Free Republic

For military veterans, many of the deepest wounds of war are invisible: Traumatic brain injuries resulting from head trauma or blast explosions. Now, researchers have discovered that the plant-based psychoactive drug ibogaine, when combined with magnesium to protect the heart, safely and effectively reduces PTSD, anxiety and depression and improves functioning in veterans with TBI. Ibogaine is found in the roots of the African shrub iboga. Since 1970, ibogaine has been designated as a Schedule I drug, preventing its use within the U.S. Before the treatment, researchers gauged the participants' levels of PTSD. Participants then traveled to a clinic in...

Joe Biden had only one event scheduled on Tuesday -- to discuss the "progress" his administration was making in regard to dealing with the massive fentanyl problem. As we reported earlier, part of the fentanyl problem is because Biden has failed to secure the border. He also didn't seem to understand China's involvement in the whole fentanyl process, lifting sanctions on a blacklisted forensics lab in exchange for Xi saying they would do more to track the flow of chemicals for fentanyl. As Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) said, that was a bit like "thanking the arsonist." But Biden also made...

Italy's financial police Guardia do Finanza, said in a statement Wednesday that authorities seized a 15.4 ton shipment of amphetamines reportedly produced by ISIS in Syria. The police tracked three containers at the port of Salerno in southwest Italy and found around 84 million pills stored inside industrial paper cylinders, CNN reported. The estimated value of the drugs was around $1.12 billion, the largest amphetamine bust in the world by quantity and value, the statement said.

As The Post's Liz Sly recently noted, the war in Syria has become a tangled web of conflict dominated by "al Qaeda veterans, hardened Iraqi insurgents, Arab jihadist ideologues and Western volunteers." On the surface, those competing actors are fueled by an overlapping mixture of ideologies and political agendas. Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon. A tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and widely available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war torn country's black market economy each year, likely giving militias access to...

California would become the first state in the nation to legalize psychedelic mushrooms if a long-shot ballot initiative passes muster with voters next year. The measure is backed by a legalization activist who says he kicked his heroin habit with the help of a mushroom trip in Death Valley. It would exempt Californians over the age of 21 from a state law that criminalizes mushrooms containing psilocybin, the compound that gives some mushrooms psychedelic properties. […] … California is one of eight states where voters have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and Saunders said legalizing psilocybin-bearing mushrooms is the logical...

The Justice Department should cross marijuana off the government's list of most dangerous drugs, says a House Democrat now trying to build congressional support for the action. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) is making the case to remove pot from the list of "Schedule I" drugs, a day after Attorney General Eric Holder revealed that the Justice Department would adjust existing rules to allow legal marijuana businesses to access the banking system. Recreational pot use became legal in Colorado this month, and 20 other states allow it for medicinal purposes. Blumenauer said the Obama administration was “unquestionably making the right call”...

April 24, 2012. Des Moines. Two networks yesterday, CNBC and MSNBC, broadcast a little known fact – Ron Paul appears to be winning the Republican nomination for President. When the popular Texas Congressman repeatedly assured supporters that the race was about delegates, not beauty contests, he apparently knew what he was talking about. Now, after three more states locked in delegates to the GOP nominating convention – CO, MN and IA – indicators point to a brokered convention with a possible, even probable, Ron Paul victory.