Danfromabove writes to tell us about Earthlapse, a Baraka style look at the wonders of our planet:

Check out all the clips on Vimeo...

Poppy plants have been suffering from a mysterious disease which leaves them yellow and withered and slashes the yield of opium resin which is sold on and processed into heroin.

The worst affected farmers have said the scale of the infection is unprecedented. Yields have dropped by up to 90 per cent in some fields they complained.

Farmers are claiming that the British and Americans are responsible for the outbreak of the poppy plague but officials have strongly denied involvement.

Samples of diseased plants are awaiting tests in Kabul and the cause remains unclear.

The blight was first noticed a month ago with reports it was linked to an infestation of aphids in wheat and fruit trees. It has since been found in four provinces across the south.

Early surveys suggest half the crop in northern Helmand is affected and a fifth of fields in the province's south. Symptoms have been spotted in Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan.

The United Nations said the disease would contribute to a significant drop in the opium harvest from last year's total of nearly 7,000 tonnes.

[Thanks Tomas!]

Ignore this if you do not want to be disturbed and horrified.

Radley Balko of Reason has posted video of the SWAT raid on a Missouri home that he wrote about last February.

It's horrifying, but I'd urge you to watch it, and to send it to the drug warriors in your life. This is the blunt-end result of all the war imagery and militaristic rhetoric politicians have been spewing for the last 30 years -- cops dressed like soldiers, barreling through the front door middle of the night, slaughtering the family pets, filling the house with bullets in the presence of children, then having the audacity to charge the parents with endangering their own kid. There are 100-150 of these raids every day in America, the vast, vast majority like this one, to serve a warrant for a consensual crime.

All for a small amount of marijuana. This was passed on by Danny Danko, also via Mother Jones.

From the Washington Post.

Just after 11 one morning last week, two men and two women, all in their early 20s, sat on a basketball court behind Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington and filled an empty cigar with marijuana -- their first hit of the day.

Also that day, at a picnic table by the Oxon Run stream, east of the Anacostia River, five men played dominoes and passed a joint.

And at an Adams Morgan park, as dog walkers and bicyclists wandered by, a 23-year-old man in a Pittsburgh Pirates cap rolled a thick joint using cherry-flavored paper. "This is hitting nice," he said moments later, forecasting that he would smoke five or six more before day's end.

The D.C. Council is set to vote Tuesday on legalizing medical marijuana, thereby allowing the chronically ill -- including those with HIV, glaucoma or cancer -- to buy pot from dispensaries in Washington.

Yet marijuana is already ubiquitous in many parts of the city, as demonstrated by federal surveys showing that Washingtonians' fondness for weed is among the strongest in the country -- and growing.

The popular image of the nation's capital leans toward the straight and narrow, a town of over-achieving, button-down bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists. But meander through any neighborhood from Congress Heights to Friendship Heights, and Washingtonians across race and class lines can be found lighting up.

"It's absolutely pervasive and accepted," said a 44-year-old sales manager who lives with his wife and three children in the city's Chevy Chase section. He estimates he spends $3,000 a year on pot. After a recent pickup hockey game, he found himself sharing a joint with a beer distributor and the vice president of a technology company.

"Everywhere you go, you meet someone who gets high or, if they don't, knows someone who does," he said.

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone...

Los Angeles city prosecutors began notifying 439 medical marijuana dispensaries Tuesday that they must shut down by June 7, when the city's ordinance to regulate the stores takes effect. It's the first step in what could be a lengthy and expensive legal battle to regain control over pot sales.

The letters, which were sent to both dispensary operators and property owners, warn that violations of the city's laws are a misdemeanor and could lead to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Collectives that stay open after the deadline could also face civil penalties of $2,500 a day.

"We're hopeful that the fact that we've given them more than 30 days to comply that a significant number of them will cease operating," said Asha Greenberg, the assistant city attorney who has handled most of the efforts to close dispensaries.

[Thanks 23 Wolves!]

The Daily Show's Jason Jones takes a hard-hitting look at Denver's booming medical marijuana trade.

Originally published in 2008 "Hofmann’s Elixir" is a collection of talks and essays by Albert Hofmann and various other psychedelic notables including Ralph Metzner, Myron J. Stolaroff and Stanislav Grof. The text is edited by Amanda Feilding of the Beckley Foundation. Published the same year that Albert Hofmann passed away (aged 102) the book is a fitting reflection of the man’s life and legacy.

The text is divided into two parts. The first contains a selection of eight talks and essays by Albert Hofmann himself. It contains a diverse cross-section of information that succinctly portrays the thought and history of a man who, on April 19th 1943, became the first person to intentionally consume the hallucinogen Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Having first synthesized the substance in 1938; intuition returned him to it some years later and the actions of this moment have had huge repercussions on society ever since.

This very scary article has a reporter for the Times of London going undercover in Beverly Hills to get a fistful of scripts for some very, very strong pharmaceuticals. Then tries living on them. Hilarity ensues!

The next morning, I take a quarter of the prescribed dose of Adderall. I focus better, but I’m buzzing. I chain-smoke -- at 8am -- and I’ve lost my appetite. As highs go, it definitely isn’t fun, and the drug has made me feel anxious. I take another quarter after lunch.

Within a few hours, I decide to have half a dose of the Klonopin, to take the edge off my tooth-gnashing, rubbish-talking, Adderalled personality. Then I go for a drink, but after one glass of wine I’m grappling to control myself. Messy is the technical term. Yet I am still legal to drive. I go home and take a sleeping pill. I watch television and through the sludgy fog I get tunnel vision. Famished, I eat a big bag of crisps and pass out. In the morning, I feel thick-headed and slow. An Adderall will sort that out...

You want to know why all those celebrities are suffering a very millennial version of 'Adult Crib Death'? Read this article.

From Randolph Hencken at MAPS:

We're proud to report that our conference, Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century, was a magnificent success! We generated a spectacular amount of media as a result, including from CNN, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, Scientific American, Nature News, New York Times, USA Today and many other media outlets. We have archived the conference related media reports on both our "MAPS in the Media" page and "Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century" page. We predict that the astonishingly positive public education achieved by these articles will be seen in retrospect as a turning point, building public support for a substantial expansion of psychedelic research. We encourage you to review and share these media reports with your friends and family.

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Slate is running a thought-provoking piece about the relative environmental impact of several popular (though illegal) mind-altering drugs:

Let's be frank: Most highs for you are kind of a downer for the planet. The conditions under which illegal drugs are produced make it impossible for the government to enforce any sort of clean manufacturing regulations, and the long-standing "War on Drugs" inflicts its own environmental damage. (Think of the RoundUp herbicide sprayed on 120,000 hectares of rural Colombia each year.) There are some ways to measure the eco-credentials of various narcotics, though. To understand how various drugs affect the environment, we need to take a close look at where each one comes from and compare the ways they're harvested or synthesized.

Have a read, find your favorite, and calculate the damage! (Myself, I'm hoping for huge crops of Roundup-resistant cannabis invading your favorite vacant lot...)