Drug du jour: khat.

[zanne]

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Traffic+stop+results+in+seizure+of+unusual+narcotic&articleId=d94b12a7-01e1-42f0-84b8-7fd5ff1454a4

This is all we need. A drug that resembles speed and LSD combined. I wonder if our troops are getting into it?

[juno jones]

1. Khat has been used by natives of egypt for many millenia

without any horrible side effects(like coco leaves to the peruvians anyone?). As far as I know, there are no dangerous synthetic/ concentrated chemical deriviates (like cocaine) associated with it. According to people I've known who've tried it, it's high is marijuana-like but stimulant instead of relaxing. It's also been used medicinally for about as long.

This is just another good old american we're-up-in-arms because eomeone would put something pleasurable into their bodies crap. If marijuana were legal, I bet people wouldn't be as enthusiastic about finding substitutes that may or may not be more dangerous. And khat isn't. In fact you have to have your own plant because it doesn't keep for any time after harvesting. Not a lot of market in stockpiling khat for distribution. Do some research people. Most of this prosecution falls upon people of egyptian culture who use this drug like many of us use coffee...or pot.

As for the troops, perhaps they have found khat in iraq, it is supposedly common in the middle east. Bet there's a lot of hashish as well. I'd be more worried about the herion tho. Plenty more of that and it's actually addictive (unlike khat) to boot.

[zanne]

2. Khat isn't addictive?

Well, that helps, I suppose.

[endarkenment]

4. Coffee is an addictive stimulant with similar properties.

[juno jones]

5. No it isn't.

It's not really like 'speed' or methamphetamine, which was developed, by the way, by the german army around WWII to keep troops awake and perhaps even make them homicidal. It's more like coffee in terms of effect. Its a non-processed herbal. No relation to synthetic drugs such as speed, heroin, cocaine or LSD whatsoever.

It's pretty benign, I cannot imagine why it's schedule 1.

edit to add: I am not refuting coffee being addictive : :7 : but all I get is a headache when I miss a couple of days. As far as I know, khat doesn't even do that. I was responding to the post above.

PS: it's not the caffiene in coffee that does it, but one of the other hundred or so alkaloids in our fave brew...

[endarkenment]

6. Big Pharma. Big Narco.

We are screwn in multiple dimensions.

[juno jones]

7. I agree with that.

The real limits to freedom are now in our minds- this textbook flap brings the issue home. Amazing how so many people want to regulate what and how we think.

All 'drugs' with proven (millenia long) track records should be made legal, and it should be one's personal choice to imbibe or not.




I bet coffee would be called 'speed-like' if they dicovered it today. Notice how it is harder to get Ma-huang, a stimulant that has been used for years in chinese medicine for sinus problems because some kids got in trouble with a synthesised extract (ephedrine) of the plant.

[endarkenment]

3. BE AFRAID

khat has been used extensively in the middle east for centuries with little or no observed harm. It is not a combination of speed and LSD, it is a very mild stimulant. Please do not be taken in by Big Pharma Big Narco War on Some Drugs idiocy.

[slampoet]

8. You use the a Paper that endorsed Buchanan TWICE as your drug war source?

Don't be foolish.


Khat is almost harmless. It is around the level of ephedra in the stimulant power level.

Also the LSD comparison is ABSOLUTE HOGWASH.



PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE


Don't fall for repeating the racist undertones of this article.
Every two-three years they try to play people's prejudices in order to pimp the drug war.

[zanne]

9. I read it in the Union Leader because it's local...

But I watched it on WBZ this morning. It's hard to know exactly what's going on with this drug, and how to look at it.

[slampoet]

11. oh Very true. That is exactly what the govt was depending on in the eighties.

(i forgot the Union Leader is your only paper besides the Boston Globe and that's hardly local)


The average person can't tell you the difference between a tranquilizer and a sedative. (I can't)


So getting information on this sort of thing is difficult.


In fact the only decent depiction of the KHAT user that I have seen is the doctor in the movie "Dirty Pretty Things" who is a Khat user who uses the leaves to hold down three jobs.


I found good info on the wikkipedia entry including this info

"In Yemen, 80% of the males and 45% of the females were found to be khat users who had chewed daily for long periods of their life."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat



I don't think that the plant is that dangerous if this is a fact, but I wouldn't use it.

(heck I need to quit coffee)

[Javaman]

10. Pfftt! check out Yaba.

http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs5/5048/

http://www.cesar.umd.edu/cesar/drugs/yaba.asp

[juno jones]

12. Thank you for the article

I knew amphetemines were used to 'enhance' performance in WWII, but had always heard of it in terms of Germany. Thanks for the history lesson! :)

[mdmc]

13. hmmn

:shrug:

[Richard Steele]

14. Khat is milder than most of the cheap weed here in the States.

Much ado about nothing from some RW fearmonger.

[Matariki]

15. Oh crap. That stuff is MILD. Like strong caffeinated TEA.

I've done it. LSD and speed my ass.

[alfredo]

16. We called it Chaat up in Asmara Eritrea. Gives a nice glow and energy.

The Ch is exploded.

[JuniperLea]

17. I'm sure it must cure something...

Otherwise the fear factor wouldn't be promoted so heavily.

Alcohol and nicotine are fare more additive and exponentially more harmful than khat.

What a "flashback"... I haven't heard about khat in ages!