Okay, here’s what’s happening with Dana:

The prosecution is attempting to re-instate the class one felony –
money laundering — that was dropped (he is currently only being
charged with obstruction of justice). This changes the playing field
slightly, and makes Dana liable for a maximum of 36 years (instead of
6), and a minimum of 4 years (instead of 1).

Fighting the charges requires funds to pay his legal fees pertaining
to both past, present, and future litigation. The total bill which is
still due Right At This Moment is: $14K. This will increase as both
sides begin shoveling wheelbarrows filled with crap — erm, I meant to
say: important legal papers and documents — at one another.

If you are a United States citizen, you’ve already done your part, in
helping waste everybody’s time and fuck over Dana, ‘cuz your taxes are
funding “The People” vs. Dana.

If you support the massive amount of work and effort that Dana has put
into the legalization and ibogaine movement over decades of time: YOUR
HELP is urgently needed.

*** Please Help / and PLEASE *READ THIS* ***

There are 101 different “Help Dana Beal!” messages, threads, and
articles being splattered all over teH InterNeTs. While all of this
is important, what’s EVEN MORE important, is actually doing something
HELPFUL if you’re in a position to do so.

Hundreds of messages flew by in many threads, and I haven’t read most
of them, but some of what was posted is just … wrong.

Please *DO NOT* send money or checks to Dana’s lawyers. Please *DO
NOT* send email or make phone calls to Dana’s lawyers. They really
don’t wanna chat with hundreds of random people; this accomplishes
nothing much. All it does is put lawyers into a really shit mood
because they *really* DO NOT want to hear from you, or chat (unless
you write for the NY Times). They’re also not accounting firms, and
NOT in a position to accumulate a boatload of small checks and
payments, and then apply the bill to a single account. It doesn’t
work that way.

Please *DO NOT* send money to the jail… I have no idea who the fuck
came up with this, or where it came from, but … what the fuck? Dana
doesn’t smoke cigarettes, he doesn’t need hundreds or thousands of
dollars for commissary? He was in jail, not serving years in prison.
If you send money directly to the jail, what you’re basically doing is
donating your cash to their jail. That’s about it.

*** WHAT YOU CAN DO *RIGHT NOW* ***

If your life, or the lives of any of your friends or family, have been
enriched by all the tireless work and effort that Dana has put into
ibogaine, please send your money orders or checks to:

Yippie Holdings
9 Bleecker St.
NYC, NY 10012

Made payable ONLY TO: Yippie Holdings, LLC.

Do not make out checks or money orders to Dana, CNW, or whatever
random person/organization/thing, people have posted or written about
in the past.

…

MindVox will have a centralized news/events/information page online
within the next coupla days. It will contain all breaking information
in one central repository, and include further information regarding
how to donate using Paypal electronically.

Thanks for your attention to this matter, and please do what you can
to help. What’s happening right now is going entirely to funding
Dana’s defense, and doesn’t even begin to touch all the cash that was
confiscated and quite likely gone up in flames.

Further information will be posted within the next few days.

Thank you,

Patrick,

oh behalf of MindVox/CNW.

A general call for help has been sent out… if anyone out there can spare a bit of cash to help out this stoned crusader, send it to:

Yippie Holdings
9 Bleecker St.
NYC, NY 10012

Made payable ONLY TO: Yippie Holdings, LLC.

Beal began his life in activism in the late 60’s with the “New York Provos”, organizing a smoke-in at Thompson Park in 1967. Also around that time, he opened a Free Store on 2nd Street between Bowery and 2nd Avenue. In 1968, Beal was forced to go underground, after jumping bail following a second drug charge (the first being an LSD sting in which he was caught in 1967). While underground, Beal met up with people involved with the Weather Underground and similar groups and wrote Right On Culture Freaks. But the Feds eventually caught up with Beal and he served one year in prison, being released in 1972.

1972 was a big year for Beal. In Miami, he helped Tom Forcade (of High Times fame) organize protests against the Republican and Democratic Conventions, along with other notable radicals such as Aron Kay (aka the “Pieman”) and Pat Small. Also in 1972, Beal started the Yipster Times, the voice of the Youth International Party. In 1973, Beal and a collection of other Yippies moved into 9 Bleecker Street, which now houses the Yippie Museum (and is a fucking rad place to visit if yer ever in Greenwich Village).

Over the years, Beal has also been a major force in organizing a series of Rock Against Racism concerts, as well as a number of AIDS benefits. Lately, in addition to running the Million Marijuana Marches, Beal has been a leading advocate for ibogaine, a psychedelic used to treat drug addictions.

I’ve met Dana a few times at different ibogaine conferences over the years, and let me tell you, the man’s a character. He looks like Mark Twain, he always seems to be a bit manic, and there’s always a faint aroma of cat piss about him (due to the herds of wild cats that seem to be the true owners of 9 Bleecker Street). He often doesn’t make a lot of sense when he rants, but his rants are always entertaining and he has undeniable charisma. He’s done a hell of a lot of good in his life. And he always has some bombin’ ass smoke.

If you wanna earn some karma points, help this living legend out.

In short, there is no detoxification product available that will have any effect on the length of time it will take for a given drug to clear your system. It’s really a sad state of affairs that people are forced to take drug tests at all; it seems to me that’s blatantly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution (if forcing someone to reveal what’s in their body isn’t an “unreasonable search”, I don’t know what is). But perhaps what’s even more shady than this seemingly obvious disregard for personal liberty is the fact that there are many vultures out there making money off people’s paranoia of failing these tests.

Before I go into the details of why these products do absolutely nothing, short of robbing you of some of your hard earned cash, let’s take a look at how long it typically takes some common drugs to clear the system [1]:

It should be noted that these times are only estimates. In the first place, people’s metabolisms (the rate at which chemical reactions occur in the body) vary widely. Other factors that causes these times to vary include age, weight, sex, overall health, the amount of drug consumed, and then length of time over which the drug’s been taken. There is also considerable variation among the different references regarding detection times. The above table is from LabCorp, one of the bigger biological specimen testing companies out there. But look at a different reference chart and you’ll get somewhat different answers. For example, NIDA (the National Institute on Drug Abuse) gives the following estimates[2]:

And yet another source [3] gives the following estimates:

So, there are two main things one might conclude from these tables. The first is that you can’t really predict with any great degree of accuracy when a drug will clear your system, primarily because there are so many variables involved. Generally speaking, the healthier you are, the quicker a given drug’ll be gone. This is because the healthier you are, the more efficiently your body processes the things you put it in.

The other main thing one might conclude from these tables is that some drugs, in particular marijuana, take a lot longer to clear the system than most other drugs. This is because most drugs are water soluble, meaning that the drugs dissolve easily in water. Marijuana, on the other hand, is not water soluble, but rather is fat soluble. In addition to being the reason why pot has to be cooked in oil or butter in order to be effective when eaten, it also is the main reason why it takes so long for pot to clear the system.

Because of this, most people who have to take drug tests only really have to worry about being caught with cannabinoids (the pharmacologically active chemicals in pot) in their pee. (Note, there are a couple other drugs that hang around in the body a long time, mainly PCP and some benzodiazepines like clonazepam, aka Klonopin). Unless you’re someone who might be subject to random drug testing, it’s pretty easy to pass a drug test for most drugs just by waiting a couple days. Pot, on the other hand, can be detected for up to a month or more, especially in people with slow metabolisms.

So, now we come to the essential question… what can be done to speed up the time it takes for cannabinoids to clear the system? Unfortunately, not a whole lot. There are many products on the market that claim to help with this, but there is little to no evidence to back up the efficacy of these prodcuts [4]. In fact, in Great Britain, many detox products have been forced to remove claims about cleaning toxins from bodies, due to a 1994 law that requires products with medical claims to have scientific proof of their efficacy [5]. Researchers from the non-profit group Sense About Science go so far as to say:

Our bodies are very good at eliminating all the nasties that we might ingest over the festive season. There is a popular notion that we can speed up the elimination process by drinking fancy bottled water or sipping herbal teas, but this is just nonsense. In fact, many of the detox diets and supplements really aren’t that good for you, nor have they been properly tested.[6]

Indeed, US research in 2005 “concluded that detox diets do no more than the body’s own natural system to get rid of toxins.” [7] The researchers, Dr. Roger Clemens, professor of molecular pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Southern California, and Dr. Peter Pressman, an endocrinologist at private medical firm Geller, Rudnick, Bush and Bamberger, go on to say, “The suggestion that elimination of noxious agents is enhanced because of this regimen [i.e., detox products] is categorically unsubstantiated and runs counter to our understanding about human physiology and biochemistry.”

So, given that the (albeit limited) research on detox products indicates that they are, in fact, essentially a scam, is there anything that can be done? The truth is…. not much. There is one thing that you CAN do that will almost certainly speed up the time it takes for drugs, including cannabinoids, to clear the system, although the amount of effects it will have is likely small and the idea may frighten many potheads. What you can do is….. EXERCISE!

Earlier in this article, I mentioned that people with higher metabolisms will clear drugs more quickly than those with lower metabolisms. Exercise is a surefire way to raise metabolism and it will also burn fat, where cannabinoids are stored in the body.

The only sure way to test negative on a drug test - other than not taking drugs - is to make sure your body has eliminated all of the drugs you have taken, which happens after the drugs have been metabolised by your body. The only way to speed up this process is to speed up your metabolism, which you can do quickly and cheaply by doing something good for you like exercise… [8]

Exercise as much as you can up to a day or two before the test, but then stop. The reason for this being that you don’t want to be releasing your fat stores the day of the test, in case there are any lingering cannabinoids left in your fat.

In addition to exercise, it is important to eat a lot of healthy food in the days leading up to your test. Eating a lot will also raise your metabolism and removing fatty foods from your diet will enable your body to use up its fat stores, thus releasing the cannabinoids that are stored in it. It’s also important to keep well hydrated, essentially so that you pee a lot. The more you pee, the more chance the offending chemicals have to get out of your body. It’s also a good idea to drink a lot of water the day of the test, as this will dilute your urine (i.e., it will reduce the ratio of drugs to pee in your urine). If you drink too much water the day of the test, the test may be rejected for being too diluted, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing and may even be a good thing. In most cases you won’t get in any trouble for having diluted urine; they’ll just ask you to come back and take the test again at a later date, giving your body even more time to process out the drug metabolites. Also, never go to a piss test and give your first urine of the day, i.e. always make sure you piss at least once before going to the test, as your first piss of the day will always be your dirtiest.

Welp, there you go. I’m sorry I don’t have better news to give you; although exercising will help, it won’t greater reduce the amount of time it’ll take for drugs to clear your system. But hey, at least it’s good for you (unlike some detox products, which, in addition to not working, may actually be bad for your health) and it’s free!

Oh, and one final note… most drug stores now sell home testing kits. If you’re worried that you might not pass, it’s a good idea to pick up one of these kits. They’re generally pretty cheap (in the range of $15-20 usually) and will let you know whatcha need to know.

Good luck!

References:

[1] “Drugs of Abuse Reference Guide,” LabCorp Inc, Retrieved online May 26, 2008.

[2] Cone, E. J. (1997). “New Developments in Biological Measures of Drug Prevalence.” NIDA Monograph 167, pp. 108-129

[3] “Typical Drug Detection/Clearance Times,” Craig Medical Distribution, Inc, Retrieved online May 26, 2008.

[4] Cohen, M. (2007). “‘Detox’: science or sales pitch?” Australian Family Physician, 36, 1009-1010.

[5] “Detox’s medical claims face probe.” BBC News, retrieved online June 7, 2008.

[6] “Detox press release.” Sense About Science, retrieved online June 7, 2008.

[7] ‘No proof’ detoxing diets work.” BBC News, retrieved online June 7, 2008.

[8] Grzelinska, J. (2004). “Drug Testing FAQs.” DrugInfo Clearinghouse at the Australian Drug Foundation, retrieved online June 7, 2008.

What is important, however, as most pot smokers tend to learn instinctually, is how DEEP one takes the smoke into the lungs. The reason for this is basically pretty simple: the lungs are essentially made up of a bunch of tubes, called bronchi. These tubes break into smaller tubes, that break into smaller tubes, that break into even smaller tubes, that finally end in tiny sacks called alveoli. These tiny sacks are covered in very fine blood vessels, called capillaries. In normal breathing, oxygen goes from the alveoli into the capillaries, which drain into the pulmonary veins, which go directly to the heart. (This is way drugs take effect so quickly when they are smoked).

So basically, to get your money’s worth, the idea is to fill as many alveoli as possibly with smoke by taking the smoke as deep into the lungs as one can. However, the actual transaction of cannabinoids (the pharmacologically active chemicals in pot) going from the alveoli to the capillaries happens very quickly. All that happens when you hold the smoke in for a long time is that it gives the irritants in the smoke a longer time to irritate your lungs. It’s pretty well established that regular pot-smoking increases one’s risk of chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and other lung illnesses (although apparently NOT cancer, as several major studies have shown, which I’ll discuss in a future article). So, to decrease your chance of developing any of these illnesses (chronic bronchitis, while nowhere near as bad as lung cancer, still sucks ass… let me tell you) you want to get the irritants out of your lungs as soon as the cannabinoids have been absorbed into the bloodstream. And this happens in a matter of a couple seconds.

Two studies (possibly more, but two that I found today, anyway) demonstrate this phenomenon. One study [1] looked at the cognitive effects of cannabis smoking in participants who held the smoke for a short vs. a long period of time. This study measured a battery of cognitive effects of pot smoking between the two groups, including tests of learning, associative processes, abstraction, vocabulary, and psychomotor performance. The majority of the tests showed no difference between the short-time and long-time smoke holders. A few of the tests showed minor differences, but the researchers concluded that this was simply a result of the participants holding their breath for a long time (maybe due to lack of oxygen). They concluded this because when the participants held their breath for a long time, they did worse on these tests whether they were smoking pot or whether they were smoking a placebo (a substance that looked and smelled like pot, but had no psychological or physical effects).

A similar, but slightly more complex study [2] looked at differences not only among groups who held the smoke different lengths of time, but also among groups who took in different amounts of smoke. As you might expect, the more smoke the participants took into their lungs, the more of an effect the smoke had. The more smoke they took in, the more THC was found in the blood, as well as the more the participants reported feeling high. Taking in more smoke also increased carbon monoxide boost, or how much carbon monoxide came out in the participants’ breath. Basically, this is a measure of how much smoke the participants’ lungs were exposed to. However, the length of time the participants held the smoke had no effect on carbon monoxide boost, nor did it have any effect on their self-reported high. The length of time the participants held the smoke also had no effect on an assortment of cognitive and motor tasks, similar to the first study. There was a difference in blood THC levels between the groups who held it in for 10 or 20 seconds vs. the group who held it in for 0 seconds, but that’s kind of a no-brainer really. Frankly I’m not quite sure what the point of having them hold it in for no time at all was. But scientists can be wacky like that. At any rate, the article concluded that the study “…cast doubt on the common belief that prolonged breathholding of marijuana smoke enhances classical subjective effects…”

So there ya go. Breath it in deep, but the only thing you’ll likely get from holding it a long time is a bad cough.

References:

[1] Block RI, Farinpour R, Braverman K. (1992). Acute effects of marijuana on cognition: relationships to chronic effects and smoking techniques. Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behaviour, 43(3), 907-917.

[2] Azorlosa JL, Greenwald MK, Stitzer ML. (1995). Marijuana smoking: effects of varying puff volume and breathhold duration. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 272(2), 560-569.

Though I don’t intend to fill this site soley with dry facts about pharmacology (though I do love me some pharmacology); I also intend to throw in assorted interesting things I find here and there related to drug policy, drug lore, and well, anything else that has to do with drugs.

In any case, it is in such a vein that I will begin my first article. I suspect every reader of this blog will be familiar with one Thomas B. Kin Chong, better known as Tommy Chong from “Cheech and Chong” fame. Many of you may know that in 2003, Mr Chong was sentenced to 9 months in federal prison, a fine of $20,000, forfeiture of $103,514, and the loss of all items seized during the preceding raid [1]. He received this sentence as a result of the US Department of Justice’s Operation Pipedreams, which targeted Paris (Tommy’s son) Chong’s Chong Glass/Nice Dreams, among a couple hundred other retailers of pipes and other smoking accessories (i.e., headshops).

Incidentally, Operation Pipedreams was launched on the second anniversary of September 11, 2001. It cost US taxpayers more than $12,000,000 and involved the work of about 2,000 law enforcement officers [2]. Out of this entire effort, Tommy Chong was the only person sentenced to jail time, despite the fact that he was only tangentially involved in the Chong Glass business (primarily as an advertising draw and financier) and despite the fact that he had no prior criminal record (while other people caught in Operation Pipedreams did). BTW, in case you’ve been asleep the past several years, Bin Laden’s still at large. Just sayin..

At any rate, it has been postulated that the reason Tommy was targeted so harshly, compared to the other 54 people that were tried in the operation, was to use him as an example, given his iconic stature in the world of stonerdom. This supposition is supported by the fact that, during his trial, his character in the film “Up in Smoke” was used as evidence against him. Note, not only was this presented as evidence, but it was ACCEPTED as evidence. Boggles the mind, dunnit? Comedian and political commentator Bill Maher compared this to Arnold Schwarzenegger being tried for all the cops that the Terminator killed.

Anyhoo, up to the present day, and the point of this article. A couple months ago, a documentary about this fiasco was released on DVD; a/k/a Tommy Chong, written and directed by Josh Gilbert. I’ve yet to see this film, but it looks pretty interesting (and I’d be interested to hear from anyone who’s seen it what they thought of it). But if you haven’t seen it and you want to, you better get a copy quick. On May 7th, Spectrum Labs, one of the main distributors of a/k/a Tommy Chong and maker of detoxification products*, was raided by the DEA:

…federal agents seized 8,000-10,000 copies of the movie AKA Tommy Chong. The movie is a documentary critical of Buchanan and the federal government’s persecution of Chong. Federal agents apparently think it’s drug paraphernalia.

He called the documentary a “focal point” of the raid. It was released about a month ago, and sales were slow, Mr. Chong said.

“The lawyer representing the Newport company, Spectrum Laboratories, said a competitor of her client had a facility raided the same day in Union Township, Clermont County. An FBI spokesman confirmed a Clermont County raid in connection to the Newport investigation but said he could not elaborate, because the search warrant was sealed.

“It’s selling like crazy now, thanks to Mary Beth**. She’s brought us a nice publicity gimmick.” [3]

The Feds have been unusually tight lipped about the raid, even for them:

The execution of the sealed search warrants was part of a nationwide investigation originating out of Pittsburgh, Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Rich Isaacson said. Officials declined to say what was sought in the raid.

The lawyer representing the Newport company, Spectrum Laboratories, said a competitor of her client had a facility raided the same day in Union Township, Clermont County. An FBI spokesman confirmed a Clermont County raid in connection to the Newport investigation but said he could not elaborate, because the search warrant was sealed.

“I expect the investigation to unfold over a number of months, if not years,” said Spectrum attorney Jennifer Kinsley of Cincinnati. [4]

Welp, that’s the scoop for now. If I find any more info on this current raid, I’ll pass it along.

* Regarding detoxifcation products, simply put, do not buy them. They do nothing to speed up the rate at which drugs are excreted from the body. I’ll write about this in more detail in a future article, but genuinely, honestly, and truly, they do nothing. They don’t do anything bad mind you, they just do nothing. Now, on the other hand, Spectrum labs does sell a product (or perhaps several) that would work to pass a pee test. These are synthetic types of urine. However, it should be duly noted that faking a piss test in any way is A FELONY. That is, if you get caught doin that sort of thing, you’re in for some serious shit.

** Referring to US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, who led Operation Pipedreams.

References:

[1] “Chong Actor Tommy Chong gets nine months for selling pot pipes“, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 13th September 2003.

[2] “Chong Family Values“, LA Weekly Times, 4th December 2003.

[3] Balko, R. Mary, Mary, Why You Buggin’?
Reason Magazine, May 21, 2008.

[4] Hannah, J. Feds raid Ky. business The Enquirer, May 8, 2008.