XPost: alt.drugs.psychedelics, alt.drugs.pot, alt.hemp.politics

Drug War Chronicle, Issue #1217 -- 7/15/24
Phillip S. Smith, Editor, psmith@drcnet.org https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/1217

A Publication of StoptheDrugWar.org
David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition"

APPEAL: Help Us Respond to the Opportunities and the Challenges of This
Time:
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/help_us_respond

Table of Contents:

1. CHRONICLE BOOK REVIEW: BLOTTER
When it comes to ingesting LSD, sometimes the medium is the message. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/chronicle-book-review-blotter

2. MEDICAL MARIJUANA UPDATE
A Delaware bill to allow medical marijuana dispensaries to jumpstart
legal adult-use sales awaits the governor's signature, Kansas lawmakers
will take up medical marijuana in an interim session, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/medical-marijuana-update-0

3. FEDERAL POT EXPUNGEMENT BILL FILED, CA BILL TO SPEED PSYCHEDELIC
RESEARCH GOES TO GOVERNOR, MORE... (7/8/24)
The Thai government has taken another step toward decriminalizing
marijuana, North Carolina's Eastern Band of Cherokees began selling
adult-use weed on July 4, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/federal-pot-expungement-bill-filed-ca-bill-speed-psychedelic-research-goes-governor-more

4. GOP HOUSE LAWMAKERS KEEP MESSING WITH MARIJUANA REFORMS, FLORIDA LEGALIZATION INIT FACES OPPOSITION, MORE... (7/12/24)
The Florida marijuana legalization initiative is well-funded but its
opposition could be too, Missouri pot tax revenues flow to drug
treatment, veterans, and legal services for the poor, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/gop-house-lawmakers-keep-messing-marijuana-reforms

5. WA NATURAL PSYCHEDELIC LEGALIZATION INITIATIVE FILED, MEXICAN
FENTANYL SEIZURES PLUMMET, MORE... (7/10/24)
Lawmakers in Kansas will spend two days of an interim session on medical marijuana hearings, Malaysian drug experts laud their government for
moving toward drug decriminalization, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/wa-natural-psychedelic-legalization-initiative-filed-mexican-fentanyl-seizures-plummet

6. MA PSYCHEDELIC LEGALIZATION INIT QUALIFIES FOR BALLOT, NC LATEST
STATE TO BAN "GAS STATION HEROIN," MORE... (7/11/24)
A House Homeland Security subcommittee heard about the threat of Mexican
cartel drones, California's governor will campaign against an initiative
to roll back drug and sentencing reforms, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/ma-psychedelic-legalization-initiative-qualifies-ballot-nc-latest-state-ban-gas-station

7. GOP HOUSE LAWMAKERS KEEP MESSING WITH MARIJUANA REFORMS, FLORIDA LEGALIZATION INIT FACES OPPOSITION, MORE... (7/12/24)
The Florida marijuana legalization initiative is well-funded but its
opposition could be too, Missouri pot tax revenues flow to drug
treatment, veterans, and legal services for the poor, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/gop-house-lawmakers-keep-messing-marijuana-reforms

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1. CHRONICLE BOOK REVIEW: BLOTTER https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/chronicle-book-review-blotter

Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium by Erik Davis (2023, MIT
Press, 248 pp., $32.95 PB)

A few years ago, I made one of my rare ventures
into the art world by bidding on and winning a blotter art print as
part of a benefit for the Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies. It is 9" x 9" and contains 225 perforated squares
with a profile view of a bearded man over an undulating palette of
colors. It does not contain any LSD but is quite striking.

A few decades ago, I made many not-so-rare ventures into the world of
blotter acid, eagerly placing one or two of those LSD-impregnated
blotter squares on my tongue before blasting off to new dimensions.
Many of those blotter hits had no design on them, merely tinted or
even plain white paper, but others featured images, some humorous,
some esoteric: dancing Grateful Dead bears, JR "Bob" Dobbs heads,
psychedelic saints, or just trippy swirls.

In Blotter, journalist and counterculture maven Erik Davis explores
and illuminates the phenomenon of blotter acid -- both as a
delirium-loaded medium for hyper-potent psychedelic substances and as
a drug-free but drug-induced form of psychedelic art. What a long,
strange trip it's been, and what memories it stirs up in old hippies
of a certain age.

Davis reviews legendary acid producers, with names like Humphrey
Owsley and Nick Sands gaining prominent mention, as he describes the
evolution of LSD dosing from sugar cubes to pills and blotter paper.
But he also introduces a cavalcade of lesser-known LSD producers and
blotter acid makers as he traces the evolution of LSD and psychedelic
culture from the 1960s to the present.

He has interesting observations about the trade in acid, noting that
it was often not (only) profit but a sort of psychedelic evangelism or militance that impelled the distribution of the consciousness-altering substance. Early adopters believed the acid experience could not only
change your consciousness; it could change the world. Sometimes they
gave it away for free; not the behavior of your stereotypical dope
dealer.

And it was always inexpensive; in part because of that psychedelic
evangelism -- the object was not to get rich but to better the world
-- but also because of the economics of its production. LSD is so
potent that anyone producing even small batches is producing hundreds
of thousands if not millions of doses at a time. And it is still a
bargain producing a whole lot of bang for $5 or $10 to this day. You
can trip for eight hours for less than it costs to buy a hamburger.

While Blotter is a book about psychedelic culture, it is also a book
about art. Blotter acid was and remains illegal, but blotter art plays
a role in the contemporary art scene. The art blotter contains no LSD
but the psychedelic spirit lives within it -- the joy and playfulness,
the humor and mysticism and radicality. And it makes fascinating art,
which Blotter is full of. There must be hundreds of images of blotter
art; the entire second half of the book is little more than images and
their descriptions.

Erikson centers his book on San Francisco artist, professor, and
occasional federal criminal defendant Mark McLoud, curator of one of
the largest archives of blotter art in existence, the Institute for
Illegal Images. McCloud played a key role in moving blotter art from
the realm of the criminal into the realm of the arts, and successfully
fended off the feds by convincing a Kansas City jury that blotter art
was art -- not dope (which it wasn't—even blotter that has been
doses becomes inert over time as the LSD is exposed to light and air).

He is also an astute commentator on contemporary psychedelic culture,
and his final words to the community are worth quoting in full.
Remarking on LSD's position as a Western, industrial creation and
noting many leaders in activists in the psychedelic space are
demanding that Indigenous groups get both a place at the table and a
share of the profits, Davis writes:

"Such reciprocity efforts are far from cosmetic. They concretely
acknowledge the enormous debt that all psychedelic people owe to those
savaged but vital communities whose healers and medicine wizards
developed and continue to maintain visionary plant and fungi
traditions for centuries and presumably millennia. But we also owe a
debt to the hippie freaks, renegade chemists, pranksters, midwives,
healers, dealers, guitarists, poets, mystics, burners, artists, and
DJs of the deep acid underground. However half-baked, dangerous, or
even batshit their practices, these folks -- often low-profile by
necessity -- still hold powerful medicine for those of us
psychedelicizing themselves within WEIRD societies: Western, educated, industrial, rich, and (more or less) democratic. These folks are our "ancestors" -- even the Hells Angels and bad brujos of the CIA. Acid
history may look like a profane mess, but it is also a sacred
struggle, and like all such esoteric agons, you have to approach it elliptically through patterns and symbols, and tricksy media that
might only send you further into forests of whatthefuck. That's the
deeper message of the Institute for Illegal Images, which is not just
a collection of artifacts but a wayward memory palace, an iconostasis
of initiation and synchronicity, a comic-book collage of igniting
signs, and the inevitable cracks between them."

What he said.

================


                                         ___________________
                                 It's time to correct the mistake:
                                     Truth:the Anti-drugwar
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                          Cops say legalize drugs--find out why:
<http://www.leap.cc>

                                Stoners are people too:
<http://www.cannabisconsumers.org>
                                       ___________________

     bliss -- Cacao  Powered... (-SF4ever at DSLExtreme dot com)

--
bobbie sellers - a retired nurse in San Francisco

      "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
      It is by the beans of cacao that the thoughts acquire speed,
      the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
      It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
         --from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.

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