[MPWG] NIH and WIDELY AVAILABLE PSYCHOACTIVE NATURAL PRODUCTS

[Cafesombra at aol.com]

Greetings All,

I'm curious to hear more about the intentions of this research, what will the 
findings ultimately be used to accomplish?  
http://www.drugabuse.gov/whatsnew/meetings/psychoactivemtgsumm.html

Increasing our knowlegde and understanding of how plants work on human beings 
is a benevolent enough goal, although I would direct participating 
researchers to give at least a cursory scan to Jim Duke's now fairly old work on synergy 
and his "silver bullet vs. the shotgun shell" argument against the active ingr
edient principle.  

I'm curious because, conspiracy theorist that I tend to be or at least 
sporting a healthy distrust of government as any average participant in a democracy 
ought to do, I was immediately concerned that such research generated by among 
only three principals, the Office of Drug Abuse, would be used to further 
what I fear is a discredit-and-ban approach to herbal medicine being increasing 
adopted under an adminitration with rather blatant, well documented, direct 
ties to the pharmaceutical industry, for example Bush ties to Eli Lily (maker of 
Prozac) or Rumsfeld's ties to G.R. Searles.  I could be wrong, but as an 
illustration of my point a ban on kava in Great Britain occuring simultaneously to 
British researchers exposing the suicidal tendencies of long-term Prozac users 
seemed to me to be orchestrated from behind political scenes.  There seems a 
not-so-hidden agenda seeking to restrict access to and prohibit use of what N. 
Culpepper called "The People's Medicine," namely the plants, in a political 
environment which aside from herbal products, seems to want to unregulate all 
trade.  Granted, with McKenna listed as a participant in the workshop in 
question I am sort of willing to concede that this may be an attempt to truly 
understand in a non-biased way.  I would honestly appreciate hearing some thoughts 
about this because I'm a free thinker and would like to know the facts before I 
make up my mind. 

In regard to this discredit-and-ban tactic, I can't help pointing out also 
that government prohibition of dangerous drugs never works, as was most famously 
illustrated by killer alcohol, a widely available psychoactive natural plant 
product. 

In regard to how this topic may affect conservation of plants, I would argue 
that once a plant is labeled as a widely available psychotropic drug and 
government forces move in to restrict or curtail supplies, generally Monsanto ends 
up with a contract for huge amounts of Round-Up as is the case of Plan 
Columbia efforts to reduce production of coca.  In my own neck of the woods, local 
sherrifs, trying to eradicate Datura stromonium after teenagers were found to be 
messing with this admittedly very dangerous plant, sprayed copious amounts of 
Round Up until they ran out of money and gave up on a futile effort to 
control an extremely abundant self-seeding weed.  I do not know the conservation 
status of any plants that happened to get in the way of these raining Round Up, 
if-you-can't-regulate-it-kill-everything approaches to drug abuse control.

I'm not a scientist and do not take scietific data as the last word on any 
subject so, take what I'm saying with a grain of salt all you scientists out 
there.  I would guess though that there are serveral people lurking in the 
sidelines with a similar, though perhaps -- perhaps -- ill-informed distrust of such 
government-sponsored scientific initiatives.  So if anyone has 2 cents to add 
to my dollar I'd like to hear it.

Best regards,
Jennifer Chesworth
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