entheogenic-gnosis
Rising Star
Vice media has improved in recent times, however I still have a few major issues with some stories that they released:
Phyllomedusa bicolor is a psychoactive frog located in the Amazon, VICE did a story titled "the sapo diaries" where it was claimed that Phyllomedusa bicolor was hallucinogenic.
Perhaps it was confusion with the tryptamine producing bufo toads that led vice to label this frog as hallucinogenic, or perhaps it was just bad journalism.
Phyllomedusa bicolor's skin secretions contain: deltorphin, deltorphin I, deltorphin II and dermorphin, these are exogenous opioid heptapeptide compounds.
This erowid report elucidates effects of Phyllomedusa bicolor intoxication
Sounds more like an ordeal poison than an opioid, but I can definantly say it's not a psychedelic.
Next,
The vice media report titled "the world's scariest drug"
...which turned out to be scopoloamine derived from a south American brugmansia tree.
Scopoloamine, atropine, hyoscyamine, and several other tropane alkaloids are commonly found in datura species (jimson weed), atropa belladonna, brugmansia species, and other plant species...
And while these compounds have been used to poison people through out history, and while they can have some pretty scary effects, I felt the report was alarmist misinformation hyped up to draw in viewers, or scare them.
I feel it was absolute misinformation, I can think of many drugs which are far more scary than scopoloamine...
And last
The "krokodil tears" report, they made claims of this new drug epidemic, yet they failed to identify the substance or explain how it was being produced, they failed to dispel or confirm any of the myths surrounding this compounds, and mostly just documented Russian heroin users.
I'll fill in some information which their report never got around to: "Krokodil" is Desomorphine, it's made from codeine, the HO grouping at position 6 has been removed, they are basically using the Nagai Nagayoshi method for methamphetamine, only the pseudoephedrine has been replaced by codeine. (In meth synthesis you are removing a hydroxyl group from the beta carbon of pseudoephedrine, in desomorphine synthesis you are removing a hydroxyl group from position 6 of the codeine molecule, in both cases it's a reduction involving red phosphorus and iodine )
Regardless, their report gave little to no information and only seemed to spread the myths around this compound...
Which is actually far more rare than the media would lead you to believe, many of the cases did not even involve desomorphine.
This stuff is out there and it is real, but vice and the media on general has done a terrible job covering it.
VICE has gotten better, I actually like some of their programs, they have a television station now, and the reporting has gotten better as a result...
...but when it comes to these drug stories, vice media does a terrible job...
You will hear your friends state some media disinformation in a conversation, so, you try to correct them, and they think you are wrong because "TV doesn't lie"...
There is so much fear and confusion surrounding drugs, and the media creates a good deal of it...vice has gotten better, but when it comes to drug reports they should probably quit (their cannabis shows are actually fairly accurate, but other than that, they shouldn't report on drugs)
-eg
Phyllomedusa bicolor is a psychoactive frog located in the Amazon, VICE did a story titled "the sapo diaries" where it was claimed that Phyllomedusa bicolor was hallucinogenic.
Perhaps it was confusion with the tryptamine producing bufo toads that led vice to label this frog as hallucinogenic, or perhaps it was just bad journalism.
Phyllomedusa bicolor's skin secretions contain: deltorphin, deltorphin I, deltorphin II and dermorphin, these are exogenous opioid heptapeptide compounds.
This erowid report elucidates effects of Phyllomedusa bicolor intoxication
Sounds more like an ordeal poison than an opioid, but I can definantly say it's not a psychedelic.
Next,
The vice media report titled "the world's scariest drug"
...which turned out to be scopoloamine derived from a south American brugmansia tree.
Scopoloamine, atropine, hyoscyamine, and several other tropane alkaloids are commonly found in datura species (jimson weed), atropa belladonna, brugmansia species, and other plant species...
And while these compounds have been used to poison people through out history, and while they can have some pretty scary effects, I felt the report was alarmist misinformation hyped up to draw in viewers, or scare them.
I feel it was absolute misinformation, I can think of many drugs which are far more scary than scopoloamine...
And last
The "krokodil tears" report, they made claims of this new drug epidemic, yet they failed to identify the substance or explain how it was being produced, they failed to dispel or confirm any of the myths surrounding this compounds, and mostly just documented Russian heroin users.
I'll fill in some information which their report never got around to: "Krokodil" is Desomorphine, it's made from codeine, the HO grouping at position 6 has been removed, they are basically using the Nagai Nagayoshi method for methamphetamine, only the pseudoephedrine has been replaced by codeine. (In meth synthesis you are removing a hydroxyl group from the beta carbon of pseudoephedrine, in desomorphine synthesis you are removing a hydroxyl group from position 6 of the codeine molecule, in both cases it's a reduction involving red phosphorus and iodine )
Regardless, their report gave little to no information and only seemed to spread the myths around this compound...
Which is actually far more rare than the media would lead you to believe, many of the cases did not even involve desomorphine.
This stuff is out there and it is real, but vice and the media on general has done a terrible job covering it.
VICE has gotten better, I actually like some of their programs, they have a television station now, and the reporting has gotten better as a result...
...but when it comes to these drug stories, vice media does a terrible job...
You will hear your friends state some media disinformation in a conversation, so, you try to correct them, and they think you are wrong because "TV doesn't lie"...
There is so much fear and confusion surrounding drugs, and the media creates a good deal of it...vice has gotten better, but when it comes to drug reports they should probably quit (their cannabis shows are actually fairly accurate, but other than that, they shouldn't report on drugs)
-eg
