Free Republic

Dale doesn't exactly look like an international crypto-criminal. He's soft-spoken, baby-faced, and a senior at an Ivy League college. But every couple of weeks the political science major logs onto the Silk Road, an online black market that has been described as an "amazon.com of drugs" to buy wholesale quantities of "molly" (also known as MDMA, a particularly "pure" form of ecstasy), LSD and magic mushrooms. Some of these will be for his personal use, and the rest he'll flog to less tech-savvy classmates at a mark-up of up to 300%. On a good weekend, he can net a profit...

Justin Bieber's rapper pal Lil Za has accused reporters of racial discrimination by exaggerating his drug possession arrest to make him "look bad". The 19 year old was taken into custody on Tuesday following a police raid on Bieber's Calabasas, California mansion in connection to an alleged neighbourhood vandalism incident. Cops claim to have discovered illegal substances in "plain view" during the property search and arrested Lil Za on suspicion of felony drug possession. The white powder allegedly found was determined to be MDMA, a form of ecstasy frequently referred to as molly, but the teenager, real name Xavier Smith,...

A married undercover cop in Arizona began an affair with the drug dealer she was investigating only to out herself and two other colleagues while the pair lay in bed according to a police report. Tempe Police Detective Jessica Dever-Jakusz, 38, met her drug-dealer lover in June of 2013 after buying narcotics from him undercover and by August she was having regular sex with him at his home. But on October 10th, after one of their trysts, Dever-Jakusz - who is married to a police officer - revealed that she was working undercover to arrest him at the same time...

When it comes to altered states of consciousness, humans are nothing if not inventive. A number of new synthetic drugs, opiate painkillers and other substances have emerged recently as increasingly popular among partygoers and drug addicts. And some of these substances are alarming health experts and law enforcement officials. Here's a look at five of the most potent of these street drugs. SNIP 2C-P A little-known synthetic hallucinogen with only a brief history of use, 2C-P is reportedly a long-lasting and very potent drug. Its intense psychedelic effects don't begin until a few hours after a person takes it, but...

A Saturday night triple-bill in the Seaport featured swirling lights, throbbing techno and dangerous drugs that sent three young men to the hospital — but no Boston police, despite a vow just 24 hours earlier by Mayor Thomas M. Menino to deploy the city’s cops on the Hub’s nightclubs in the wake of a young woman’s death. Two of the men, who were attending the Sound Tribe Sector 9 show at Bank of America Pavilion, appeared to have OD’d on a “molly-type” drug, according to state police — the same virulently popular substance believed to have led to the death...

The benefits of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) persist years after the first treatment with the drug (also known as ecstasy), according to a follow-up study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology1. The finding gives hope to people with PTSD who do not respond to conventional treatments. However, the results come from a small-scale pilot study, and the outcomes have not been so convincing in other recently published work. In the original trial, 20 patients with PTSD who had not responded to either psychotherapy or to conventional psychopharmacological drugs received MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) or a placebo during...

LAPLACE -- A still-unidentified man was reported barking like a dog at passing cars and rolling on the ground, until he was taken to River Parishes Hospital with a high fever and died an hour later. Maj. Michael Tregre of the St. John Parish Sheriff's Office reported that the sheriff's office was notified Friday afternoon of the strange, dog-like behavior of the man, who appeared to be in his mid-20s. A deputy who arrived at the scene on La. Highway 628 found him lying in the roadside, breathing heavily but otherwise not responding. An ambulance took the man to River...

An Australian lingerie model facing drug charges in Indonesia has denied that she has adopted full-cover Muslim dress in detention to win favor with the authorities. Michelle Leslie said in a statement that her Muslim faith was helping her avoid going "crazy" in her police cell in Bali as she awaits trial on charges of possessing two ecstasy tablets. If found guilty she could be jailed for up to 15 years under tough drug laws in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Leslie, who says that she converted to Islam a year ago, last week began wearing a head-to-toe...

Alexander Shulgin, Sasha to his friends, lives with his wife, Ann, 30 minutes inland from the San Francisco Bay on a hillside dotted with valley oak, Monterey pine and hallucinogenic cactus. At 79, he stoops a little, but he is still well over six feet tall, with a mane of white hair, a matching beard and a wardrobe that runs toward sandals, slacks and short-sleeved shirts with vaguely ethnic patterns. He lives modestly, drawing income from a small stock portfolio supplemented by his Social Security and the rent that two phone companies pay him to put cell towers on his...

Ecstasy: a lethal class-A drug responsible for numerous teenage deaths. Ecstasy: a harmless drug that provides entertainment for millions every weekend – and could save marriages. How can opinion be so divided? Jane Feinmann examines the evidence 12 June 2002 Football hooliganism could hold the key to treating a range of common psychological disorders, such as chronic stress and depression. But the clue lies not with hooliganism itself but with its remarkable disappearance. Throughout the Eighties and early Nineties, the football season was a long history of violent days, with rival "firms" engaging in running battles, trashing city centres and...

IS TAKING A PSYCHEDELIC AN ACT OF SEDITION? The disturbances of September 11 have sent us reeling, driving many to seek relief from anxiety and depression through socially-sanctioned psychotropics such as Prozac, Xanax, and alcohol. But some of the so-called psychedelic drugs (cannabis, LSD, peyote, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and MDMA or Ecstasy), targets of America's deeply misguided War on Drugs, could have a more profound and healthful effect, if used responsibly. The very idea of going off on a psychedelic "head trip" in this hour of national crisis might be seen as self-indulgent folly, or worse, an act of cerebral sedition....