Holbrooke, at a G8 meeting in Italy, said current measures against poppy growers had been "a failure"....

Mr Holbrooke said that existing programmes of eradication had not reduced by one dollar the amount of money the Taliban earned from production.

"Spraying the crops just penalises the farmer and they grow crops somewhere else. The hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on crop eradication has not had any damage on the Taliban."

"On the contrary, it has helped them recruit. This is the least effective programme ever," Mr Holbrooke added.

Interesting. I might posit that "war on drugs" in general is more "least effective," but whatever. So what's the new plan?

According to Reuters, eradication of crops will still occur, but only in limited regions. As crop destruction is phased, the "emphasis will shift to intercepting drugs and chemicals used to make them, and going after drug lords."

The new direction was welcomed by officials from the other G8 countries and in the international community, many of whom felt the eradication of crops was deeply flawed.

Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN's Office of Drugs and Crimes said the policy had been a "sad joke...Sad because many, many Afghan policemen and soldiers ... have been killed and only about 5,000 hectares were eradicated, about 3 percent of the volume."

Oh. Just 3 percent, huh? Yeah, okay, that's definitely some serious "least effective" going on. Anyway, we here at DoseNation wish the Obama administration luck with "intercepting drugs and chemicals used to make them, and going after drug lords." Because, as we all know, when a drug lord is taken out, the power vacuum left behind is filled by unicorns and missionaries.

Tax debates often get heated, but a marijuana tax is particularly divisive because it's so speculative. (After 70-plus years of illegality, little is known about the economics of the drug.) A cannabis tax could be like an excise tax (a point-of-sales tax added to any sales tax, as exists in many places for gasoline, alcohol, cigarettes, and, potentially, soda), or it could be a pricey license to sell the product. Either method would increase the cost to consumers, who would in turn buy less of the product—a public health benefit in either instance. And unless people buy drastically less soda or pot, the government will pocket some extra cash. So far, it seems like a win-win situation.

But there are complications. One is the thriving black market for marijuana, with sales valued, albeit shakily, as high as $100 billion a year. A high tax could keep the market underground, robbing the government of tax revenue. The theory is that John Q. Pothead would be willing to pay a premium so he can "go to a regulated establishment that can assure some level of safety and labeling," says Houston of the Marijuana Policy Project. But make the premium too high, he says, and users will just go to "that shady guy" on the corner. The problem is that nobody really knows what the optimum premium is.

Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever. You would never have to ask for directions again. Now a group of scientists has isolated a protein that mega-boosts your ability to remember what you see.

A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals' ability to remember objects they had seen.

A man who ran naked through the Stateline casino core was subdued by a Taser on Tuesday before a group of “startled” children in the Harrah's Lake Tahoe casino arcade.

Sean Stanley Smith, 19, was jailed on charges of indecent exposure and resisting a peace officer.

He reportedly told officers he had ingested marijuana and LSD, and was running naked because he thought he was “the Terminator.”

A deputy patrolling the casino core at 1:45 p.m. Tuesday was waved down by a motorist who said there was a naked man running in front of the Marriott across the Nevada/California state line. The deputy, traveling west on Highway 50 in front of Harrah's, saw the naked suspect running in front of the Pony Express statue.

The suspect ignored the officer's command to stop and ran inside the casino.

The deputy grabbed his Taser and entered the casino with South Lake Tahoe police officers who had been searching for the suspect.

Smith reportedly ran into the arcade, startling the children who were playing video games.

The deputy deployed his Taser with a “touch stun” which failed to subdue the suspect. The second time, Smith went to the ground and was handcuffed.

Everyone knows you should never use a Taser on a Terminator, it just makes them mad.

Weeks after legalizing the sale of marijuana to sick people, lawmakers have voted to explore how much Rhode Island might collect in revenue if it were to make all sales of marijuana legal and impose a “sin tax” of $35 per ounce.

During the General Assembly’s aborted rush to adjournment Friday, the Senate approved a resolution — introduced earlier the same day — to create a nine-member special commission to study a swath of issues surrounding marijuana.

Among them: “The experience of individuals and families sentenced for violating marijuana laws … The experience of states and European countries, such as California, Massachusetts and the Netherlands, which have decriminalized the sale and use of marijuana.”

The sponsors of the eleventh-hour measure — which requires no further action — include Senators Joshua Miller, D-Cranston; Leo Blais, R-Coventry; Rhoda Perry, D-Providence; Charles Levesque, D-Portsmouth, and Susan Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown.

In a brief interview Wednesday, Miller said the resolution was sparked by the referendum-driven move to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana in Massachusetts, and by what he perceives as “a national trend towards decriminalization.” In November 2008, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, making getting caught with less than an ounce of pot punishable by a civil fine of $100.

Asked why he waited until what was to be the last day of the session to introduce the measure, Miller said he and his fellow sponsors felt it was “very important” for this study to be “defined as an issue” completely separate and apart from the passage — over Governor Carcieri’s veto — of legislation allowing the creation of state-regulated dispensaries to sell marijuana for medicinal use.

Miller said it also “took that long for it to be taken seriously.”

Food scientists combine sugar, fat and salt in ways that make junk foods like burgers, chips, cold drinks and pizzas impossible to resist, says a leading expert who claims that cereals and ready meals can act on the brain's reward centres in the same way as tobacco.

David Kessler, former head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), claims that manufacturers seek to trigger a 'bliss point' when people eat certain products.

'It is time to stop blaming individuals for being overweight or obese. The real problem is we have created a world where food is always available and where that food is designed to make you want to eat more of it. For millions of people, modern food is simply impossible to resist,' The Times quoted him, as saying.

In his new book, The End of Overeating, David suggests food manufacturers use precise combinations of fat, sugar, salt and texture to make foods 'hyper-palatable'.

To reach the conclusion, Kessler with researchers at Yale University conducted a study using functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques.

About 50 percent of obese people and 30 percent of those who are overweight were prone to so-called 'excessive activation', the study found.

'The right combination of tastes triggers a greater number of neurons, getting them to fire more,' said Kessler.

'The message to eat becomes stronger, motivating the eater to look for even more food,' he added.

Kessler said: 'Many of us have what's called a 'bliss point' - the point at which we get the greatest pleasure from sugar, fat or salt.

'As more sugar is added, food becomes more pleasurable until we reach the bliss point, after which it becomes too sweet and the pleasure drops off.'

To The Editor: Salvia divinorum (salvia) is a sage plant that is easily obtained in the United States. Its active ingredient, Salvinorin A, is a novel and highly selective pure kappa opiate receptor agonist with rapid onset and powerful hallucinogenic properties (1). Salvia has become increasingly popular as a drug of abuse when smoked. No long-term negative outcomes have been reported from the use of salvia. We present a case in which salvia precipitated persistent psychosis.

"Mr. J" was a 21-year-old man with no family or personal psychiatric history or laboratory abnormalities. He was reported to have normal social interactions, behavior, and cognitive skills. He was transferred to our psychiatric unit for acute psychosis and paranoia, which occurred shortly after smoking salvia. In transport, the patient became suspicious and attempted to jump from the vehicle. Upon presentation, he demonstrated echolalia, paranoia, flight of ideas, and psychomotor agitation. The patient remained agitated for the first 2 days of hospitalization. He attempted to barricade himself in his room. Risperidone (3 mg by mouth/three times per day) was administered, and the patient was eventually stabilized. The dosage, however, resulted in the parkisonian features of rigidity, bradykinesia, and masked facies.

Mr. J was transferred to the chemical dependency unit for further treatment. He was stabilized, and treatment with risperidone was slowly tapered. During the taper from risperidone, the patient continued to improve and manifested better insight and logical thought processes. He participated in group therapy and interacted with peers, and the parkinsonian features subsided. One day after risperidone was withdrawn, the patient’s symptoms abruptly returned. He became agitated, paranoid, and aggressive and believed he was able to project and receive thoughts. He returned to the inpatient psychiatry unit where risperidone (3 mg by mouth/twice daily) was reinstated. He was once again stabilized and transferred to the referring psychiatric facility for further treatment. At the 4-month follow-up, the patient exhibited no perceptible improvement.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case of a persistent negative outcome from the use of salvia. We suspect that our patient was genetically predisposed to schizophrenia, and salvia precipitated the clinical manifestations. This may relate to the drug’s ability to influence dopamine levels in the brain and potentiate plastic changes in frontal lobe networks (3).

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It is estimated that 120,000 tons of caffeine are consumed each year, making it the most popular psychoactive substance globally. While many people sip a cup of joe to wake up in the morning before going to work, a growing number of athletes are using coffee to increase their performance.

In recent studies it has been shown that coffee improves performance and endurance during prolonged, exhaustive exercise. Short-term, high-intensity workouts also saw vast improvements with an added bonus of caffeine decreasing the perception of pain during exercise. While caffeine is mostly known to improve mental alertness, it also reduces the perception of fatigue.

The ground-breaking study by exercise physiologist, David Costill, Ph.D., used two female and seven male competitive cyclists to study the effect of caffeine on their performance. He found that consuming caffeine 60 minutes before exercising led to an 18% increase in performance. He also noted that the test subjects burned more fat and felt less exhausted indicating that the exercise felt less strenuous.

A more dramatic result of caffeine’s effect on athletes is shown in a test of trained runners. That study resulted in athletes achieving a 44% increase in race-pace endurance. Additional studies have reached similar conclusions.