Israeli scientists develop date-rape drug detector

From: http://www.physorg.com/

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A bartender mixes a drink. The days of having to cart your cocktail to the ladies room may be over: two Israeli scientists say they have developed a sensor that can accurately detect date-rape drugs in drinks 100 percent of the time.

Professor Fernando Patolsky and Doctor Michael Ioffe of Tel Aviv University's school of chemistry say the sensor can tell you in real time whether your martini or your mocktail has been spiked with either of the two most common date-rape drugs.

"You just dip it into your drink, it might actually look like a stirrer in the final production, it's tiny, very tiny," Ioffe told AFP.

"And you don't even have to hold it up to the light and the system will let you know whether there are drugs dissolved in your drink."

The device sucks up a tiny drop of the suspect beverage and puts it in contact with the patented chemical formula devised by Patolsky and Ioffe.

"The drug itself is reacting with this chemical formulation and the previously clear formula becomes dirty and when the light shines it you can detect it," Ioffe said. "You don't have to do anything but dip it in your drink."
The two scientists tested their device on a range of popular cocktails as well as soft drinks and other beverages and found it was able to correctly tell which had been spiked 100 percent of the time.
"What's amazing is that there is no false positives until now," Ioffe said.

At present, the device can accurately detect the presence of the two of the most-commonly used date-rape drugs: GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyric acid) and ketamine.

The scientists are also working to expand the device's detection capacity to include Rohypnol, another drug commonly used to sedate the victims of date rape.

"We have some very, very optimistic preliminary results," Ioffe said. "All we need is money."

The pair expect the first batch of sensors could be commercially available within a year and a half.

The chemical formula that the device uses is cheap to produce and is not poisonous, meaning companies should be able to produce the sensor without requiring government approval.

All that remains is for the producers to decide how the device will let its users know whether their drink is safe for consumption, and a range of options are being considered, Ioffe said.

"We haven't decided how it will let you know. Maybe it will just light up or a part of it will rotate or maybe it will send a signal to your cell phone because you want to be discreet about it."

(c) 2011 AFP

Before & After: A good case against drug use

  From: http://i.imgur.com/

 
i.imgur.com — I don't like the drugs but the drugs like me. Rest in peace, Amy Winehouse.

Underground Website Lets You Buy Any Drug Imaginable

• By Adrian Chen, Gawker
• From: http://www.wired.com/

Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.

About three weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service delivered an ordinary envelope to Mark’s door. Inside was a tiny plastic bag containing 10 tabs of LSD. “If you had opened it, unless you were looking for it, you wouldn’t have even noticed,” Mark told us in a phone interview.

Mark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit “check out.” He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins — untraceable digital currency — worth around $150. Four days later, the drugs (sent from Canada) arrived at his house.

“It kind of felt like I was in the future,” Mark said.


Silk Road, a digital black market that sits just below most internet users’ purview, does resemble something from a cyberpunk novel. Through a combination of anonymity technology and a sophisticated user-feedback system, Silk Road makes buying and selling illegal drugs as easy as buying used electronics — and seemingly as safe. It’s Amazon — if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals.

Here is just a small selection of the 340 items available for purchase on Silk Road by anyone, right now: a gram of Afghani hash; 1/8 ounce of “sour 13″ weed; 14 grams of ecstasy; .1 gram tar heroin. A listing for “Avatar” LSD includes a picture of blotter paper with big blue faces from the James Cameron movie on it.
The sellers are located all over the world, a large portion from the United States and Canada.



But even Silk Road has limits: You won’t find any weapons-grade plutonium, for example. Its terms of service ban the sale of “anything who’s purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of mass destruction.”

‘It’s Amazon — if Amazon sold mild-altering chemicals.’

 

Getting to Silk Road is tricky. The URL seems made to be forgotten. But don’t point your browser there yet. It’s only accessible through the anonymizing network, TOR, which requires a bit of technical skill to configure.
Once you’re there, it’s hard to believe that Silk Road isn’t simply a scam. Such brazenness is usually displayed only by those fake “online pharmacies” that dupe the dumb and flaccid. There’s no sly, Craigslist-style code names here. But while scammers do use the site, most of the listings are legit. Mark’s acid worked as advertised. “It was quite enjoyable, to be honest,” he said. We spoke to one Connecticut engineer who enjoyed sampling some “silver haze” pot purchased off Silk Road. “It was legit,” he said. “It was better than anything I’ve seen.”

Edgarnumbers is selling these 2C-B "blue bees" tablets. Price: 1.15 bitcoins ($10) per tablet.

Silk Road cuts down on scams with a reputation-based trading system familiar to anyone who’s used Amazon or eBay. The user Bloomingcolor appears to be an especially trusted vendor, specializing in psychedelics. One happy customer wrote on his profile: “Excellent quality. Packing, and communication. Arrived exactly as described.” They gave the transaction five points out of five. 

“Our community is amazing,” Silk Road’s anonymous administrator, known on forums as “Silk Road,” told us in an e-mail. “They are generally bright, honest and fair people, very understanding, and willing to cooperate with each other.”

Sellers feel comfortable openly selling hard-core drugs because the real identities of those involved in Silk Road transactions are utterly obscured. If the authorities wanted to ID Silk Road’s users with computer forensics, they’d have nowhere to look. TOR masks a user’s tracks on the site. As for transactions, Silk Road doesn’t accept credit cards, PayPal or any other form of payment that can be traced or blocked. The only money good here is Bitcoins.
Bitcoins have been called a “crypto-currency,” the online equivalent of a brown paper bag of cash. Bitcoins are a peer-to-peer currency, not issued by banks or governments, but created and regulated by a network of other bitcoin holders’ computers. (The name “Bitcoin” is derived from the pioneering file-sharing technology Bittorrent.) They are purportedly untraceable and have been championed by cyberpunks, libertarians and anarchists who dream of a distributed digital economy outside the law, one where money flows across borders as free as bits.
To purchase something on Silk Road, you need first to buy some Bitcoins using a service like Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchange. Then, create an account on Silk Road, deposit some bitcoins, and start buying drugs. One bitcoin is worth about $8.67, though the exchange rate fluctuates wildly every day. Right now you can buy an 1/8 ounce of pot on Silk Road for 7.63 Bitcoins. That’s probably more than you would pay on the street, but most Silk Road users seem happy to pay a premium for convenience.

‘It kind of felt like I was in the future.’

Since it launched this February, Silk Road has represented the most complete implementation of the Bitcoin vision. Many of its users come from Bitcoin’s Utopian geek community and see Silk Road as more than just a place to buy drugs. Silk Road’s administrator cites the anarcho-libertarian philosophy of Agorism. “The state is the primary source of violence, oppression, theft and all forms of coercion,” Silk Road wrote to us. “Stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market.”
Mark, the LSD buyer, had similar views. “I’m a libertarian anarchist and I believe that anything that’s not violent should not be criminalized,” he said.

1UP of Canada is offering 1/8 ounce of "the infamous Jack Herer." He writes: "This is just classic stuff, well grown, well cured, well smoked." Price: 7.42 bitcoins ($64)

But not all Bitcoin enthusiasts embrace Silk Road. Some think the association with drugs will tarnish the young technology, or might draw the attention of federal authorities. “The real story with Silk Road is the quantity of people anxious to escape a centralized currency and trade,” a longtime bitcoin user named Maiya told us in a chat. “Some of us view Bitcoin as a real currency, not drug barter tokens.” 

 

Silk Road and Bitcoins could herald a black market eCommerce revolution. But anonymity cuts both ways. How long until a DEA agent sets up a fake Silk Road account and starts sending SWAT teams instead of LSD to the addresses she gets? As Silk Road inevitably spills out of the bitcoin bubble, its drug-swapping utopians will meet a harsh reality no anonymizing network can blur.

Alice in Wonderland Demonstrates Various Drug Use

Published by Paul Tassi
From http://unrealitymag.com/

So you all remember last week when I brought you a series of GIFs demonstrating various mental disorders via Winnie the Pooh characters. That was from artist Matthew Wilkinson (warning graphic content on site), and he’s actually done another series that I think is even better.
Everyone has always thought of Alice in Wonderland as some sort of allegory for a super ridiculous drug trip, but these GIFs demonstrate just how many substances are actually covered in the story. Granted, some weren’t even invented when the story was written, but it’s hard to unsee all of these once you realize they’re there.
Check out the full GIF gallery below, and Matthew, I look forward to seeing what your next project like this will be.

Trippy Bowls Inspired By Spiders On Drugs

Trippy Bowls Inspired By Spiders On Drugs

by Stephen Messenger

from http://www.treehugger.com/

Photos via Guillaume Lehoux

Spiders are one of nature's most capable engineers, crafting their delicate webs with uncanny precision, making it seem so effortless -- but when they get high on drugs, boy is it a different story. Once, in order to test the effects of psychoactive substances on the behavior of living things, NASA doped-up several spiders and watched them build. What resulted were some undeniably trippy web patterns. Now, one designer has replicated those drug-inspired creations into some unique-looking bowls, sure to leave you a bit dazed and confused.

During the testing, several spiders were given doses from one of four different substances: marijuana, benzedrine, caffeine or chloral hydrate. Interestingly, the web patterns the intoxicated spiders then produced seemed to reflect their altered state, deviating significantly from their standard web design.

Despite the rather cruel nature of those NASA experiments, French designer Guillaume Lehoux found the outcome to be fascinating and began working on the SOD_project, which of course stands for Spiders On Drugs.

The designer explains his motivation behind the project:

This experience seemed interesting to me for the visual and graphic aspects of its results. The webs produce by spiders offer something rare: a tangible and comparable visualization of the way some drugs affect the behavior of a living being.

My designer reflection focused on one side on how to reinvest the patterns of the webs of the experiment in one or more objects in volume and on the other side, the reflection was on the search for a typology of objects relevant to the environment of the experiment, namely the science/medicine, the drugs and the spiders.

The normal web (sober spider) is a dense and regular pattern. The design of the web, made of concentric circles and diagonals, seems to be governed by a general idea.

Marijuana affects concentration of the spider. Parts of the web, especially toward the outside, so late in the making of the web, are incomplete or missing.

Caffeine greatly disturbs the spider which is no longer capable of doing anything other than a fully heterogeneous and disorderly web.

Benzedrine, stimulating substance, causes great excitement among the spider. It works hard to weave his web but his haste causes significant omissions in the construction.

Chloral hydrate, sedative substance, slows down the actions of the spider. It fells asleep quickly without completing the making of the web. That explains the very brief appearance of this one.

Following the spirit of the spiders' original creations, Lehoux designed his webs to 'trap' or hold things as well, finding use as fruit bowls and loose change trays. Still, I suspect they'll serve better as a conversation piece -- or a place to store your old Pink Floyd cassettes.

NOTE: Just to clarify, this post was written to showcase one artist's provocative work, the focuses of which centers on the results from a controversial series of experiments performed by NASA some years ago. It should be said that I do not condone the animal-testing that inspired these designs, nor does, necessarily, the artist. I believe that the lives of all creatures, even common spiders, should be treated with respect and dignity.

Drug experts say alcohol worse than crack or heroin

Reuters – A bartender carries glasses at a booth during the 'Vinexpo Asia-Pacific 2006' in Hong Kong May …

By Kate Kelland Kate Kelland

From: http://news.yahoo.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Alcohol is a more dangerous drug than both crack and heroin when the combined harms to the user and to others are assessed, British scientists said Monday.

Presenting a new scale of drug harm that rates the damage to users themselves and to wider society, the scientists rated alcohol the most harmful overall and almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco.

According to the scale, devised by a group of scientists including Britain's Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) and an expert adviser to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), heroin and crack cocaine rank as the second and third most harmful drugs.

Ecstasy is only an eighth as harmful as alcohol, according to the scientists' analysis.

Professor David Nutt, chairman of the ISCD, whose work was published in the Lancet medical journal, said the findings showed that "aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy."

He said they also showed that current drug classification systems had little relation to the evidence of harm.

Alcohol and tobacco are legal for adults in Britain and many other countries, while drugs such as ecstasy and cannabis and LSD are often illegal and carry the threat of prison sentences.

"It is intriguing to note that the two legal drugs assessed -- alcohol and tobacco -- score in the upper segment of the ranking scale, indicating that legal drugs cause at least as much harm as do illegal substances," Nutt, who was formerly head of the influential British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), said in a statement about the study.

Nutt was forced to quit the ACMD a year ago after publicly criticizing ministers for ignoring scientific advice suggesting cannabis was less harmful than alcohol.

The World Health Organization estimates that risks linked to alcohol cause 2.5 million deaths a year from heart and liver disease, road accidents, suicides and cancer -- accounting for 3.8 percent of all deaths. It is the third leading risk factor for premature death and disabilities worldwide.

In an effort to offer a guide to policy makers in health, policing, and social care, Nutt's team rated drugs using a technique called multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) which assessed damage according to nine criteria on harm to the user and seven criteria on harm to others.

Harms to the user included things such as drug-specific or drug-related death, damage to health, drug dependence and loss of relationships, while harms to others included crime, environmental damage, family conflict, international damage, economic cost, and damage to community cohesion.

Drugs were then scored out of 100, with 100 given to the most harmful drug and zero indicating no harm at all.

The scientists found alcohol was most harmful, with a score of 72, followed by heroin with 55 and crack with 54.

Among some of the other drugs assessed were crystal meth (33), cocaine (27), tobacco (26), amphetamine or speed (23), cannabis (20), benzodiazepines, such as Valium (15), ketamine (15), methadone (14), mephedrone (13), ecstasy (9), anabolic steroids (9), LSD (7) and magic mushrooms (5).

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Suspect Eats Evidence During Arrest .. Cops get OWNED

Pure Genius!!!

Chandler Woman Renting Out Retired Drug Dog to Patrol Teens' Bedrooms

By James King
From http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/

www.tf.com

Attention Valley teens: Just when you thought your weed stash was safely hidden from your parents, get ready to say "fuuuuucccck!"

A Chandler woman has started a business called Desert Drug Dog, where she rents out her retired, drug-sniffing dog to parents who suspect their teens of using drugs.

Amy Halm and her dog, Dargo, will come to your house and flip it for drugs like it's a mini-van at a border-patrol checkpoint. She'll even do it when the kids are at school so they'll never know how you found their stash.

Amy Halm Dargo hard at work

​Dargo used to work for a police department in Indiana but has since retired and come to live with Halm in her Chandler home.

Halm tells New Times that Dargo had to leave his job as a working drug dog because, while he was great at sniffing out dope, he would often freak out if -- while he was searching for drugs -- a loud vehicle sped by.

Dargo's specialties are cocaine, marijuana, crystal meth, and just about any other mind-altering substance your kids probably don't want you to find.

Halm's operation is fairly unobtrusive to parents -- Dargo doesn't scratch or dig when he finds something, just indicates that it's there, at which point Halm will come and put a sticky note where the dog suspects drugs to be hidden. Parents can handle what they find as they see fit.

Halm isn't limiting Dargo's work to suspect teens, though, Dargo's services can be used in businesses and schools, too.

For more information on Desert Drug Dog, click here.

Scorpion Venom Strikes at Pain Without Morphine's Addictive Sting

By GreenerDesign Staff
From: http://www.greenbiz.com/

Tel Aviv, Israel — Scorpion venom could lead the way to morphine alternatives, according to research at Tel Aviv University.

The research, headed up by Prof. Michael Gurevitz of the Department of Plant Sciences, is looking at how to use natural compounds in scorpion venom to develop painkillers that aren't addictive or have other side effects.

Toxins in the venom interact with the nervous and muscular systems' sodium channels, some of which communicate pain. “The mammalian body has nine different sodium channels of which only a certain subtype delivers pain to our brain," Gurevitz said in a statement. “If we figure this out, we may be able to slightly modify such toxins, making them more potent and specific for certain pain mediating sodium channels."

With a better understanding of the toxins, researchers could engineer chemicals that mimic the painkilling aspects of venom without causing side effects.

"Instead of running the risk of addiction, this venom-derived drug, mimicking the small peptide toxin, would do what it needs to do and then pass from the body with no traces or side-effects,” Gurevitz said.

Gurevitz's research is focusing on the Israeli yellow scorpion, one of the most potent scorpions in the world, whose venom contains more than 300 peptides. Very few of those peptides have been investigated, but researchers do know that over the scorpion's history, its toxins have diversified and evolved to the point that some of its toxins can affect mammals while others affect insects. According to Gurevitz, those changes show how genetic engineering would be able to manipulate toxins in a similar way.

Scorpion - http://www.flickr.com/photos/furryscalyman/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

'75 Red Sox World Series hero: "I played every game high"

From: http://www.boston.com/

Bernie Carbo was out of major league baseball by the age of 33, but now stays connected with the game by running a fantasy camp each year in Mobile, Ala. (Stan Grossfeld/ Globe Staff)

boston.com — Bernie Carbo launched the greatest pinch-hit home run in Red Sox history. He admitted he was high on drugs during the 1975 World Series. Now he has cleaned up his act.

Click here for this fascinating article

South Park Takes on Medical Marijuana

Posted by: Matt Tobey
From: http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/

On this week's South Park, opinions are split when medical marijuana comes to town. Randy does everything he can to get a prescription, but Cartman is upset to find his beloved KFC replaced by a pot dispensary. I'll personally be watching this episode very closely, because medical marijuana is an issue that's very important to me. You see, I was born with a genetic condition that makes it so I can only eat Cheez-Its in moderation. You can imagine how debilitating it is. But with medical marijuana, I'm able to eat an entire box in one sitting. Two boxes if there's a Golden Girls marathon on.

South Park airs Wednesday at 10pm / 9c, followed by an all-new Ugly Americans.

10 children’s characters who were definitely on drugs

by Jeff Wysaski
from http://guyism.com/

Have you ever thought that Goofy was just a little bit too goofy? Wonder where Woody Woodpecker gets all that energy? Keep reading to take a look at 10 children’s characters who were obviously on drugs:

1 Scooby Doo and Shaggy Marijuana

Scooby and Shaggy were clearly the two slackers of Mystery, Inc. Add in the fact that they always had the munchies, were way too paranoid about everything and drove around in the back of a van, and it’s pretty safe to say that these two were ripping bong hits every chance they got. Of course, there’s also the infamous recurring scene in which the Mystery Machine drives away and smoke curiously billows out the back. Scoobie DOOBIE Doo!

2 Woody Woodpecker Cocaine

The hyper-speed energy of Woody Woodpecker is just too boundless and frenetic to be the mannerisms of a completely sober cartoon character. I mean, you can’t watch an episode of this classic cartoon – what with Woody bouncing off the walls, eyes all big and dilated – and not start to catch onto the fact that he was snorting something up that beak of his.

3 The Caterpillar From Alice in Wonderland Opium

The Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland smokes out of a hookah – case closed. Further ammo – at one point he exhales and a cloud of smoke in the shape of a Chinese dragon comes out of his mouth. Oh, and he also informs Alice that she can grow and shrink through the use of mushrooms. Sounds like the guy knows his way around a drug party.

Note: The Caterpillar is probably just the clearest example of someone getting stoned in Wonderland. The Mad Hatter and Cheshire Cat were clearly on something as well, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee were probably huffing paint out in those woods.

4 Goofy Glue

Speaking of huffing, Goofy was just a little too loopy to suffer from low IQ alone. With his patented awkward walk and remarkable ability to fall flat on his ass, those motor skills of his were obviously impaired in some way. My bet is on rubber cement, but I could also see this dopey Mickey sidekick sniffing on a Sharpie or sucking nitrous from a red balloon.

5 Chester Cheetah Marijuana

Forget the old cats vs. dog feud – Chester Cheetah would be great friends with Scooby Doo. If this cartoon feline ever took off those patented sunglasses of his, it’s probably fair to say we’d see a couple of dry, bloodshot eyes. And of course, anyone who loves Cheetos as much as that Cheetah has got to have a pretty healthy level of THC circulating through the body.

6 Popeye Steroids

Spinach makes you strong? Yeah, right – not that fast at least. Symptoms of steroid use include sudden growth in muscles, increased aggression and feelings of invincibility. Sound familiar? Oh yeah, another symptom is poor decision making – which would explain why ol’ Popeye was dating that whiny string bean with the wobbly arms – Olive Oyl.

7 Pepe Le Pew Ecstasy

How do you spell love. Well, when you love everything as intensely as Pepe Le Pew, the answer is probably M-D-M-A. Combine his overt affection with the fact that he couldn’t stop rubbing his hands all over the ladies, and it makes a pretty strong case that Pepe Le Pew was hitting up the underground rave scene in his off time.

8 Animal PCP

Symptoms of PCP include erratic behavior, poor speech, mania and a blank stare facial expression. Animal possesses all of these traits. Angel dust also grants the user extreme strength. If you recall, the enthusiastic drummer of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem actually had to be CHAINED to his drum set because he became so violent. Oh, and he’s a musician – a profession that virtually requires you to be a drug addict.

9 Yakko, Wakko and Dot LSD

The odd behavior of the three main characters from Animaniacs might be the result of many different types of drugs. However, when you take into account clues such as Wakko attempting to eat scene backgrounds and Yakko believing he’s the king of a made-up country named Anvilania, the use of hallucinogenics becomes more apparent. Clearly, only such grand illusions could be caused by LSD.

10 Pippi Longstocking Marijuana

Here’s one more pothead for the books. If that picture doesn’t sell you, Pippi’s love for all things fun, along with her disdain for authority figures and public schooling should serve to further bolster her hippie tendencies. She also loves telling long stories that consist of nothing but pure nonsense or ridiculousness. Pippi’s curious super strength (she can lift a horse over her head with one hand) also suggests that she may be lacing those joints with PCP.