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Quick Hits (page 5)

Greenville Bust

By: Elmore Stone

Agents of the Third Judicial District Drug Task Force (DTF) — with help from the Greeneville-Greene County Special Operations Team, Greene County sheriff's deputies and the Greeneville Police Department's K-9 unit - raided what they described as a sophisticated indoor marijuana-growing operation in southern Greene County.

Sheriff Steve Burns, who was at the scene along with Chief Deputy John Jones, said at about 7 p.m. Friday that charges of manufacturing marijuana were expected to be placed against a Tweed Springs Road couple in connection with the discovery of "50-75 marijuana plants" inside a house adjacent to theirs.

Burns noted that when DTF agents and members of the Greeneville-Greene County Special Operations Team served a search warrant at what was otherwise a vacant house on Tweed Springs Road, they found dozens of heavily-budded marijuana plants growing in pots inside two bedrooms of the small frame house.

The raid, according to the DTF agent, came as the result of information received by the DTF from the TBI, the Greene County Sheriff's Department and from citizen complaints.

Acting on that information, the DTF conducted surveillance of the Tweed Springs Road residence that led agents to suspect that marijuana was being grown or sold inside the house, the DTF agent said Friday evening.

The small frame house was situated at the end of a gravel driveway leading to an adjacent house and was surrounded by the pens of what appeared to be game roosters. Several head of cattle also grazed nearby.

Sophisticated Operation

The plants, according to a DTF agent who headed the investigation that led to the Friday afternoon raid, were situated on specially constructed tables made from corrugated fiberglass roofing material.

Fed by an electronic timer-controlled watering system that recycled nutrient-rich water from a large plastic tank, the plants were lit by special lights designed to simulate sunlight.

Electronic timers also controlled the "grow lights" hung from the ceiling above the plants, the DTF agent said, noting that the grow light in one of the rooms was mounted on a ceiling track.

A timer, the agent said, switched on an electric motor periodically, moving the light back and forth over the plants below in an effort to ensure that each received adequate light.

In one room was what appeared to be a "battery backup" system to keep the lights and timers going in the event of a commercial power failure.

Taped to a wall inside one of the bedrooms was what appeared to be a hand- written growing schedule that tracked the amount of nutrients being fed as well as other aspects of a plant-care program.

The list was titled "The Cycle" and appeared to outline a multi-week growing schedule.

The DTF agent said the lights and sophisticated controls were designed to "trick the plants into new days of growth."

Sheriff Burns, meanwhile, said the growing process could be maintained 365 days a year using the techniques being employed inside the small frame house.

"These are good plants, and this operation is ongoing," Burns said. "These plants are capable of producing many, many pounds of marijuana."

Both the sheriff and DTF agents on the scene described the quality of the marijuana as "very high."

Burns said the plants appeared to have been specially cultivated and tended to produce large numbers of buds, which contain high levels of THC, the active ingredient of marijuana.

Squeezing one of the buds between his forefinger and thumb, the sheriff pointed out that they were sticky to the touch. That, the sheriff said, indicated that the plants had a high THC content. THC is the active ingredient in marijuana.

A DTF agent, meanwhile, described the confiscated marijuana as "one toke dope," noting that inhaling one puff of a cigarette or pipe bowl containing the plant material likely would be enough to make the smoker high.

"This is some of the strongest marijuana you can grow," the sheriff added.

Each marijuana plant, the agent said, could be sold for "a couple hundred dollars, easy, if they wanted to sell the marijuana that way. If sold by the pound, the agent said, the marijuana found Friday likely could have sold for anywhere from $2,800 to $3,500 per pound.

The agent estimated that all the marijuana found inside the house on Friday likely would weigh between three and five pounds.

Sheriff Burns noted that the growers apparently were "cloning" new plants from old ones by clipping stems from plants and rooting them in a growing solution.

By doing that, the sheriff said, the growers could theoretically continue growing potent marijuana for as long as they desired to do so.

Other Drugs Found

When DTF agents served a search warrant at a nearby house where the alleged marijuana growers were believed to live, a DTF agent said, a quantity of drugs believed to be Valium and the potent pain-killer OxyContin were found there.

The residents of the house did not have medical prescriptions for those drugs, the agent said.

Charges of possessing controlled drugs likely will be placed as a result of that discovery, the agent said.

DTF agents, Special Response Team members and sheriff's deputies and detectives were still at the two residences late Friday night conducting additional searches and dismantling the marijuana-growing operation.

Growin' Our Own (page 5)

Mint-Julip

By: Still Tripping

Little is known about the drug, salvia divinorum, a member of the mint family, or how it works on the brain and what its longterm effects might be. But word of its existence is spreading through e-mail chains and Web sites praising its potential, which has caught the attention of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA has included it on its list of "Drugs and Chemicals of Concern" and is considering whether to add the herb to its list of controlled substances.

Some researchers who have studied it and other hallucinogens doubt the DEA needs to worry much, and say they don't believe the herb will live up to the hype seen on some of the Web sites.

Still, the Internet descriptions of the herb's effects, albeit more subdued, would be familiar to anyone who remembers the 1960s, when Harvard University professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert began proselytizing for LSD's power to help people expand their consciousness.

Then, reports of "bad trips" and allegations that LSD use would lead to chromosome damage and widespread birth defects, which were never borne out by studies of users of the drug, helped to create a backlash against "acid" that quickly led to it being outlawed.

Forty years later, the fate of salvia divinorum, is still in the doubt. And there are many differences between it, LSD and the cultures that surround both. LSD was manmade and new, while salvia, a perennial in the mint family that is native to parts of Oaxaca, Mexico, has been used by Indians there for centuries as a healing and divining tool.

And unlike the champions of LSD in the 1960s, those running the Web sites offering salvia divinorum are not portraying the herb as a wonder drug without any potential problems for users.

Also, while Leary and Alpert spread their words far and wide, those offering salvia divinorum for sale, and even some researching it, are reluctant to draw widespread attention to the herb. They say on the one hand that publicity might attract users looking for a new "recreational drug," which they emphasize salvia divinorum is not, and on the other that it could prompt the DEA to take action against it without a full review of the case.

One site posts an extensive list of academic articles discussing the herb's use by Indians in Mexico and how it works chemically on the brain. Among the articles is Salvinorin A: Notes of Caution by Daniel J. Siebert, the ethnobotanist who runs the site.

"Salvinorin A (the major active principal of the plant Salvia divinorum) is an extremely powerful consciousness altering compound," the article begins. "In fact, it is the most potent naturally occurring hallucinogen thus far isolated. But before would be experimenters get too worked-up about it, it should be made clear that the effects are often extremely unnerving and there is a very real potential for physical danger with its use."

Siebert did not respond to requests to be interviewed, but much of the information given on the site was confirmed by other researchers.

What Does It Do?

Smoking or chewing the leaves of the plant sends the user on a trip that according to accounts posted on various sites can be even more intense than the LSD experience, but unlike an LSD trip, which can last six hours or more, the Mexican herb's effects usually last less than an hour, with a peak of only 20 minutes or less.

One woman who has experimented with the herb told ABCNEWS that she lost touch with her surroundings for only a few minutes, but during the experience it seemed much longer, and she found it difficult to describe everything she saw, heard and felt.

"At first I was able to tell myself, 'This is the drug,'" she said. "Then it didn't seem to matter so much what it was that was doing it, I just let it all come. I think there were moments when I was scared to death, but something kept comforting me."

The greatest danger, according to Siebert's article, comes when too much of the active ingredient gets into the user's system too quickly.

Dr. John Halpern, a psychiatrist with McLean Hospital, a teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard University, said there are other dangers with salvia divinorum, but they are dangers associated with other hallucinogens and with alcohol when they are used by people in their late teens and early 20s, when the brain is still maturing. These substances can aggravate tendencies towards schizophrenia, said Halpern, who has received a career development award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The enthusiasm over LSD included hopes that the drug could be a valuable tool for psychotherapy, and similar claims are made in some of the literature about salvia divinorum, but the caution and detailed recommendations regarding dosage and preparing the proper atmosphere are a marked difference from the era of "acid tests."

"If you choose to pursue a relationship with this plant please treat it with respect and care," Siebert's article says. "Perhaps if people can use the plant safely and responsibly it will be able to grow and thrive freely into the future."

'Nobody Has a Clue'

Perhaps the biggest question about the drug is how it works.

"Nobody has a clue," said Purdue University professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology David Nichols, who has studied the effects of hallucinogens on the brain for 20 years. Nichols is among the scientists who has given information about the drug to the DEA.

He said attempts to discover which part of the brain the drug works on have thus far been unsuccessful. When tests involving the most common brain receptors were performed, the active ingredient in the herb, Salvinorum A, did not seem to bind to any of them.

When asked about potential dangers, he said thus far none have been identified, other than the potential for an unpleasant experience with the herb, which he said has more of a "disorienting" effect than other hallucinogens.

"We haven't really heard of any adverse reactions," he said. "Like LSD, when the dose is so small, unless it's a toxin it really can't damage most of your organ systems."

Dr. Edward Boyer, an assistant professor of emergency medicine and the director of the toxicology fellowship training program at the University of Massachusetts, said that over the last three years he has seen no cases of people suffering any toxic effect from salvia statewide in Massachusetts.

He warned, though, that there could be health concerns if it were taken along with antidepressants - a combination he said could cause hypertension, high blood pressure or strokes.

And there is always the danger of "merging," when a person using the drug feels the need to merge with another object.

"You may try to merge with an open window and fall out," he said.

Legal Issues

A DEA spokeswoman said the administration does not comment on the specifics of its consideration of substances while they are under review. At the Food and Drug Administration, which also must review a substance before it is put on the controlled substances list, two spokeswomen said they had no record of any study being under way.

The DEA Diversion Control Program has included salvia divinorum on its list of Drugs and Chemicals of Concern, and in a statement about the herb compares the active ingredient it contains to that in absinthe and to THC, which is found in marijuana.

"There has been a growing interest among young adults and adolescents to rediscover ethnobotanical plants that can induce changes in perception, hallucinations or other psychologically-inducing changes," the statement said. "Since Salvia Divinorum is not specifically listed in the Controlled Substances Act, many on-line botanical companies and drug promotional sites have advertised Salvia as a legal alternative to other plant hallucinogens like mescaline."

Richard Glen Boire, an attorney with the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, said salvia divinorum "does not meet the criteria" to be a Schedule 1 substance. "It does not have the abuse potential that other drugs that are on the DEA's list of controlled substances," he said.

The group submitted a report to the DEA in October to make the case to keep salvia divinorum legal, which included a survey of hospital emergency room data from across the country which found no record of anyone requiring treatment from using the herb.

Spokesmen at the Center for Substance Abuse Research and the Community Epidemeology Work Group, two drug abuse watchdog groups, said concerns about the herb have not been raised with their organizations.

Ethan Russo, a clinical neurologist and expert on psychotropic drugs who has studied the herb, said there is no evidence that salvia divinorum causes any damage to the brain and he does not want to see it outlawed, saying that could inhibit study of the drug.

"I can say that there is no inherent danger to salvia divinorum except that some people are going to scare themselves and it's possible for someone to walk off and get hurt by something like falling down a flight of stairs, so somebody should always be close by," he said.

"I see no reason for this to be rendered illegal," he continued. "It's not going to help anything. In a perverse way, if it were rendered illegal it might make it more attractive to some people. … There is a long list of substances on the DEA list and they haven't been eradicated."

Halpern, who emphasized that he is not a drug advocate, said he doesn't believe that making salvia divinorum illegal is necessary, though he also said there is no reason for anyone to fear that DEA scheduling would interfere with academic research.

"If it is scheduled, I don't think it's going to change anything," he said. "It doesn't seem like there's going to be that many repeat users."

Chemical Questions

There are still more questions than answers about salvia divinorum. According to researchers, salvia divinorum acts on the brain in a way that has not been seen before, and for that reason it deserves more study.

Like the peyote cactus, which contains mescaline, and psyllocibin mushrooms, salvia divinorum has long been used by American Indians as a tool for divine visions as part of religious practices. But it is different because the hallucinations it creates are not dependent on the physical environment around the person using the drug.

Whereas a person on an LSD trip or eating peyote might see patterns or ripples appear in the walls around them — their perception is altered - someone who has used salvia divinorum truly hallucinates - he sees and hears things that are not there.

Work done so far has determined that salvia operates on a receptor system in the brain that was previously unknown, and the study of the aspects of consciousness controlled by that area could lead to advances in both medicine and psychology, Russo said, pointing to the gains made through the studies of how opiates and cannabis affect the brain.

A Religious History

Ethnobiologists and anthropologists have been aware of salvia divinorum since at least the early 1960s, when R. Gordon Wasson wrote an article published by Harvard University's Botanical Museum, entitled, A New Mexican Psychotropic Drug from the Mint Family.

Though there are accounts of the use of psychotropic plants by the Indians of Central America dating back to the time of the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, and as early as the 1930s anthropologists recorded that the Mazatecs were using leaves to produce a tea for divination, it was not until Wasson's expeditions in 1950s and early 1960s that salvia was identified.

The article recounted Wasson's exploration of the remote mountainous regions of Oaxaca, where the Mazatec Indians live. He said the Mazatec used salvia divinorum in their religious practices "as a less desirable substitute" when the psychotropic mushrooms they prefer were not available.

According to Wasson, the Mazatec often used the herb, which they called hojas de la Pastora orhojas de Maria Pastora, as a curing or divining tool — to determine what illness a person might be suffering from or to learn the facts of a crime that might have been committed against him. In those ceremonies, though, it was usually the shaman alone who took the herb, not the patient.

An article by Leander J. Valdes III, Jose Luis Diaz and Ara G. Paul published in 1982 in The Journal of Ethnopharmacology, "Ethnopharmacology of ska Maria Pastora" provided more detail, recounting several ceremonies in which the herb was used.

According Halpern, the herb's potential is also being explored by a group of religious people in the United States who are "finding it is useful in their practice." He said he preferred no to identify the group other than to say they are "middle-class, responsible people."

Controlling Consciousness

While accounts of experiences on the drug range from blissful, to mystically illuminating to terrifying, the issue that concerns the DEA should be public health issues, not people's experiments with their consciousness, supporters of the drug's legal status say.

"We see this as the government confusing its own rules with respect to drugs," Boire said. "Yes, they have a responsibility with respect to public health, but they're confusing that with a responsibility to prevent people from altering their consciousness."

The question, he said, is deeper than the right to free speech - it is the right to control your own consciousness. The small number of people experimenting with salvia divinorum, and the even smaller number who want to repeat the experience, together with the lack of evidence indicating health risks make it clear that the herb is not a public health problem, he said.

"There needs to be a lot of thinking about whether doing something like this really does any good," he said. "If salvia divinorum is made illegal, to some people it's going to become more attractive. We worry about the knee-jerk reaction when we hear about people altering their consciousness and we think, 'What can we do about it?'"

An Oregon man who tried salvia divinorum said when he was younger he tried other hallucinogens such as peyote and psylocybin several times but didn't expect to repeat the Mexican herb.

"Nothing I had done prepared me for it - I mean I thought I knew what these things did to you," he said. "I found it valuable, I felt like it re-opened some things that maybe had started to close up in me, but I don't think I want to go back."

"I can't preclude there's something special about salvia divinorum because of the shaman connection," Halpern said. "It's a tool that's remained in the shaman's bag and that's probably where it should stay."

Pipeline (page 5)

The iBong

By: Wired News

Giving new meaning to the term high tech, a couple of stoners have turned an old Macintosh into a bong.

"Agapornis" and "Prozac," a pair of 29-year-old computer nerds from Austin, Texas, traded chips for hits when they transformed an old all-in-one Mac into a device for smoking marijuana.

"It has a lilting touch of death-like intoxication," said Prozac. "It's treated us well."

The Mac Bong, or iBong, is made from a water-filled bong mounted inside an old Mac SE 30. The bowl of the bong protrudes from the front of the computer, just below the screen. The mouthpiece sticks out the back.

"It looks like any other dingy Mac," said Prozac. "But it doesn't draw as much suspicion if you do have to take it outside the house. We haven't taken it to Macworld, but it has been to a couple of computer swap meets. People like it. They laugh. It gets the usual, 'Whoa, dude, that's crazy' reaction. Everyone wants to try it."

The iBong delivers a killer hit, according to the pair. After smoking the iBong one evening, Prozac wrote about the experience and posted it online.

"My bong burnt bright," he wrote, "electrifying fractals dancing in the raging embers, smoke curling like a halo around my bowed and fatal head.... The restlessness of a millennium's solitude soared through my rushing blood, the roar of being alive skipping like a jumping spark through my brain."

The iBong was inspired by the MacQuarium, a famous modification of Apple's old one-piece Macintosh computers that turns them into fish tanks.

"We saw the MacQuarium and said, 'Let's put a bong inside one instead,'" Agapornis said. "We were probably stoned."

The two have actually made three iBongs. The first was made in 1992 and attempted to incorporate both a fish tank and a bong within the casing of the old computer.

"We were working on a way to make an aquarium with the bong inside it so that the person taking the hit could watch the fish," Agapornis explained, "but the aquarium took up too much room."

They also found the stem was too long, which made it difficult to take a hit; it required drawing in too much air.

The second model, which had a shorter stem, was too harsh. "It was like a pickle-jar bong," said Agapornis. "It was pretty painful."

The third attempt was just right. "It's not bad," Agapornis said. "It's pretty easy hitting."

But after 10 years of perfecting the design, they are smoking less and less pot; they've gone from chronic to occasional smokers. "We're not going through four quarter bags in a weekend -– each –- like we used to," said Agapornis. "We're not into a void like we used to be 10 years ago." Still, "the Mac bong is the best thing to have around when you're listening to the first four Burzum albums," he added.

Burzum is a Norwegian death metal band.

There is a strong connection between Macs and pot. Both are countercultures, in the loosest sense of the word, appealing to people who are creative or artistic, people who, as a particular ad campaign might say, "Think different."

"The entire personal computer revolution came out of the San Francisco Bay area and was pioneered by pot smoking members of the counterculture," said Steven Hager, editor-in-chief of High Times. "Because these people tend to be highly creative and because Macs are the choice of most art and video professionals, I guess that's your story."

A couple of veteran journalists who covered the creation of the Macintosh in the mid-1980s claim pot had a profound influence on the design of the machine. That's a claim denied by others, including Jef Raskin, the head of the Mac's design team.

"The Mac building was a very loose outfit," said one journalist, who asked to remain anonymous. "The building was permeated with a certain odor."

Another journalist -- the former editor of a famous Macintosh magazine -- said the Mac's engineers and programmers were always smoking weed.

"There were people out the back in the parking lot smoking pot all the time," said the editor, who also asked to remain anonymous. "The IBM PC was created by people who drank alcohol. The Mac was created by people who smoked pot."

The editor noted that many in the Mac's original development team were pretty young; the average age was about 25, he said.

"The personal computer industry was an outgrowth of the 60s' counterculture," the editor said. "It was a rock-and-roll business in those days. Look at (Apple's famous) 1984 ad. It symbolized a generation shift. The IBM PC was the computer of the establishment. The Mac's purpose in life was to be the computer of the anti-establishment. I mean, it had the psychedelic interface: 'Wow man, good visuals.'

"If they hadn't been smoking pot, maybe they wouldn't have invented the Mac," he said. "It would have been another Apple II, or an IBM PC. It would not have been the Mac. Who would have thought they wanted a computer to be cute?"

Half joking, the editor suggested further evidence of pot's influence could be found in the Mac's stoned, smiley startup face, the rainbow colors of the Apple logo, and early software like MacPaint, a drawing program perfect for drug-induced doodling. Nothing like it existed on the PC platform, despite the fact that a lot of Windows programmers –- some now very rich and famous -– were also dopers, according to the editor.

"We all noticed this when we were covering this stuff," he said. "At PC Expo, people smell like booze. At Macworld, people smell like marijuana."

The editor said there's even a special pot smoking area around the back of San Francisco's Moscone Center, the long-time venue of Macworld Expo, known as "the office."

"Ten or 20 people are there all day long," the editor said. "CEOs, programmers, authors. People say, I'm just going to the 'the office' for a couple of minutes."

However, the editor's claims were strongly disputed by Raskin, the "father" of the Macintosh.

"As the creator of the Macintosh project, and the guy who named it 'Macintosh' after his beloved McIntosh apples, I can firmly say that pot had nothing to do with it," Raskin said in an e-mail.

"Unlike our previous president, I have never even brought a reefer to lip, much less inhaled it. I also do not use alcohol, tobacco or any other recreational drugs, and never have."

Raskin said to the best of his knowledge, there was no pot smoking at Apple by the Mac team during his tenure, and no other drug use.

"I never saw Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak use pot," he wrote. "What people did at home or after I left Apple is, of course, beyond my knowledge, but even at our social occasions, drugs were not a part of the scene. Pizza, yes. Puns, yes. Play, yes. Pot, no.... I even prefer my apples unfermented."

Raskin was backed up by David Bunnell, the founding editor of Macworld magazine, who said he saw no pot smoking at Apple.

"I never saw any evidence of that among the people who created the Mac," he said. "And I was there. I was intimately involved with the Mac development team. I had free access to the Mac building. I don't recall seeing any evidence of people smoking pot while they were developing the machine."

Bunnell conceded that any pot smoking may have been witnessed only by those who were sympathetic to it.

"They didn't invite me," he said. "Maybe I was too straight."

But Bunnell noted that if pot has been smoked at Apple, it could account for the machine's relatively sluggish performance.

"Maybe that's why Macs have been slower all these years," he said.

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