Drug War

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Pot Activist Still in the Joint: ‘It Was All Medical Marijuana’
Lincoln Anderson

Dana Beal would rather be smoking a joint — but he’s in the joint.

Bleecker St. marijuana activist Beal continues to sit in jail in
Wisconsin after police arrested him and Lance Ramer of Omaha,
Nebraska, on Jan. 6 with an alleged 186 pounds of pot in a car that
Ramer was driving and in which Beal was a passenger.

Beal has been unable to make his $50,000 bail, though his lawyer has

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Yippie Activist Dana Beal Arrested in Wisconsin Pot Bust
Todd Finkelmeyer

Irvin Dana Beal, a blast from Madison's counter-culture past, is sitting in the Iowa County jail because police say the car he was riding in on Jan. 6 was pulled over with more than 180 pounds of marijuana in it.

And although few details are available, the Barneveld police chief is hinting that those involved could be linked to a national drug operation.

Will California Legalize Pot? Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet Today, at least a third of Americans say they've tried smoking weed. Is it possible that after half a century of increasingly mainstreamed pot use the public is ready for marijuana to be legal? We may soon find out. California has long been on the front lines of marijuana policy. In 1996, it became the first state to legalize medical cannabis. This year, the Tax Cannabis initiative -- now officially baptized Proposition 19 -- may very well be the best chance any state has ever had at legalizing the consumption, possession and cultivation of marijuana for anyone over 21.
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LSD Pioneer Owsley Stanley Dies in Australian Car Crash
Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Owsley "Bear" Stanley, a 1960s counterculture figure who flooded the flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of Australia on Sunday, his family said. He was believed to be 76.

The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco's Bay Area.

"He made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honor," former rock 'n' roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoirs "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

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A Yippie Veteran Is in Jail Far From the East Village Colin Moynihan, New York Times It has been more than 40 years since Dana Beal came to prominence as a theoretician for the Youth International Party, known as the Yippies, and embarked on a long career in the world of countercultural politics. Since 1973, Mr. Beal and other Yippies have used a brick tenement on Bleecker Street, just west of the East Village, as a base for planning large-scale events, including demonstrations at national political conventions and worldwide marches calling for the legalization of medical marijuana, among other causes. But Mr. Beal, 61, was far from the national stage last week when he found himself arrested on charges of money laundering in Mattoon, Ill., about 170 miles south of Chicago. He is being held in a county jail in nearby Charleston, awaiting an appearance before a judge on Thursday. Ronald Tulin, a Charleston lawyer representing Mr. Beal, said that the police found his client with a large sum of cash, which was sniffed by police dogs. “They’re saying the money smelled like marijuana,” Mr. Tulin said.
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Remembering Dr. John P. Morgan Dr. John P. Morgan, a drug policy reform leader and close friend to the U.S. Drug Policy Alliance, died suddenly last Friday of acute myeloid leukemia. Morgan was a professor of pharmacology at the City University of New York Medical School for 26 years until he retired in 2004, and published widely in medical journals on pharmacology, drug toxicity and other topics.
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Go Ask Alice:

Mushroom Drug Is Studied Anew

Ron Winslow

In a study that could revive interest in researching the effects of
psychedelic drugs, scientists said a substance in certain mushrooms
induced powerful, mind-altering experiences among a group of
well-educated, middle-age men and women. [Psilocybe Cubensis]


Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions researchers conducted the study
following carefully controlled, scientifically rigorous procedures.
They said that the episodes generally led to positive changes in
attitude and behavior among the 36 volunteer participants and that the
changes appeared to last at least two months. Participants cited
feelings of intense joy, "distance from ordinary reality," and feelings
of peace and harmony after taking the drug. Two-thirds described the
effects of the drug, called psilocybin, as among the five most
meaningful experiences of their lives.

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Supreme Court Okays Hallucinogenic Tea

Gina Holland, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a small congregation in New Mexico may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God.


Justices, in their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. Federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church, Roberts wrote in the decision.


The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred to members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, which has a blend of Christian beliefs and South American traditions. Members believe they can understand God only by drinking the tea, which is consumed twice a month at four-hour ceremonies.


New Justice Samuel Alito did not take part in the case, which was argued last fall before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor before her retirement. Alito was on the bench for the first time on Tuesday

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