Holy Smoke

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Southern Africa has one of the world’s longest histories with cannabis, which was likely introduced to the continent by medieval Arab merchants. By the time Dutch settlers landed in what is now Cape Town in the mid-17th century, they found the native Khoisan people puffing on the peculiar plant, which the Khoisan called “dagga”. The weed had a variety of uses: Zulu warriors smoked it to ease their nerves before battle and it provided pain relief for Sotho women during childbirth. European settlers even began cultivating the crop to keep their non-white workforce “happy”, though few indulged themselves.

However, in 1922, South Africa imposed a nationwide ban on selling, growing and possessing the plant, and called for it to be outlawed globally.
In 1971, the apartheid government passed the Abuse of Dependence-Producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act, which it boasted was the toughest drug law in the Western world where arrestees could risk jail spells of two to 10 years for possession of a single marijuana joint. The 1971 law was replaced by the 1992 Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act, and although apartheid ended not long after, the new government kept the same legal framework.

This so-called war on drug raged until 2017, when the Western Cape High Court ruled on a case brought by Rastafarian lawyer Ras Gareth Prince, who had been arrested with his family for growing dagga in 2012. The court declared that the prohibition violated his right to privacy, a claim ultimately upheld by the Constitutional Court in 2018. Arrests plummeted over the next few years, and in 2023, the South African police officially ordered its officers to stop making “pot busts”...

 

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On the eve of the May 27 general elections, which saw the ruling African National Congress lose its majority for the first time in 30 years of South African democracy, a major change to the country’s drug laws slipped through, barely noticed by most, when the day before the historic ballot, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, making South Africa the first African nation to legalise the use of marijuana. The bill removes cannabis from the country’s list of outlawed narcotics, meaning adults are now free to grow and consume the plant (except in the presence of children). The bill also stipulates that those who broke the law by committing such deeds should have their records automatically wiped clean.

Unlike other countries where cannabis has been legalised, such as Malta, Canada and Uruguay, there is still no way to lawfully acquire it in South Africa as a casual smoker unless you grow it yourself. Selling cannabis remains illegal unless it is for medicinal purposes and has been prescribed by a doctor. The new legislation has been six years in the making. After a 2018 court ruling that private consumption of cannabis was constitutional, the government was told to prepare legislation which would legalise it within two years.

Since then, shops and dispensaries have been selling the drug under Section 21 of the Medicines Act, which allows for “unregistered medicines” if prescribed by a doctor. The 2018 ruling meant that cannabis could be included in this list of unregistered medicines. However, uncertainties in the law have led to a few of these dispensaries and “private members’ clubs” (operating under the principle of “private consumption”) being targeted by authorities. The Haze Club (THC) in Johannesburg, a collective of cannabis growers operating on private premises, for example, was raided in 2020, and legal proceedings continue. “They’ve mushroomed up in the last six months: there’s been more clubs and shops opening than ever before, they’re literally saturating the market, and now they don’t have a law to arrest them on. Trade is everywhere already. We just need to regulate it.”...the fight now is to actually regulate trade. This means overcoming perceptions among conservative sections of society that cannabis is still a dangerous drug....

 

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While a few African countries like Malawi have legitimised medical marijuana, and others such as Ghana ended penalising minor quantities for personal consumption, South Africa is the first to allow recreational use. Elsewhere on the continent, Morocco allowed the use of cannabis for medical and industrial purposes, such as the use of hemp in fabrics, in 2021. But with a centuries-long tradition of smoking for relaxation, full legalisation is now very much part of the public debate, with cannabis farmers and investors holding public debates with MPs on the issue.

High Times@Al Jazeera.com

It looks weird to see extreme right-wing government becoming more popular around the world as legislation to lift restrictions on the cultivation and consumption of marry juana becomes widespread, reversing 150 years of criminal attribution to a widely misunderstood narcotic. Governments have finally got the message that the 'War on Drugs' has caused more harm than good in prohibiting the use of a plant that can provide medical assistance and psychological relief for a wide range of treatable illness'. The new legislation in SA closely resembles the new laws spreading across the United States where they've been in place for some time - with mixed results. It allows people to indulge their right to choose and legally purchase the weed but hasn't stopped the illegal traffick or the consumption of Class A narcotics which are effectively far worse.

There's no easy fix but the recent amendment to Germany's new law means you can now toke n' drive legally and, on selected roads, drive as fast as you like beyond the speed limit...what could possibly go wrong?

 

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After Colorado became the first state to legalize the sale of recreational cannabis to any adult in 2014, it took just 10 years for about half of the country to follow suit. More than 100 million adults in the US went from having no legal access to the drug to being able to waltz into their local dispensary, buy some weed, and take it home to get as happy as they please.

Now, Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, sees the same kind of early activity in state psychedelic policy, including budding legislation to legalize sales, that he saw in cannabis right before the wave of legalizing commercial sales took off. While the medicinal use of psychedelics gains more attention and as states allocate funds toward research, the prospect of retail psychedelics has quietly landed on our doorstep. “State policymakers, whether they like it or not, are going to start confronting these conversations,” said Kilmer.

RAND’s report joins Transform Drug Policy Foundation’s “How to Regulate Psychedelics,” published late last year, as some of the first major pieces of policy research to begin mapping the possible policy options for designing a retail psychedelics market. Kilmer explained that the logistics of retail psychedelics fall into one of two categories: supply architectures and design considerations. Supply architectures come first. Who gets to sell psychedelics? The RAND report lays out a taxonomy of options, including sales by a government authority, sales by nonprofits, sales by for-benefit corporations, and full-on for-profit sales...

 

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One step further would be legalizing sales through only certain types of organizations, like non-profits or for-benefit corporations. For example, when New York handed out its first wave of retail licenses for cannabis, they went to either non-profits or equity applicants (mostly people with past cannabis-related convictions). By concentrating retail licenses with organizations that have goals other than profit, some of the potential excesses of commercializing psychedelics, from excessive marketing to skirting regulations in search of more revenue, could potentially be counterbalanced by emphases on public health or equity.

And finally, the approach that now dominates cannabis in the US: for-profit sales. In theory, a for-profit approach could benefit consumers by enlisting competition to push prices down. But it also creates an incentive for companies to push against regulations in search of a financial edge, while both advertising and innovating to seek out as many new customers as possible. THC gummies are one thing, but LSD-infused ring pops? Psilocybin bubble tea? This leads down a slippery slope that makes even advocates uncomfortable.

 

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The bill would essentially take our approach to driving licenses, and adapt it for psychedelics. People 18 and up would have to go through a health screening, take an educational course, and pass a test, after which they’d receive a permit to buy psychedelics (in this bill’s case, only psilocybin) from licensed vendors. They could then take the drugs home and use as they please. They could also then grow the mushrooms at home, and share them with other permitted adults.

Still, an approach that requires licensing at each step of the commercial journey, from production to distribution to consumption, builds in plenty of opportunities for regulation, while still filling the gaps in supply left by therapy, supervised programs, or religious exemptions. And by requiring permits for consumers, it leans deeper into harm reduction than the for-profit cannabis model that is coming under increasing criticism.

There is no approach to retail psychedelics that’s without risk. But cars killed nearly 41,000 Americans last year alone, and we keep licensing people to use those. “Obviously, there are a number of concerns, especially if you were to unleash a commercial industry,” said Kilmer. “But at the end of the day, you can have the best empirical evidence out there with minimal uncertainty, and a lot of it still just comes down to the values and risk preferences for the people making decisions.”

VOX.com

 

[crystal ball]

Southern Africa has one of the world’s longest histories with cannabis, which was likely introduced to the continent by medieval Arab merchants. By the time Dutch settlers landed in what is now Cape Town in the mid-17th century, they found the native Khoisan people puffing on the peculiar plant, which the Khoisan called “dagga”. The weed had a variety of uses: Zulu warriors smoked it to ease their nerves before battle and it provided pain relief for Sotho women during childbirth. European settlers even began cultivating the crop to keep their non-white workforce “happy”, though few indulged themselves.

However, in 1922, South Africa imposed a nationwide ban on selling, growing and possessing the plant, and called for it to be outlawed globally.
In 1971, the apartheid government passed the Abuse of Dependence-Producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act, which it boasted was the toughest drug law in the Western world where arrestees could risk jail spells of two to 10 years for possession of a single marijuana joint. The 1971 law was replaced by the 1992 Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act, and although apartheid ended not long after, the new government kept the same legal framework.

This so-called war on drug raged until 2017, when the Western Cape High Court ruled on a case brought by Rastafarian lawyer Ras Gareth Prince, who had been arrested with his family for growing dagga in 2012. The court declared that the prohibition violated his right to privacy, a claim ultimately upheld by the Constitutional Court in 2018. Arrests plummeted over the next few years, and in 2023, the South African police officially ordered its officers to stop making “pot busts”...

The last mbanje spliff I had was in 91 in Zimbabwe

 

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Watched this item on the BeeB news last night - so it must be true?

This article in the Guardian has more detail: One in six vapes confiscated in English schools are spiked with the highly addictive “zombie drug” spice, according to research. Analysis from 38 schools revealed that the synthetic street drug, classified as class B alongside ketamine and GHB, was in nearly 100 devices. The researchers said they believed the substance was being put into vapes marketed as containing cannabis oil. The tests also found that spice was predominantly added to refillable vapes rather than disposable ones.

I thought vapes were originally intended to help people quit the evil weed yet somehow they've gone from a pharmaceutical aid to a one-hit training bong for teenagers. Madness.

 

[ajohn]

There is no evidence to suggest that the Assassins used drugs in their ceremonies. Indeed, the use of alcohol and other intoxicants was prohibited by the austere Islamic sect. Despite such prohibitions, the myth that the Assassins were drug-crazed killers has persisted into the modern day. Part of the confusion stems from the terms hashishim and hashishiyya, two names commonly used by early Muslim sources to refer to the Nizari Ismailis. These names would later become the roots of the word “assassin.” Both of these terms loosely translate to “users of hashish,” prompting many later historians to assume that the Nizaris used the drug. However, since hashish was considered to be the drug of the immoral and disenfranchised, it is more likely that the names were meant in a derogatory manner. It must be remembered that many contemporary chroniclers of the Assassins were Sunnis, and they had a vigorous dislike for the Shiite sect. This dislike colored their accounts and prompted them to brand the Assassins with a fearsome name that would be dreaded and reviled for centuries.

How Assassins Got Their Name

How did assassins first get their name? Mark Longo explores this question and others below.

warfarehistorynetwork.com

The run up, not long, says how Polo said they used it.

Might depend on how it's taken
Conclusion: Acute cannabis exposure in a healthy adult male resulted in self-reported hallucinations that rated high in magnitude on several subscales of the HRS. However, the hallucinatory experience in this case was qualitatively different than that typically experienced by participants receiving classic and atypical hallucinogens, suggesting that the hallucinatory effects of cannabis may have a unique pharmacological mechanism of action. This type of adverse event needs to be considered in the clinical use of cannabis.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5908416/

 

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“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours, the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended directly and unconditionally by Mind at Large—this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.”
Aldous Huxley

A distinguished author and intellectual who gained international fame following the publication of his novel “Brave New World,” Huxley’s immense enthusiasm for the intellectual and spiritual implications of hallucinogenic drugs would prove formative for the generation of psychedelic drug enthusiasts that subsequently changed the face of American society...and the world.

Huxley had been an aspiring mystic for much of his life, cultivting a steady interest in Vedanta Hinduism since the end of the 1930s; his 1945 book “The Perennial Philosophy,” a comparative study of mystical traditions, argued for the universal compatibility of all spiritual systems. Huxley’s unique perspective certainly contributed to the development of his perennial interpretation of the effects of psychedelics, which not only enlisted the teachings of mystics from various traditions but also interpreted the drugs as revealing a perennial type of knowledge, which he termed a “Mind-at-Large.” His religious interests placed him in the unique position of shifting the discourse by being one of the first Western thinkers to point to the potential religious importance of hallucinogens.

In May 1953, psychiatrist Humphry Osmond spent a few days at the Huxley residence in Los Angeles with the author and his wife. Huxley, who was fascinated by the accounts of hallucinogenic drugs and their peculiar effects, had implored Osmond to allow him to experience these effects firsthand. Osmond was reluctant at first, worried that he might become infamous as the person who rendered the famous novelist insane. However, he eventually consented, and on May 4, 1953, Huxley had

His first experience with mescaline, inspired him to write the “Doors of Perception” provoking a gamut of responses: some hostile, some sympathetic, some clearly bewildered. Several magazine writers noted that Huxley’s radical ideas could easily be rejected as the fantasies of a “misguided crackpot” had they been presented by anyone other than the respected English author. Some magazines celebrated Huxley’s proposition for a superior drug that could replace alcohol; others worried that the author’s ruminations might inadvertently encourage undisciplined hordes of youths to experiment with drugs. Authors were notably disturbed by Huxley’s association of the mescaline experience with Christian theology and mysticism. Stephen Siff, who has conducted an exhaustive review of media reactions to Huxley’s essay, notes that “Time” magazine went as far as to skip the parts of Huxley’s text that it considered potentially offensive to readers because of their Christian content.

The English author had become a suspicious eccentric in the eyes of many, a situation that he lamented with great bafflement and bitterness. However, as the years progressed, Huxley’s views proved to be highly influential with a new generation of hallucinogenic drug researchers, as well as with the nascent psychedelics movement.

 

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excerpts from: Altered States of Consciousness

Times are changing. The very fact that in the past few decades the theme of consciousness itself has become a central topic for psychologists and neuroscientists signals a transformation in the scientific landscape. For example, it is said among distinguished brain researchers that just 30 years ago they dared not disclose that their actual research topic was consciousness — they had to say they were studying visual perception, or processes of attention. The prevailing advice was not to “out” yourself as a consciousness researcher before achieving permanent tenure of employment. Of course by then, psychology was no longer dominated by the kind of behaviorism that, with its stimulus-response models, rejected consciousness as superfluous. But even subsequent paradigms in the cognitive sciences had no need for the concept of consciousness. How much harder it was then for scientists who were researching “altered states of consciousness.” If consciousness itself was unworthy of attention, there was certainly no need to investigate altered states of consciousness.

This transformation in the sciences is also evident in contemporary research into the short-term and long-term effects of meditation. It is notable that over the last decade psychologists and brain researchers have more frequently addressed meditation as a research topic, and this work increasingly garners media attention. Meditation, as a form of psychological intervention, has even been incorporated into hospitals’ clinical practice. Research findings on the effects of meditation are clear: Just a few weeks’ practice of meditation improves performance in terms of attentiveness and short-term memory, effects that demonstrably accompany alterations in brain structure. It can also be seen that those who meditate perceive their bodies more intensively, achieve stronger emotional self-control, and in the long term experience more positive emotions. More important is the fact that people who meditate regularly have extraordinary consciousness experiences — of calmness of thought, or of the self being one with the world — during their meditation, sometimes even after a short time of practice; more frequently, however, after they have been meditating intensively for many years. For some years these experiences have also been recorded scientifically. For example, in a study that may call to mind disconcerting images, Carmelite nuns were examined using a brain scanner as they prayed, in order to identify the brain activity associated with a mystical communion with God.

Further, there are scientists whose own formative experiences, whether with meditation or with hallucinogens, influenced their choice of profession; some have gone on to investigate extraordinary states of consciousness. Of course, the employment of established methods of brain research in this work has been a factor in its growing acceptance in the scientific community as a whole. Ultimately, though, it is up to the researchers to first tackle the topic itself, then hold their ground in the arena of more traditional ideas and among entrenched academics who may not be so open to new ones.

From this emerges a clear picture of the psychological and neuronal foundations of our time consciousness, as it is linked to our consciousness of self. From speculation we reach hypotheses. And, in the empirical sciences, hypotheses are there to be tested. This is the business of the researcher. To be continued...

“This is how one ought to see, how things really are.”