ABC Radio National's Bush Telegraph has a special programme on a psychoactive plant called kava that has been used ceremonially by Pacific Islanders for generations and has recently been researched as a treatment for depression and anxiety...

The programme explores the history and traditional preparation of this tranquillising plant as well as discussing recent scientific research on its use as a psychiatric treatment.

This is particularly in light of a recent study by psychiatrist Jerome Sarris and colleagues where it performed remarkably well as both an anti-anxiety and anxidepressant drug.

In the interview, Sarris describes how kava affects the brain as well as suggesting that its ban in many countries, based on concerns about liver damage, may be due to low quality preparations of the compound which aren't found in traditional methods.

Authorities announced Saturday a massive heroin bust in the Bronx, where dealers were moving millions of dollars in dope inside Build-A-Bear dolls.

The drugs were packaged in tiny glassine bags branded with names like Barack Obama, Swine Flu and Crime 360, a nod to a detective series on A&E.

"The agents walk in and there's heroin and all the dime bags and the Build-A-Bears just sitting there," said Erin Mulvey, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Some California pot sellers are living the high life this summer — because high-tech social-networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter are allowing them to legally swap street corners for the Internet.

"Just in! Baby Crunch, Spy Diesel and Critical Mass! Buy a quarter, get a gram," read the "tweets" listing the strains of pot available from the Los Angeles-based non-profit medical-marijuana dispensary Artists Collective, which also promises "free delivery."

Artists Collective has the biggest online presence, with a snazzy Web site, Facebook and MySpace pages and the Twitter feed. San Francisco's more staid The Green Cross has a MySpace page, but like Artists Collective lists its latest arrivals on its own Web site.

"We've been open for six months, and I've been doing this project for 18 [months], and only in the last two weeks with a Twitter account has anybody started paying attention to us," says Dann Halem, director of Artists Collective. "That sends a message — an important one — and it really has been, strangely enough, the fact that we're using Twitter that has opened the door."

Links to all the Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace pages at FoxNews.com.

Drinking five cups of coffee a day could reverse memory problems seen in Alzheimer's disease, US scientists say.

The Florida research, carried out on mice, also suggested caffeine hampered the production of the protein plaques which are the hallmark of the disease...

The 55 mice used in the University of South Florida study had been bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

First the researchers used behavioural tests to confirm the mice were exhibiting signs of memory impairment when they were aged 18 to 19 months, the equivalent to humans being about 70.

Then they gave half the mice caffeine in their drinking water. The rest were given plain water.

The mice were given the equivalent of five 8 oz (227 grams) cups of coffee a day - about 500 milligrams of caffeine.

The researchers say this is the same as is found in two cups of "specialty" coffees such as lattes or cappuccinos from coffee shops, 14 cups of tea, or 20 soft drinks.

When the mice were tested again after two months, those who were given the caffeine performed much better on tests measuring their memory and thinking skills and performed as well as mice of the same age without dementia.

Those drinking plain water continued to do poorly on the tests.

In addition, the brains of the mice given caffeine showed nearly a 50% reduction in levels of the beta amyloid protein, which forms destructive clumps in the brains of dementia patients.

Further tests suggested caffeine affects the production of both the enzymes needed to produce beta amyloid.

The researchers also suggest that caffeine suppresses inflammatory changes in the brain that lead to an overabundance of the protein.

The so-called "Prince of Pot" launched his farewell tour Sunday in Calgary. Marc Emery has given up his long fight to avoid extradition to the U.S. for selling cannabis seeds. He plans to turn himself in to Seattle authorities in the fall, and then he'll likely serve a lengthy prison sentence in an American jail.

Calgary is Emery's first stop on a 32-city farewell tour.

"I'm being taken to a U.S. prison for something I did in Canada as innocuous as selling seeds, which don't even have any drug quality, and yet I have to face a five year term for that."

Emery plans to surrender himself to U.S. authorities in September. He's giving up on his fight to avoid extradition for selling cannabis seeds to customers in the United States.

"It's difficult to say what will happen in a U.S. federal penitentiary. It's never very pleasant. American jails aren't run nearly as well as Canadian jails."

And Emery would know: he's been arrested more than a dozen times in his 20 years of activism. He says he's on tour to bid farewell to his friends and encourage them to keep up the fight to legalize cannabis.

"I'm going away for a long time so I expect everybody to do their best and pick up the slack for me.'

Word Associations: Prince Charles

Tony Blair: Mushrooms.

What?

Prince Charles, actually, the one thing he is absolutely expert of, is everything to do with wildlife and the countryside … And you know, every year, you as prime minister spend a weekend with the royal family [in Balmoral], and one day when I was up, Prince Charles and I, we had gotten to talking about wildlife and the countryside and what plants are used in what way and so forth and he then explained to me -- he actually took out and showed me -- the mushrooms you could eat and the mushrooms that you couldn't.

Future Hero?

Bob's medical marijuana card (member # 2323, natch) is at $527 at the time of this posting. The auction runs for another 5 days, so you've got some time to gather some funds. It seems like it would be a nice thing to keep such an item in the broader family.

A Kingston teen is headed to prison after pleading guilty to doctoring up store-bought shiitake mushrooms with blue food coloring and trying to sell them as a drug for $900.

[the defendant] was sentenced to one to three years in state prison Friday for his role in the fake hallucinogenic mushroom scheme that crumbled when he sold them in an undercover police sting and was caught with the food coloring on his fingertips.

D'oh!