

07/30/09 - Interview with J. P. Haripignies, the author of Delusions of Normality: Sanity, Drugs, Sex, Money and Beliefs in America. We will talk about how much more kinky, crazy, and mystically inclined we are than we think we are.

07/23/09 - This week's guest on Expanding Mind will be Mike Jay, a British historian of drugs and medicine, talking about his new book The Atmosphere of Heaven, which relates the fascinating, politically- charged story of the discovery of nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas.

Meanwhile, over on Erik's Techgnosis site, he has a review of Jay's book that might pique your interest a little further:

The Atmosphere of Heaven, Mike Jay’s latest book of hard-as-nails history of consciousness, tells the curious story of the Pneumatic Institution, a somewhat heretical outpost of British medical exploration where chemistry, poetry, and Jacobin politics crossed. Researchers at the Institution, founded at the close of the eighteenth century by the clearly excellent Thomas Beddoes, had the good fortune and cleverness to discover, at the turn of the nineteenth century, the giddy metaphysical glee of sucking down bags of nitrous oxide. Jay enlivens his story with well-drawn characters—including Samuel Coleridge, the brilliant Humphry Davy, and the very fat and lovable Dr. Beddoes—while the economic, political, and philosophical turbulence of the time is almost too vividly invoked. Indeed, though Jay’s exacting assessment of the era’s struggles with tyranny, recession, war, and the deflation of liberty curtail some of the book's escapist potential, these contemporary shudders are somewhat compensated by the modestly comforting realization that, at least as far as modernity goes, it was ever thus.

The Shulgin Project's got a nine minute trailer to whet your appetite for the full documentary:

[Via The Teleomorph.]

Here's the (depressing but tight) trailer for a new anti-prohibition DVD called The Union: The Business Behind Getting High:

I haven't seen it, but Drug WarRant watched the whole thing and commented:

It is the most comprehensive documentary review of cannabis policy, politics, history, myths, science, and.. humanity that I've seen. It's compelling (and yes, a little overwhelming -- you almost need to take a break during it to absorb everything).

It takes you briefly through the history of criminalization, debunks every bit of reefer madness nonsense from the suffocated monkeys' lost brain cells to Walters' marijuana treatment stats, explores the Chong and Emery cases, takes you into grow-ops and the business of black market cannabis, talks with the scientists and economists and doctors and patients and hemp activists and members of LEAP. It also vividly demonstrates the absolute lack of integrity of so many who promote continued criminalization, including Presidents of the United States.