HOLIDAY SPIRIT

There's a cold wind rattling windows in the Happy Valley today that smells of snow, so we're hunkered down at HQ and waiting for the holiday season to be over. I loved this time of year as a kid and still enjoyed it when I was raising my own, but I've come to loathe the whole consumption driven ordeal.

That's not to say that I don't hum a carol or two and watch the old standards on TV, but the essence of the season has been lost in the contest for presents as evidenced by this tragic story of a trampled Walmart shopper.

Authorities said that Patricia Van Lester arrived at Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. for an early sale on a DVD player for her mother. When the store's doors opened at 6 a.m., Van Lester grabbed the DVD player but was quickly overcome by hundreds of shoppers rushing into the store.

The woman was knocked to the ground, slammed her head on the ground and suffered at least one seizure, according to Local 6 News.

....When Orange City and EVAC paramedics got to the store they found Van Lester lying on her left side on top of the DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to the unconscious woman, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.

In the retail bsuiness they call it Black Friday. If this is the meaning of Christmas, count me out.

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HELP WANTED

There's apparently a high turnover among the park rangers at the Arizona National Parks. The job satisfaction level is reportedly low.

Working as a ranger these days for U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management or Fish and Wildlife Service along the U.S.-Mexican border is mostly about being a border cop.

.....One of the rangers spent five years as a Border Patrol agent, then joined the Park Service to do something different: writing speeding tickets, going out on medical calls, fighting fires.

It hasn't quite worked out.

"What I'm doing now," he says, "isn't very different from what I did for the Border Patrol."

Before he was a Border Patrol agent, the ranger was a cavalry scout for the Army.

"Come to think of it," he says, gunning the engine, "what I'm doing now isn't much different from what I did in the Army. It's the same language, the same equipment and the same tactics."

Just another example of the collateral costs of the WOSDU that is not counted in the Drug Czar's budget. These guys are being paid to safeguard campers from natural disasters not to be narco-cops and immigration agents.

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LIFE SENTENCE

Today's outrage comes from the Phillipines where a 34-year-old farmer was convicted by the Regional Trial Court (RTC) to a reduced penalty of life imprisonment and was ordered to pay a fine of P500,000 for planting marijuana in his farm in Buhangin, Davao City last May.

It could have been worse.

Melmida availed of the lower penalty when he pleaded guilty to the charges of violation of RA 9165 (Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002), escaping the supreme penalty of death.

But not much. He received this sentence for 298.5 grams of marijuana plants. That's less than a pound and I assume they weighed it wet. It seems rather excessive to me but compared to Thailand's beheading of 4,000 drug defendants, I guess he got off pretty easy.

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CASE STUDIES

The bright spot in today's news has been unreported here, a US study will look at therapeutic value of the dancefloor drug, Ecstasy.

In what will be the first trial of its kind, the researchers want to see if the emotional closeness reported by clubbers taking the drug can help victims of rape and sexual abuse talk to therapists.

Supporters of the study, which has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, claim it marks an important milestone in the medical rehabilitation of ecstasy or MDMA, which was given to patients by some alternative therapists in the 1970s and was only made illegal in the 1980s.

"What we'd like to do is develop MDMA into a prescription medicine," said Rick Doblin, the founder and head of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which is coordinating and funding the new trial. "MDMA has a dramatic ability to help people express deeper emotions, to look at emotionally conflicted topics from their past and it promotes a certain catharsis."

Here's hoping MAPS will be able to overcome the bad press from the much touted and fatally flawed John Hopkins study with some good science. This organization has been engaged in the study of psychedelic drugs for long time and also send out an informative newsletter. You can register at their website.

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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

Once again, I don't have a pithy quote for the last word today so I'm leaving you with this cheering bit of news.

The Sarasani Cafe, founded in 1968 just outside of Amsterdam, and claiming to be one of the oldest in the Netherlands, just celebrated 35 years of operation. The invitations to the party included a bogus joint.

While cannabis technically remains illegal in the Netherlands, its use and sale has been tolerated since the 1970s under strict conditions imposed by the government.

Today there are about 800 coffee shops in the Netherlands, drawing a booming tourist trade.

This may change under new new European Union drugs control law but no one is panicking yet. In spite of the recent controversy surrounding the restriction of tourists from the cannabis cafes in Amsterdam, word from those in the know say the new rule will at worst create a new job opportunities for locals to go in and make the purchases for them.

We'll keep you posted as developments arise.

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