"Mexico's stark reminder of the cost of prohibition"

The Independent

Highlights:  "Even by the barbaric standards of Mexico's drug criminality, the discovery this week in the north-east of the country of a mass grave with 72 bodies – including 14 women – is shocking. It is also a reminder of the root cause of the violence that has killed an estimated 28,000 people since president Felipe Calderón declared domestic war on the drug cartels almost four years ago. The mayhem reflects above all one simple fact: that the United States, which shares Mexico's 2,000-mile long northern border, is the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs."

"The size of this clandestine market obviously cannot be calculated with precision. But the best guesses put it at $60bn or more per year and suggest that 70 per cent of the flow of illegal drugs into the US is controlled by Mexican cartels, which have long since supplanted their Colombian counterparts as the driving force in the region's drug business. Cocaine, heroin, cannabis or methamphetamine – whatever the US user's substance of preference, the overwhelming likelihood is that it will have transited though Mexico."

"If Americans lost their taste for drugs, the Mexican cartels would be out of business. That, however, will not happen; indeed the forbidden nature of drugs may make them more attractive. So why not legalise them? The argument has been powerfully made before and will be so again, but probably to no avail. Sadly the barbaric drug wars will continue."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-mexicos-stark-reminder-of-the-cost-of-prohibition-2061932.html

"Violence breeds violence. The only thing drug gangs fear is legalisation"

by Johann Hari, The Independent

Highlights: "Why? When you criminalise a drug for which there is a large market, it doesn't disappear. The trade is simply transferred from off-licences, pharmacists and doctors to armed criminal gangs..."

"Look carefully at that mound of butchered corpses found yesterday. They are the inevitable and ineluctable product of drug prohibition. This will keep happening for as long as we pursue this policy. If you believe the way to deal with the human appetite for intoxication is to criminalise and militarise, then blood is on your hands.

How many people have to die before we finally make a sober assessment of reality, and take the drugs trade back from murderous criminal gangs?"

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-violence-breeds-violence-the-only-thing-drug-gangs-fear-is-legalisation-2062252.html

"...latest uk newspaper to back legislation"

Transform Drug Policy Foundation Blog

Highlights: "Does the media follow public opinion or lead it? Probably a bit of both, but it is clear that the climate around drugs policy is changing in the public political and media spheres, and the momentum for change is building."

http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2010/08/independent-becomes-latest-national-uk.html

"Monkeys love Metallica"

by Rob Bryanton, Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Highlights: "music, like the the other patterns we've just looked at, connects in ways that go beyond the limits of our 4D spacetime"
"In the study, 14 cotton-top tamarins were played clips of music while the researchers noted any changes in behavior. Pieces included Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, a soft piano piece from The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails, Metallica's Of Wolf and Man and Tool's The Grudge... According to the Guardian article, the monkeys didn't exhibit any clear response to these piece of music one way or another, except for the Metallica song,which had the unexpected effect of calming them down... the New York Times article claims the scientists saw a similar soothing effect on the monkeys with the Tool song."
 

http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/2010/01/monkeys-love-metallica.html

"Vets Get Ecstasy to Treat Their PTSD"

By Katie Drummond, Wired

September 2, 2010

Highlights: "Dr. Michael Mithoefer and Anne Mithoefer, a psychiatric nurse, are the South Carolina pair who’ve been spearheading research into ecstasy, known clinically as MDMA, since 2000. After one successful study on 21 PTSD patients between 2004 and 2008, they’ve now received the final okay from FDA and DEA officials to start a study entirely devoted to former military service members."

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/09/new-trial-gives-vets-ecstasy-to-treat-their-ptsd

"Magic mushrooms ingredient beneficial to cancer patients"

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times

September 7, 2010


Highlights: "The research was a pilot study involving only 12 patients, but it is viewed as a first step in restoring the drug to respectability."

"This is a landmark study in many ways," said Dr. Stephen Ross, clinical director of the Center of Excellence on Addiction at New York University's Langone Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. "This is the first time a paper like this has come out in a prestigious psychiatric journal in 40 years.

"Subjects were given the drugs in a hospital research unit and were then closely monitored for six hours. They were encouraged to lie in bed, wear eyeshades and listen to music during the sessions."
"The patients were given a relatively low dose of psilocybin, 0.2 milligram per kilogram of body weight. Nonetheless, the team reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry, all patients reported a significant improvement in mood for at least two weeks after the psilocybin treatment and up to a six-month improvement on a scale that measures depression and anxiety. Most also reported a decreased need for narcotic pain relievers. No adverse reactions were observed."

"These types of patients normally do not respond well to psychological therapy, Grob said, but his study showed that the drug has "great promise for alleviating anxiety and other psychiatric symptoms."

"http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-magic-mushrooms-20100907,0,4230087.story?track=rss

"God particle signal is simulated as sound"

By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News


Highlights: "The process of converting scientific data into sounds is called sonification."

"The aim is to give physicists at the LHC another way to analyse their data. The sonification team believes that ears are better suited than eyes to pick out the subtle changes that might indicate the detection of a new particle."

"We can hear clear structures in the sound, almost as if they had been composed. They seem to tell a little story all to themselves. They're so dynamic and shifting all the time, it does sound like a lot of the music that you hear in contemporary composition"

hoped the particle collisions at Cern would "reveal something new and something important about the nature of the Universe".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10385675