Century of Lies April 18, 2010

The failure of Drug War is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors and millions more. Now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century of Lies.
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You can look forward to a great Century of Lies today. We’re in San Hose, California attending the Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century Conference. This show features a lot of one on one interviews with many of the speakers and attendees and I urge you to tune into this weeks Cultural Baggage show, which features many selections from the plenary stage and a couple interviews as well. Let’s get on with it.
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Dean Becker: OK. Introduce yourself, please.

OK. Hi, I’m Jan Freel. I’m the Senior Editing Manager for alternet.org and I also am the Editor of AlterNet’s drug reporter. I’m here for the MAPS Conference. It’s mid April. It’s San Hose. It’s the Holiday Inn. But it’s actually pretty cool, considering where we’re at. It’s a pretty huge crowd.

Dean Becker: It’s slightly diverse but it’s also very centered around the fact that possible positives are in the offing and they want to be part of it.

Mr. Jan Freel: No question about it. We’re looking at, at least five hundred people for poolside party. There is definitely diversity in ages. There’s young and old here. From people I’ve talked to, they come from all over the country. There’s a Northern California concentration, but that’s normal considering the history and the culture.

It’s promising. I’ve already talked to two doctors who were curious about doing their own research and they’ve come to talk to other doctors and get a sense of what it would take for them to conduct their own studies with Ecstasy. So it’s exactly what they hoped for and I’m really impressed at their organizational skills.

Dean Becker: Jan, I’ve noticed in the last week, especially somewhat over the last months, that the number of stories in the major media - Washington Post, New York Times, the TV network and cable - are beginning to focus on this again without laughing.

Mr. Jan Freel: Yeah. Without the kind of counterculture ‘knee-jerk’ bias that we’ve seen since the sixties. By going through the medical research route, I think they’ve found a way to do an ‘end run’ around the cultural critique they’ve kind of left it in the dust. They’ve done a really good job of cultivating respectability through their studies at key universities, with really well regarded medical researchers, who’re going to be at this conference. It’s an impressive array. They’ve passed the seed point and this is a mature thing.

Dean Becker: Will you be reporting on it? On the web?

Mr. Jan Freel: I will. I will be doing it for AlterNet.org. We’ll probably have either have the transcripts of some of these speeches or a report from me. But look out for coverage on it, because it’s impressive. Of course, we’ll also probably run Phillip S. Smith’s piece from the Drug War Chronicle.
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Sharon North, Producer and Hostess of Shattered Lives Radio, which broadcasts off KZFR Community Radio out of Chico, California.

Dean Becker: Sharon, we’re here at the Psychedelic Science of the 21st Century Conference and boy, it’s a diverse group here. Isn’t it? What are you hearing?

Ms. Sharon North: I am enjoying this thoroughly. Every person that you come up and meet is from a different country. It’s just amazing.

Dean Becker: Now we have friends. Me, probably from the Vietnam War. You, maybe friends from the more recent wars, who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it sure would be a good thing if they had some better treatment available to them. Would it not?

Ms. Sharon North: It certainly would and there are speaker here to address that issue. Some of the first people I met here today are from El Paso, Texas. Two nurses, a man and wife, who came here to learn about what they can do for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Because the town that they live in, in El Paso, has a base right near by and forty-five thousand soldiers just came home.

They’re all nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old and psychologically, they are trashed. They are just completely a mess and so these nurses what to know what they can do to help these people. So they came to this conference.

I think it’s amazing. It’s such a resource. Look at the people here. They’re such a diverse crowd. Very, very professional, serious people who are really looking to help others on the planet. It’s wonderful.
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My name is Georgina Ramirez and I am an El Paso nurse for the El Paso County Hospital UMC, University Medical Center and I work on the sixth floor and also in an oncology unit. I see a lot of Hispanics involved, a lot of families distraught, and not just that. The whole aspect, the whole range of just what the limit is.

OK, so now people cannot touch this, but there’s alcoholism involved. There’s smoking. There’s COPD. There’s all these things different. Repercussions of our choice to reduce our stress. Right? So I take care of this on a daily basis. This is what I do. I help out as much as I can. Whatever it is that I can do.

Dean Becker: I’m sure tangentially, maybe you’re not in the emergency room, but you see and/or hear about some of the gross violence that takes place perhaps in El Paso. But on occasions patients that are brought from Ciudad Juarez? Am I correct?

Ms. Georgina Ramirez: Yes we do. We’ve seen some of the tragedies and all of the devastation that comes from hating your fellow mankind or being greedy or just wanting to do something that doesn’t benefit anybody else but that certain person. What we see is not just the patient, him or herself. It’s the family, the children, it’s the generations and then plus, we’re all connected into that as well. In the sense of, a lot of people might say, ’It’s on that side of the border.’ ‘Don’t worry about it.’ ‘It’s not going to cross over.’

Oh, but it’s already crossed, since a long time ago. But we choose to say, ’OK. Let’s build a fence and that’s going to keep us safe.’ It’s that bordering up that, ‘No one’s going to get into my private world.‘ When what we need to do, is actually say, ’Enough! Let’s help out.’ ‘Let’s go ahead and review what is on the table now.’ ’Let’s review this drug policy.’ ’Let’s change something in order to prevent more deaths.’ That is just a very simple minded goal. If we could just review the drug policy to even save lives. Hey, let’s put that out there as a new objective! No longer a war on drugs. But peace on human kind.
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I’m Mosso Shreki. My name is Mosso Shreki. I’m from Jordan. I’m interested in the work and I just came to participate in the conference and see the things happening here in the States.

Dean Becker: As I’m understand it, things are beginning to change in the US and elsewhere. Governmental authorities are beginning to allow these studies to be conducted. Is it as restrictive in your country, as it is in the US?

Mr. Mosso Shreki: It is and I will see if we would be able to cooperate and do similar studies over there, in Jordan.

Dean Becker: We have many victims of Post Traumatic Stress coming back from our wars, here in the US. Jordan has had it’s wars in the past, too. Do you have a lot of veterans who could perhaps benefit?

Mr. Mosso Shreki: Yes, we do. That’s exactly why I’m here. We have many patients suffers from PTSD and we have as well, Iraqi refugees who suffer from PTSD. So we have a huge number of patients which can be candidate for this kind of treatment. It’s turned out to be useful. It’s something new, interesting and it’s getting FDA approval. That’s interesting and we hope that at some stage, we can cooperate with the American side. With the MAPS.
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What he’s referring to ‘MAPS‘, is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Who in collaboration with the Heffter Research Institute, the Council on Spiritual Practices and the Beckley Foundation out of the UK, sponsored this conference.
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Dean Becker: We’re with Dr. Chris Jenks. He’s out of Sacramento, California. What brings you to the conference, sir?

Mr. Chris Jenks: Well, there hasn’t been a general conference about psychedelics for awhile and it was in my area. So I just wanted to come here and meet all the people interested. I’m especially interested in the use of psychedelics for addiction treatment, especially things like Ibogaine and since there‘s some presentations on the topic, I wanted to hear those.

Things like Iowaska can also be useful for some aspects of addiction. But what’s special about Ibogaine is it’s ability to prevent withdrawal from things like opiates, which makes it unlike the other psychedelic compounds.

The main risk of Ibogaine, as far as a person’s body, is possible heart toxicity. It causes slowing of the heart and then possible lengthening of the QT interval, which is kind of an advanced concept. But that’s the main thing that they monitor, when they’re giving Ibogaine in a hospital.
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My name is Franz Vollenweider. I’m a researcher at the University of Zurich and we do psychedelic research since twenty years. We started in 1990, doing the first brain scan using FMRI and PET scans, to look at the neural basis of all the states.

Dean Becker: Here in the US, in a couple of instances they’re beginning to allow the study of LSD and/or Psilocybin from medical purposes. There’s been a slight change, if not a hopefully larger change, taking place in America and perhaps around the world. How does the use of these products play out in Switzerland?

Mr. Franz Vollenweider: This is well known in the scientific community, but not in the public. In the public, there’s still skepticism or people don’t know a lot about psychedelics. Even in the professional societies, people are not aware about what’s going on in psychedelic research.

So the reason we had given, or still give, a lot of talks in scientific meetings, but the turning point was to bring in modern neuro science to understand, at the deeper level, what’s going on. What can we use for understanding consciousness? The other part is more the clinical applications. For what kind of patients could it be a beneficial application?

We still don’t know really what is the indication? We have some project even in Switzerland, going on in terminal cancer patients. Because there’s evidence in the earlier studies that it may alter pain perception and if you’re feeding off of relaxation, let it go and accept you’re dying. It’s more the emotional part where we have hope that we can use that kind of experience.

Basically, as you ask in the beginning, there’s not such traumatic change as within the society of people who know what’s going on. But in the public, there’s still not too much knowledge about that. So it needs a lot of education and…

Dean Becker: If I understand correctly, you’re working on a means, where people might be better educated on that. Doing a film about the discoverer of LSD, Dr. Hoffman. You want to talk about that?

Mr. Franz Vollenweider: Yes. I was. I’m a happy person in so far I know. I knew Albert for twenty-eight years and we had a very close relationship because he often came to the University of Zurich, to look at what we are doing in terms of research. How is the progress going on?

The reason is, why we do so much research in that is because in our hospital, the University of Zurich, was the first LSD study done. Then we did a lot of studies in these other drugs, like Psilocybin or mescaline or cannabinoids. So it was a steady program, but it was more oriented into, ‘What are the dimensions of consciousness?’

There were some medical studies in the sixties and seventies. But there was a gap between the late eighties to the beginning of the ninety’s. There was also a period where some Swiss psychiatrist did a lot of work between eighty-eight and ninety-three. There were about a hundred people studied again, using LSD and MDMA at that time. MDMA came up and now the pressure from the government for us to come out with the data and to show, ‘Was it positive?’ ‘Was it negative?’ ’Was it really good for the patients?’

So nowadays, we need to show up and to have a lot of convincing data to go on with that kind of use and research.
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Alright, my friends. You are listening to the Century of Lies show, on Pacifica and the Drug Truth Network. We’re tuning into a recent conference held in San Hose, California. The Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century Conference. Eight hundred fifty to nine hundred participants from around the world.
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Dean Becker: Alright. Déjà vu, all over again. I’m here with Christopher Peza, whom you may recall was with us at the SSDP Conference. But he’s here attending this 21st Century Psychedelic Conference in San Hose. What’s you opinion, sir?

Mr. Christopher Peza: Oh, I think it’s an amazing crowd of people. We have all the individuals who were involved in the start of this movement. Incredible chemists like Sasha Shulgin. So the cast of characters here is just unbelievable. I think it’s probably one of the most important psychedelic gatherings to ever take place.

Dean Becker: The level of enthusiasm, the groundswell of knowledge, the hope… is really building as well. Right?

Mr. Christopher Peza: Oh, yeah. I don’t think it’s exactly like what you were seeing in the sixties. This isn’t just like a wild party. You can tell that there’s a degree of professionalism that has entered the psychedelic movement. Where a lot of people attending this conference have PhD’s, Master Degree’s, or Doctors offering continuing Medical Education Credits. We’re really taking it up to this new level of intellectual thought and the reputability for the movement is really founded in this demonstration that we’re here witnessing.

Dean Becker: Well, now. I’m old enough to have been there and to have seen what the cultural war was about and it was Nixon versus anti-war protesters. The drugs were just used as an excuse for their draconian measures, which reached it’s peak at Kent State with a mass murder of students about your age, Christopher.

Mr. Christopher Peza: Well, it’s interesting thinking about that, because the protesters now are wearing suits and have degrees. It’s a whole different ball game. So they’re sort of protesting with their credentials, nowadays. Versus throwing some signs up and just the outright aggression of what that movement was.

I’m still in complete support of student protests and individuals uniting to express an opinion or protest like form. But I do feel like there is a power to having so many reputable individuals, intelligently speaking out against the way that we treat psychedelic substances in our society.

Dean Becker: As an alternate board member for Students for Sensible Drug Policy, I’m sure you’d like to share that website. Because you guys are not ’just’ about psychedelics, you’re about this whole damn drug war. But psychedelics is a huge part of it. Correct?

Mr. Christopher Peza: Oh, yeah. Especially for my personal opinions. Psychedelics are the most important thing for me, when it comes to regulation. I hope that there really is a legitimate avenue, for people to be able to access these incredible tools.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy. You can find out more about us at ssdp.org and you know we’re a ‘groupie youth’ that has chapters all around the world that works to reform policies in our communities and produce more compassion for the drug movement.
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Hi. I’m Roland Griffiths. I’m Professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Neuro Science at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Dean Becker: Dr. Griffiths, we have eight hundred and fifty/nine hundred people here, attending this conference. What does that say to you, sir?

Dr. Roland Griffiths: Well, there’s a real interest in research with these psychedelic compounds. It’s been suppressed for so long. As you know, research with the classical hallucinogens has not been allowed to go forward in people, for almost three decades and we’re seeing a change in that. Slowly and incrementally, now. People here, seem to be excited about that and the implications of that for treatment and for using these compounds to understand the nature of human consciousness and the nature of the human condition.

Dean Becker: Yes, sir and I think it’s encouraging that a lot of the major media is beginning to focus on this, at about this same time as well. Without the ‘laughing up their sleeve’ syndrome, if you will. Correct?

Dr. Roland Griffiths: It does appear that the major media is paying attention and they‘re finding the results very interesting.

Dean Becker: Alright, now. Is Johns Hopkins doing any research in this regard, at this time?

Dr. Roland Griffiths: Yes. We’re doing research with Psilocybin, the active ingredient in the magic mushroom. We’ve been doing this research now for almost ten years. We’ve been flying largely under the media radar. We’ve done some studies in healthy volunteers. We’re now doing studies in cancer patients.
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Alright. You are listening to Century of Lies on the Drug Truth Network. We’re tuning into a recent conference, the Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century. Held out in San Hose, California. We’re going to close this out with an interview I did with Lady Neidpath who heads up the Beckley Foundation. One of the four main sponsors of this conference.
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Dean Becker: It’s with great pleasure that I’m here with Amanda Fielding, Lady Neidpath of the Beckley Foundation, based in the UK. Hello, Lady Neidpath.

Lady Neidpath: Hello.

Dean Becker: Yes, ma’am. You gave a speech to the conference, here this morning. Got a standing ovation for your acumen and for your courage. Would you kind of summarize that speech for us?

Lady Neidpath: That’s very kind of you to say that. It’s my passion to open up research into the full range of conscious state, in the sense of getting a scientific understanding of what underlies them and how we can use them, society, to our best advantages. I think they’ve been taboo for too long. It’s only through a scientific approach that we could cleanse the taboo and realize that they have benefits, as well as harms potential.

Dean Becker: We have here, a gathering of the Worlds experts, in this regard. We have also seen a gathering of major media, to tap into this reservoir of knowledge. Have we not?

Lady Neidpath: Yes, absolutely. It’s the first time that I think so many researchers got together in one place. So that’s a good step forward, kind of thing and as I said in my talk, I think our toe’s in the door, finally. I mean the Beckley Foundation got the first permissions to do scientific research on LSD in California actually, at Berkley and now we just got permissions in London to do the first psychedelic research on psilocybin.

So, what I’m interested in, is opening that door to scientific research, because I’ve always been interested in knowing what underlies these substances. Because in a scientific age, one needs scientific explanations in order to make clearer, ‘What are the potential advantages?’.

Dean Becker: Yes, ma’am. As I’m well aware, the Beckley Foundation has done a great deal of investigation analysis into the components of Cannabis. Meaning THC versus the Cannabinoids and what that might mean to a person’s mental health.

Lady Neidpath: Yes, absolutely and though I think it’s a very, very interesting new findings, which we’ve been very involved in, is that THC and CBD work in exactly opposite ways and through genetic modification, the modern breeds have gone up in THC and down in CBD. THC is the compound which get’s you high, but also it increases stress, because CBD relieves stress. Therefore natural Cannabis, as is found in the Himalaya’s, has a fairly equal balance of the two.

So I think it’s interesting to know about this, so then one can try different breeds. Indeed that’s what I’m doing at a dispensary in California, is doing a questionaire about, ‘What do patients find, treat which symptoms best?’ ‘What types of Cannabis?’ See if we can build up a database about how different strains of Cannabis, with different a ratio of THC/CBD, work on what symptoms from the patients point of view. I think that would be a very valuable database.

In England we’re doing a big study. It will be four hundred people smoking their own Cannabis and then we’re taking the THC/CBD and all the genetic information and personality types and then seeing how it affects creativity. Which we’ll then look in brain imaging, to see the effect. We’re also looking to find out why some people get stressed on Cannabis and others find that it relaxes and causes pleasure. It seems to be individual biochemical differences in the uses of that. Which is very interesting as it’s never actually been researched.

I think the drug issue had become the kind of modern inquisition and it‘s got wrapped up in unscientific taboo‘s, so that all drugs become wicked and dirty and harmful. That isn’t actually so. In the 1950’s/60’s, LSD was the new wonder drug and all the psychiatrists were… There were ten thousand research papers on it. So it’s been affected by policy and the attitude of prohibition, more than it should have.

That’s what I, at the Beckley, am trying to cleanse. So we get a scientific, rational investigation. But it’s the harms which has been done and all, but also the benefits. Because I think, without a doubt the reason why two hundred million people or a hundred and ninety five or whatever the UN says now, people use Cannabis, is because people experience benefits. It’s not that they’re a great mass of adapted people, but people who use Cannabis because for one reason or another, it makes them feel better.

So that is what I want to research and that’s one of the researches I’m doing with Professor Nutt in England, is researching what underlies the ‘high‘ the people find as beneficial. What are the nearer physiological changes, in terms of blood supply and neurotransmitters, electro activities. So one gets a better understanding of what are the benefits.

Dean Becker: OK. Your working, as you say, with Professor David Nutt. He was the equivalent, if I dare say, the US Drug Czar and he was protesting the fact that they were not embracing the findings of his commission, in the higher parts of Government. Correct?

Lady Neidpath: Quite right. I mean, they have studied the situation, at the bequest of the government, for two full years and they came up with the evidence that Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. The government was furious with this information and basically ‘sacked’ him. Because he wasn’t prepared to fall in with the discipline of saying what the government wanted. He didn’t think it should be put up into a more dangerous category. He thought it should come down into a less dangerous category and he refused to give into the government, so he was got rid of.

He’s on the Beckley Foundation Advisory Board and has been for ten years and funny enough. So his replacement, Professor Iverson said, ’Now the rightwing papers are getting very hysterical about saying, ’What is this shadowy Foundation which hassle the drug czars on it’s Board?’

The international regulations doesn’t give a country room for maneuver and the best thing would be for each country to be able to work out what regulations works best for itself. Not to have one rule which forbids all use, production, sale. Which everyone knows is rubbish.

Dean Becker: Once again, we’ve been speaking with Amanda Fielding, Lady Neidpath of the Beckley Foundation in the UK. Lady Neidpath, once again it’s a pleasure to speak with you and I admire your work. I hope you will continue.

Lady Neidpath: Well, it’s a delight to talk to you. Thank you.
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Well, that’s about it. I hope you enjoyed this snapshot of the Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century Conference out in San Hose and I hope you will take some of this information and put it to good use. Like educating your elected officials.

As always, I remind you there is no truth, justice, logic. No reason for this drug war to exist. Please visit our website endprohibition.org

Prohibido istac evilesco.

For the Drug Truth Network this is Dean Becker, asking you to examine our policy of Drug Prohibition.

The Century of Lies.

This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston

Transcript provided by: C. Assenberg of www.marijuanafactorfiction.org