This is your brain on 'Dangerous Drugs'

[Taro Toporific]

This is your brain on "Dangerous Drugs" aka 危険ドラッグ, Kiken doraggu, nee 'dappo'

dangerous.jpg

http://youtu.be/_G4r5ofhPPA

Man under influence of herb stabs woman in nextdoor apartment
JapanToday | Dec. 04, 2014
Police in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward arrested a 31-year-old man on Wednesday after he broke into the apartment of his nextdoor neighbor and slashed her with a knife
According to police, the suspect, identified as Katsuhiko Tanaka, admitted that he had inhaled a “dangerous drug,” the term given by law enforcement authorities to refer to quasi-legal hallucinogenic herbs.
m0aR~!

[Coligny]

On this topic... Never give 'lemon grass' to cats... Unless you want to spend a week with felines running on the walls and ceiling like if the were chased by a chinese cook...

[Samurai_Jerk]

On this topic... Never give 'lemon grass' to cats... Unless you want to spend a week with felines running on the walls and ceiling like if the were chased by a chinese cook...

Racist.

[matsuki]

On this topic... Never give 'lemon grass' to cats... Unless you want to spend a week with felines running on the walls and ceiling like if the were chased by a chinese cook...

Racist.

What yoo say?

[Coligny]

On this topic... Never give 'lemon grass' to cats... Unless you want to spend a week with felines running on the walls and ceiling like if the were chased by a chinese cook...

Racist.

Nope...

http://www.chinasmack.com/2010/pictures ... rants.html

And they are officially listed as enemies of the felinekind. They will be nuked first when we takeover the planet...

[matsuki]

That should be the next arrow of Abenomics....round up all the diseased, inbred, stray cats here and sell em to China.

[Russell]

That should be the next arrow of Abenomics....round up all the diseased, inbred, stray cats here and sell em to China.

Or to Switzerland...

[Samurai_Jerk]

That should be the next arrow of Abenomics....round up all the diseased, inbred, stray cats here and sell em to China.

Careful. That kind of talk almost lead to a fistfight with Japanese cat lovers.

[matsuki]

I love cats as well but got no tolerance for the messed up feral ones I've come across in Japan. From being attacked to seeing some really badly deformed kitties...to them using the garden as a litter box, fuck feral cats. I don't think the J-gov will do anything til feline-SARS breaks out though.

[Mike Oxlong]

I love cats as well but got no tolerance for the messed up feral ones I've come across in Japan. From being attacked to seeing some really badly deformed kitties...to them using the garden as a litter box, fuck feral cats. I don't think the J-gov will do anything til feline-SARS breaks out though.

Something like this would be useful...

http://www.catwelfare.org/node/10680

[Coligny]

I love cats as well but got no tolerance for the messed up feral ones I've come across in Japan. From being attacked to seeing some really badly deformed kitties...to them using the garden as a litter box, fuck feral cats. I don't think the J-gov will do anything til feline-SARS breaks out though.

I've send you army surplus blanket for christmas...

Keep you warm and all...

(Yea, i know:http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/5240451.0001.009/--did-the-us-army-distribute-smallpox-blankets-to-indians?rgn=main;view=fulltext)

[IparryU]

That should be the next arrow of Abenomics....round up all the diseased, inbred, stray cats here and sell em to China.

Careful. That kind of talk almost lead to a fistfight with Japanese cat lovers.

Fuck cats and their lovers. The Chinese will give them all the warmth they need.

[Mike Oxlong]

Japan kicks its ‘loophole herb’ drug habit

At a head shop in Tokyo’s bustling Shibuya ward, its shelves strewn with Jamaican flag knick-knacks and bongs bearing marijuana motifs, a clerk swiftly shoots down an inquiry on the availability of “dappo habu,” a previously quasi-legal mix of herbs laced with chemical compounds that pack a narcotic punch.

“The police cracked down on it heavily in recent months,” she says. “It used to be easy to find, but you can’t buy it legally anymore.”

Until the middle of last year, dappo habu — literally meaning “loophole herb” and akin to fake marijuana “spice” or “K2” found in the West — was readily available in Tokyo’s nightlife scene. Its rise and fall offer an interesting tale of Japan and how the country is tightening its control of intoxicants, even as the U.S. and other nations are decriminalizing illicit drugs such as marijuana.

Prior to the crackdown, loophole drugs “were sold in the equivalent of a head shop,” says Brett Bull, founder of Japanese crime news site Tokyo Reporter. “The drugs come in what look like tea packets, and those were on display inside the shops.”

Walking through Tokyo’s red-light district, Bull points to a shop hardly bigger than a stall, tucked away on a quiet side street by a strip club and a hair salon. Dappo herb was once openly sold at the shop, he says, but now the lights are out and it’s empty inside.

In its heyday, dappo was often sold as “incense” under English-language brand names like “Assassin,” “Bolt” and the poorly spelled “Illution.” Until the middle of last year, the chemists who made it managed to play a legal cat-and-mouse game, tweaking the molecular makeup of the active ingredients whenever a previous strain was banned. Tinkering in the lab would allow the new variant to slip under the legal radar again for a time, hence the term “loophole” herb.

Those who have smoked dappo describe a range of effects, from euphoria and hallucinations to “bad trip” symptoms such as vomiting and feelings of panic or dread.

“You can taste the chemicals on it when you smoke it. You don’t need much for it to really hit you hard. When I tried it, I couldn’t stop laughing,” said a Japanese woman who has used the drugs on four different occasions and asked to remain anonymous.

However, another erstwhile dappo user who declined to give his name said the experience was an ordeal: “I felt like my eyes were closed, but I could still see as things were rushing past me. I had to get away from my friends and be alone. I’d never do it again.” (See an image of dappo herb packets and vials from this archived Asahi Shimbun report.)

In any event, the loophole began to close last July when Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare launched a public-awareness campaign to rebrand dappo herb, a relatively bland term, as “kiken” (“dangerous”) drug. Along with this came a law with real teeth, allowing Tokyo metropolitan police to visit shops known to peddle the stuff — a right previously limited to pharmaceutical inspectors. A subsequent wave of dappo/kiken busts drove the message home.

At the same time, a media blitz portrayed the perils of using dappo. From a man falling off his bicycle while stoned on it last September, to a motorist driving onto a sidewalk in front of Ikebukuro Station in Tokyo last June, killing one pedestrian and injuring seven, notable disasters on dappo have made waves in the national press.

Celebrities are not immune either. In November of 2013, girl supergroup AK48’s manager Tomonobu Togasaki, then 40, was caught on camera toking a pipe packed with dappo herb in the stairwell of a bar-restaurant in Tokyo’s posh Moto Azabu neighborhood. Given AKB48’s squeaky-clean public image, the images whipped up considerable controversy.

Nao Mazaki, Japan’s representative at Foundation for a Drug-Free World, says the synthetic mash-up nature of drugs like dappo make them especially risky.

“You never know what will happen to your mind and body with these kinds of drugs,” Mazaki said. “You cannot compare kiken drugs with other illegal drugs, as there are thousands of products in the ‘kiken drug’ category. But kiken drugs could be much more dangerous than [other] illegal drugs, since no one knows what they contain.”

Law enforcement has targeted establishments hawking dappo with a vengeance in recent months. In December, Tokyo police busted a shop called Heaven for selling just two pouches of kiken drugs for 3,400 yen ($28). And after a larger raid in January, they scored their largest kiken bust to date in late February, seizing 12 kilograms (26.5 pounds) from an alleged dappo-herb producer in Kanagawa.

“Crackdowns in Japan are fairly effective,” says Jake Adelstein, author of “Tokyo Vice” and editor-in-chief of the publication “Japan Subculture Research Center.”

“Once the police have a law and are motivated, they do a good job. For example, human trafficking of foreign women was a serious problem for Japan in 2005-2006. But by 2009, after laws had been put on the books, the trafficking in foreign women significantly declined,” Adelstein says. (Japanese police officials hadn’t responded to a request for comment as of the publishing of this report.)

The story of dappo herb isn’t the first case of a controlled substance rocketing to popularity and then getting pushed virtually out of existence in a police crackdown. As recently as the early 2000s, psilocybin — a.k.a. “magic mushrooms” — was openly hawked on the streets of nightlife hubs like Tokyo’s Center Gai and Kabuki-cho.

However, when the World Cup came to Japan in 2002, the authorities decided that allowing the open use of hallucinogens wasn’t a good idea. As a result, the trade was taken off the streets and had practically disappeared before the first games began.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japan- ... 2015-03-29

[Coligny]

Meanwhile i still need 10 minutes of negociation whenever i need a box or loxonin in most drug stores...

Which is supposed to be OTC anyway...

[matsuki]

Meanwhile i still need 10 minutes of negociation whenever i need a box or loxonin in most drug stores...

Which is supposed to be OTC anyway...

Allegra was the same deal...it's like OTC+α

[Taro Toporific]

Meanwhile i still need 10 minutes of negociation whenever i need a box or loxonin in most drug stores...
Which is supposed to be OTC anyway...

The LD50 of Loxonin make it perfect for suicide, hence your purchasing problem.

[wuchan]

Meanwhile i still need 10 minutes of negociation whenever i need a box or loxonin in most drug stores...
Which is supposed to be OTC anyway...

The LD50 of Loxonin make it perfect for suicide, hence your purchasing problem.

and why it hasn't been approved by the FDA.

[Coligny]

and why it hasn't been approved by the FDA.

You say that like if it was important...

[Takechanpoo]

Cannabinoid, which is included in marijuana, destroys brain nerves.
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/26/7039.short

[Russell]

Cannabinoid, which is included in marijuana, destroys brain nerves.
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/26/7039.short

It doesn't say that Cannabinoids destroys brain nerves.

It does say that Cannabinoids appear to influence the formation and refinement of thalamocortical axons. But there are a lot of factors that do the same. Hell, even exposing someone to a stimulus-deprived environment likely does similar things as Cannabinoids. Or drinking alcohol...

[Wage Slave]

Cannabinoid, which is included in marijuana, destroys brain nerves.
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/26/7039.short

It doesn't say that Cannabinoids destroys brain nerves.

It does say that Cannabinoids appear to influence the formation and refinement of thalamocortical axons. But there are a lot of factors that do the same. Hell, even exposing someone to a stimulus-deprived environment likely does similar things as Cannabinoids. Or drinking alcohol...

Thank you Russell. Tacky, every single time you post an article or extract you get it completely wrong. Not a bit wrong but completely wrong. Is this just something you do with English language materials or is it just they way you are?

[wuchan]

Cannabinoid, which is included in marijuana, destroys brain nerves.
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/26/7039.short

you do realize that weed is a traditional japanese crop and they would burn it on a fire before religious ceremonies and festivals.


and they still burn it before festivals today......

[kurogane]

Allowing for the usual retardation of the species, hemp isn't weed, and weed isn't hemp. I've smoked the wrong one to no effect and tried to tie the other one before realising it might have been smoke. And my ex Father inlaw went hippy and sold properly cultivated weed to amputees after the surrender.

[wuchan]

Allowing for the usual retardation of the species, hemp isn't weed, and weed isn't hemp. I've smoked the wrong one to no effect and tried to tie the other one before realising it might have been smoke. And my ex Father inlaw went hippy and sold properly cultivated weed to amputees after the surrender.

There are only three types of cannabis. Sativa, indica and ruderalis. Industrial hemp is all cannabis sativa which also tends to be the strongest of the three. However industrial hemp was cultivated for height and not potency and tends to be very weak but it still contains about 1% THC. It now grows wild in many parts of the USA because of the mass cropping for the war effort in the 1940s, the locals call it "ditch weed". In Japan the hemp currently being grown is not Japanese, it's American. After the war the US famously banned hemp production, that wasn't the end to the story tho. The US allowed small scale growing for religious purposes as long as American companies provided the seed. Today, no one knows how strong the original Japanese hemp was except for a few scientists that maintain a stock of seeds for the government. Chances are it was potent enough to get you high due to unintentional cross breeding with wild ruderalis that grows in the northern areas of Japan. Even today the NPA has search checkpoints near areas where ruderalis grows to catch people harvesting it in October. It isn't that good as flower but hash made from it is all over Japan.

Please take your nihinjinron undereducated nonsense to the door.

[kurogane]

I was talking about Take being retarded there, btw, not you.
I have smoked the industrial stuff before and it's rubbish headache weed. Interesting stuff about the rest of it though. That would make whatever my ex FinL grew the native sort I would imagine, as he talked about getting his original stock from the ditch, as you said. It sounded like he put some serious work into it while he was doing it. For old school smoking weed it sounded like good stuff.

[wuchan]

I was talking about Take being retarded there, btw, not you.
I have smoked the industrial stuff before and it's rubbish headache weed. Interesting stuff about the rest of it though. That would make whatever my ex FinL grew the native sort I would imagine, as he talked about getting his original stock from the ditch, as you said. It sounded like he put some serious work into it while he was doing it. For old school smoking weed it sounded like good stuff.

No offense taken, I just get mad when people spew NPA bullshit that was proven wrong many years ago.

"headache weed" is a term given to smoked cannabis that causes a dull ache in the head, thus the term. The truth is the affect has more to do with the treatment of the crop than the quality. Think of it like a vegetable. Would you eat a potato that is soft and squishy before you cooked it? Fuck no. There are scientific standards behind California medical "weed" dating back to the first vote in 1996. Those medical standards have revolutionized not only medical standards but also illicit standards. The days of "Bc bud" where island homes rotted away due to mass hydroponic cultivation are over. That rock hard chem tasting thing is over. Today the market, both legal and illicit, is all about a quality that is very hard to commercially produce. Organic, dirt grown fetches the highest price from those over 25. The sad thing is the new market of concentrates. BHO. One gram in one puff. No one can 100% say what goes int it, and that's scary.

[kurogane]

Interesting. I have a very hard time finding nice weed that gives a nice buzz without brain fuck or nausea. Whatever they're doing they're making most of it too strong, or I am just too cheap a date. To me, it's like if they were to make a 30% beer. I should probably go get a medical card and get some of the nice weak body buzz stuff.

[Taro Toporific]

... have a very hard time finding nice weed...

Consulate-General of Japan in Vancouver is warning citizens living in Canada not to purchase/use of Marijuana --- use overseas is still illegal under Japanese Law.

About legalization of cannabis in Canada
vancouver.ca.emb-japan.go.jp... Published October 4, Heisei 30

With the enactment of the "Canadian Canadian Act on Marijuana" that was adopted on June 21, we inform you of the following for Japanese nationals.

1. In Canada, possession and use of cannabis (marijuana) will be legalized from 17th October this year.

2. Meanwhile, in Japan in the Cannabis Control Law, the possession / transfer of cannabis (including purchase) etc is illegal and subject to punishment.

3. This provision may be applied not only in Japan but also in foreign countries.

4. Japanese nationals residing in Japan and Japanese tourists should observe these Japanese laws and take sufficient precautions not to purchase/use cannabis (as well as foods and drinks containing cannabis), even outside of Japan.

[Mike Oxlong]

Yeah, good luck with that, eh!

[Russell]

Yeah, good luck with that, eh!

I seem to remember that THC stays in your system for at least 2 weeks, so it still could be detected once someone returns to Japan. It all sounds pretty overbearing, though.