Fri, 13 Aug 2004

New Orleans Discovers Datura

As though this was a new "threat", the good City Fathers of The Big Easy are attacking a plant: datura inoxia, also known as angel's trumpet.

I have some bad news for them: this is nothing new at all. Daturas are referenced in Homer's Odyssey, and all over Shakespeare's plays: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Anthony and Cleopatra. It's appeared in herbals almost from the time such things were written down, and was a major subject of a best selling series of books from the 1960's about Yaqui Indian brujo's (shamans): The Teachings of Don Juan.

There is even some speculation that a datura species was a component of soma, used in Vedic India as a sacred drink. The genus name itself is derived from the Sanskrit dhatura, and the plant is still considered sacred to Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god. It has also been a candidate for the infamous "witches salve" of medieval Europe, which gave the illusion of flight.

Curiously enough, most deaths and injuries from datura are the result of risk taking induced by the psychdelic properties, and not as a result of atropine poisoning itself (although the latter is certainly possible). Information on these plants is not widely available: I daresay that if it were, and if the folks attempting to brew their tea were aware of the extreme effects, that these incidents could be minimized.

I guess it just tickles me when we "discover" a new "threat" that's been around since men crawled from caves and declare "war" on it. Have the people in charge of these efforts ever really thought about what they're doing: decalring war on a plant? It's absurd on the face of it, but dig a little deeper and I think you'll see the real agenda here. Notice that New Orleans didn't actually ban the plant, as that would've pissed off way too many gardeners. They just banned it's ingestion for recreational purposes.

The driving force behind puritianism is the dread fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time in a way that the puritan neither understands or approves. And that is what we're really trying to stomp out.

Responding to recent reports of young people abusing hallucinogenic substances derived from the popular garden plant known as angel's trumpet, the New Orleans City Council has passed a law banning the manufacture or sale of compounds made from the plant.

(link) [The Times-Picayune]

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Raging Bee wrote

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