ALL over the ancient world, concoctions were used through clandestine requests by citizens to sorcerers and sorceresses to inflict injury, mental disorientation towards submission, and death on specific victims. This often included unfaithful spouses to relatives for gain, to the competitive other, and even towards social elevation, and little has changed with the desperate. The perpetrators, on accusation and trial, were put to death (we’re not talking about an ancient world of fair trials).

Those who have had some reason to pay attention to the documentation of human origins concerning our legal and healing practices would come across some of this data on what was confronted and used for what purposes. There are lists of sinister personalities and poisons over the colonising era, and further back to the ancient world that point to a sinister stream in human nature that we invoke, based on our temperament and our ethical values. But some people are driven, out of unforeseen malice for the other; like the woman who gave a child a potion as a gift through a cake out of envy that he was brighter than her child. Luckily, the child survived, through some uncommon favourable circumstances.
There was a need to glance back to resonate with the fact that what is happening now in the following paragraphs is not to be interpreted as the world is ‘getting worse’. The reality is that we must become wiser to meet the evolution of the familiar.

The following content is a partial extract from a DISCOVER MAGAZINE MARCH 2012 article: CHEMISTS IN THE SHADOWS: “The fastest growing trend is a more complicated class of compounds brewed up by trained chemists like P……. *……. who are searching for exotic steroids, or pursuing novel psychoactive compounds. In just the past two years, the use of synthetic stimulants that produce a meth-like high, and are marked as ‘bath salts’ has exploded. In 2010 alone, 41 new psychoactive substances were, by European nations, more than triple the amount identified in 2008, according to a report issued by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. (No similar statistics are kept in the United States, but many of the drugs end up here, too.)

DERIVATIVES OF PCP AND COCAINE
The new substances include derivatives of PCP and cocaine, as well as new forms of synthetic cannabinoids; compounds that are similar to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana.
Many of these psychoactive substances are little-known compounds culled from obscure research journals like A***. While some published steroids have a research trail, most psychoactives have never been tested on humans until, that is, they show up at clubs or parties. When these recipes hit the mainstream, they often go viral through websites where chemists and entrepreneurs of all stripes trade recipes. These drugs can end up being mass-produced by chemists-for-hire in China, who advertise “Custom organic synthesis” on the web, and take their orders from the emerging breed of transnational rogue chemists. “There are a lot of smart people out there who know how to read chemistry papers,” says Nathan Messer, president of the nonprofit organisation, DanceSafe, which provides drug testing at festivals and parties. “It usually starts off as some people making it themselves, and if it works out, they will contract it out to China, set up a distribution chain, buy it in bulk, and sell it,” Messer added.

So, it’s gone beyond just burning local ‘ganja’ farms, and as things get harder on any domestic platform, opportunities of dubious likeness that defy conscience will be embraced. It happened before, especially now, if there’s a possibility that these schemes can be camouflaged as pharmaceuticals or sports-health hype items. A lot of First World entertainment sports, like wrestling, have paid the price through the body count of the fallen. Also, actors, bodybuilders, etc, and the dependency on proposing super boasters are now part of the culture. The featured article is 12 years old. There was no summary at any point then of referring to the content as will be, in the near to be, as past tense. I can only hope that its report is in the ‘aware of, in the relevant protective fields locally.

I have had the unfortunate human experience of dealing with an offspring with a drug problem. Thanks to the DRUG COURT, their support systems, and a friend with a legal law firm, some progress has been achieved. Still, I can’t come to terms with any understanding of witnessing medications that layfolk describe as producing ‘robots’ out of addicted and mental health subjects, nor of medications that are prescribed to help that lead to relapse. I do realise that we are witnessing beyond Guyana that cough syrups bought from sources have killed children, only to be told that the producers had purchased some illicit component from an unusual source. Some errors cannot be rectified; we must transcend the parochial to contend with the world before us, what has already migrated here, and where it inhabits.