Illegal Botanicals (U.S.A.)

[Anonymous]

You listed spores and mycellium also, however, spores are only illegal in California, Idaho and Georgia. And thanks to a recent FBI study and published paper, according to them there is no psilocine or psilocybine in the mycelia of magic shrooms, so the mycelia can legally be send across the continental USA and not be illegal.

Perfect!!!

[Anonymous]

I think we should follow most laws put in place by our various governments except those which state that we may not grow a certain botanical!

All botanicals, all plants, all cacti, all fungi, all forms of life should be legal!

(Note the "I think")

[dogbane26]

Actually they should be approached from an ecological standpoint.  

Plants as well as some fungi produce chemicals that protect them from herbivores.    This is part of the green world hypothesis ( well fungi isn't but i included it anyways since some fungi produce chemicals as well).

Plants have to be able to survive in nature since there are more species of insects than there are plants.  Not just insects but other herbivores as well.   Plants have physical defenses such as thorns and chemical defenses such as alkaloids, terpenes..etc.    

Mescaline, THC, Cocaine, Morphine, Psilocybin are all defense mechanisms, its just a coincidence that they became used as recreational drugs by humans.  

Peyote is said to be one of the only cacti that doesn't bear spines but instead it relies on chemical defenses to protect itself.  Mescaline is probably the main alkaloid that discourages browsing.  

An animal learns to avoid it after eating it.  Not that mescaline will necessarily kill an animal, but it will deter it from consuming it next time.  

I think horses learn to not eat sleepy grass more than onetime.

[Anonymous]

Mescaline, THC, Cocaine, Morphine, Psilocybin are all defense mechanisms, its just a coincidence that they became used as recreational drugs by humans.

I disagree. I think they are from God, put here so plants can talk with people.

Peyote is said to be one of the only cacti that doesn't bear spines but instead it relies on chemical defenses to protect itself. Mescaline is probably the main alkaloid that discourages browsing.

Wrong. Ariocarpus. Astrophytum. There.

[dogbane26]

I wasnt trying to turn it into a religious conversation i was just agreeing that they shouldnt be illegal and i was using  ecology to explain that they have a right to grow and be here just like everything else does- just because they produce chemicals that help them survive/ adapt doesnt mean they should be illegal.    

To say any plant is bad is absurd and plants should have the right to grow where they please, it is people that are bad and abuse the earth like pollution , deforestation, global warming,...etc    not plants.  
 

 I was just using the example of how plants use chemicals and thats how an ecologist or biologist would look at it rather than someone who just heard the word cocaine and has no knowledge of alkaloids and other secondary compounds found in plants.  

Cocaine is thought to work as a defense and i heard onetime the US DEA tried to use an insect pest to attack coca plants in South America and the plants adapted by producing more cocaine alkaloids to prevent the insects from eating them.

You can believe what you want but i was just recently reading about a plant from Australia which was shown to have anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-feeding properties.    

This is all suggested/ proposed and not proven.  ( the function of alkaloids in plants)

Using a car should be illegal.  I dont agree that a society can say what is legal or isnt.    

Saying something that was created by god/nature is illegal is absurd.

I think the man-made and or extracted  drugs should be illegal but not the plant itself.    

Coca plants are no more dangeous than drinking coffee yet alot of ignorant people think coca and cocaine are the same when they arnt.

I think cocaine should be illegal but not using coca leaves.

What is a society to say whether something is bad or good that is found in nature?    Cocaine is semi-synthetic so id say it should be illegal if it was up to me.   Meth should be illegal since it is mostly synthetic and a bunch of dangerous chemicals.   I dont think using opium should be illegal but heroin yes.  

God/nature it doesnt matter. Some biologists believe in both and that god orchestrated evolution.

[Anonymous]

I wasnt trying to turn it into a religious conversation i was just agreeing that they shouldnt be illegal and i was using ecology to explain that they have a right to grow and be here just like everything else does- just because they produce chemicals that help them survive/ adapt doesnt mean they should be illegal.  

Good point.

To say any plant is bad is absurd and plants should have the right to grow where they please, it is people that are bad and abuse the earth like pollution , deforestation, global warming,...etc not plants.

That what I'm saying man. You know don't do cocaine or shoot heroin or whatever, but I think we should be able to grow whatever plants we fucking please.

Saying something that was created by god/nature is illegal is absurd.

Preach on brother!

What is a society to say whether something is bad or good that is found in nature? Cocaine is semi-synthetic so id say it should be illegal if it was up to me. Meth should be illegal since it is mostly synthetic and a bunch of dangerous chemicals. I dont think using opium should be illegal but heroin yes.

They think about what I do... that all botanicals, should be 100% legal in their living and dried forms, only if they were processed into drugs would they be illegal.

It would be legal to do simple extractions of botanicals in ones home or private property, such as brewing ayahuasca, or making hash, but I would still like to see ayahuasca, shrooms, peyote and cannabis commerically illegal.

[boomer2]

I, along with Jonathan Ott, Dennis McKenna and Jochen gartz on a panel discussion group, all suggested and agreed in 1994 at Chapman University in Orange County, California, at the Gathering of the Minds Symposium (12 hours),  That natural plants should be legal and extractions of the active ingredients illegal.

This was onthe very day or Richard M. Nixon's funeral.

It is taped on VHS. I intend in the next month or so tohave this video of this panel discussion on you tube before the x-mas holiday.

WE debated this, Ott talks about it in Pharmacotheon, the most liberal approace to legalizing drugs by any professional scholar, and that was later followed by Sasha and Ann Shulgin in Tihkal.  I was the first to present individual dosages for mushrooms in both my 1st two mushroom field guides because the experts were afraid to.

Dennis and I had discussed that very idea at lunch before our lectures a the all day conference of more than fifty speakers, including Tim Leary and Baba Ram Dass and others.

boomer2

[Anonymous]

I, along with Jonathan Ott, Dennis McKenna and Jochen gartz on a panel discussion

group, all suggested and agreed in 1994 at Chapman University in Orange County, California, at the Gathering of the Minds Symposium (12 hours), That natural plants should be legal and extractions of the active ingredients illegal.

And thats exactly what I'm talking about!

[dogbane26]

Teotzecal i meant generally speaking Peyote is one of the only cacti that doesn't have spines.  I meant looking at the majority of cacti species out there they seem to rely on spines as a physical defense against herbivores while peyote uses chemicals instead since it lacks the spines.  

Mescaline ive heard is even found in some Opuntia but much lower % compared to Trichocereus pachanoi or Peyote.  

Phytochemistry is an interesting topic but i dont like chemistry that much and i would have to take to many other chemistry classes just to be able to take phytochemistry.  

I think wild plants contain higher concentrations  of chemicals to be used as defenses and that is also why wild ginseng is worth more than even  simulated wild ginseng ( ginseng that you plant and try to make it  wild).  

I know wild purslane contains alot more oxalic acid than the cultivated varieties.  

This means you probably shouldnt eat a lot of wild purslane.

I agree that no plant should be illegal but if i were to tell people that they might think i am growing marijuana , or poppies which i am not.

Its hard to avoid ignorance;   i once was telling a teacher about coca plants and then he started to say: your not growing anything illegal.

See that is ignorance right there.  Coca isnt cocaine.  I was telling him about my friend who lives in Indonesia.  

Coca is probably one of the best plants in the world it is so nutritious and etc yet people in America are ignorant about it because of the war on drugs propaganda.

Huge distinction.  You take one alkaloid out of the plant then it becomes a dangerous addictive drug, but using the whole herb isnt the same.      Coca is the best example i can think of.  

Its not because cocaine is purified its because the other chemicals are absent which would have a neutralizing effect on the cocaine alkaloid.  


Hey i have a book where this author makes a point about it.   Botany in a day is the name.  

He says when u start extracting chemicals you actually begin to learn less about the plant.

[boomer2]

Apparently you are not aware of the ethnobotanical garden in Hawaii on the big Island of Hawaii near Kona which grows dozens of entheogenic plants legally. It was started by the Late Terence McKenna and his wife Kat Harrison,

You really need to start reading the literature about entheogens.

One, the government will never allow the legalization of these plants.  IT is not a religious matter.

Minors steal, car tape decks, stereos, burglarize homes just to buy a gram of pot.  This is what law Enforcement see every day.

Families do not want this happening to their children.  It has nothing to do with your rights or mine.

I notice in your entheogenic declaration you say anyone 17-years-of age.  IS that your age?

 Read some Mercea Eliade Shamanism books.  Writings by McKenna Richard Evans Schultes, the greatest Botanist of the last century.

He lived in the Amazon for 14 years.  hardly saw any white man.  Botanically discovered over 24,000 plants new to science.  83 of them were entheogenic plants.  HE has a 2 million acre land tract in the Amazon named in his honor.

Co-authored the Plants of the Gods and the Botany and Chemistry of the Hallucinogens with Albert Hofmann.

Wade Davis, author of the Serpent and the rainbow wrote his biography called, One River.  Read that book.  Learn to post information which you actually have knowledge of instead of sophomoric tirades.

Then people might began to take you seriously.

You speak of all of these entheogenic plants yet you have no knowledge of them, their culture or their history.

Read Jonathan Ott's Pharmacotheon and Ayahuasca Analogs.

Read Sasha and Ann Shulgin's Tihkal.

Go to Hawaii and take a course at the u of Hawaii on Psychoactive Drug Plants.  A 16 week course, which also requires a lab course and some psychology classes or a class on social medicines.  This course is by my co-author on 7 papers on magic shrooms.  Dr. Merlin also wrote the first modern book on Hemp (Man and Marijuana, 1971), soon to be released with a few hundred more pages of updates and partially edited my me.  That was his masters degree thesis at the U of Hawaii for the Department of geography. HE also wrote for the Federal Government, On the Trail of the Ancient Opeium Poppy.  And coauthored, Kava The Pacific Drug with Vince LeBot.

Merlins course:

[attachment=2:3shpfqbm]merlin'scourse1a.jpg[/attachment:3shpfqbm]

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boomer2

[boomer2]

The last two pages of Dr. Merlin's course

This course is scheduled every other semester.

Of course you can take courses in Ethnobotany at many University's, Including Harvard where most of the scholars involved in psychedelic research graduated from.

Terence McKenna graduated at the U of Hawaii

[attachment=1:lsyoogtx]merlin'scourse4a.jpg[/attachment:lsyoogtx]

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boomer2

[dogbane26]

I know U of Hawaii, Manoa has programs in ethnobotany.  

right now i am just working on getting a four year degree in plant biology.  

Im not sure exactly what branch of biology id like to specialize in.  

Probably not genetics i know that for sure.  

I think southern illinois university has graduate programs in ethnobotany as well as Miami International University in Florida.

[Stonehenge]

Boomer, thanks for posting the interesting information. It is nice that they are teaching about these things. Maybe some day people will be more tolerant and understanding. Speaking of which, I have to take exception to this part:

Minors steal, car tape decks, stereos, burglarize homes just to buy a gram of pot. This is what law Enforcement see every day.

Families do not want this happening to their children. It has nothing to do with your rights or mine.

That is terrible misinformation. Perhaps you don't like pot but the fact that kids steal and do other things is not because of pot. Cannabis is not addictive but you seem to imply that it is or that it makes people commit crimes. It has a lot to do with our rights, IMO. People steal to eat, should we make food illegal or other things they may buy?

I would go along with denying it to minors, much the same way alcohol is regulated. They always seem to use the old "it's to protect the children" to take away our rights. How many times have I heard that one? They are using that to try to censor the internet and prohibit many other things. They use protecting the children as an excuse to spy on us or other totalitarian things they want to do.

[boomer2]

I happen to love pot and have nothing against it personally.  however, statistics show that teenage theft revolves around being able to purchase marijuana which use to be ten dollars an ounce.  When it was Ten an ounce,, their was really less crime associated with drugs and drug use.

Interstingly, hash has been stable since the 1970s. While pot increased to 20 an ounce int eh 1970s, ounces of hash increased form $0 dollars an ounce to *20 and now about $100-$120.00 an ounce, yet a gram has been stable at ten an ounce to $15.

While marijuana is considered as a harmless drug, Teenagers who drop out of school are a big cause of concern with law enforcement agencies. I have this on good information first hand form Sasha Shulgin who for twenty years analyzed drugs for the DEA in court cases.

He had informed me personally that pot is a big social problem for teenagers who do not finish school and that it is statistically recorded that many car theft of radios and tape players and cd's are by teenagers looking to buy pot and other drugs.  This includes teenage robberies in many suburban areas in condos, duplexes and apartment buildings.

And many of these kids involved in this kind of activity are white middle-class and below.  More so than blacks.

But it also showed that many are also into meth, crack and cocaine bow as opposed to twenty-five years ago when most drug crimes were related to prostitution and mob action.

Anyway, have a shroomy day.

[Stonehenge]

Someone who worked for the DEA is not an impartial source of info on pot.

"I have this on good information first hand form Sasha Shulgin who for twenty years analyzed drugs for the DEA in court cases."