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veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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The other weed [MA] 1
#8964103 - 09/21/08 03:25 PM (15 years, 6 months ago) |
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Jimson weed is wicked, wild, and can be deadly. And this poisonous plant is sprouting up in Dorchester. Setember 21, 2008 - Boston Globe
As the languid waters of Dorchester Bay nuzzle the shoreline, the area around Savin Hill Beach in Dorchester comes alive. The crush of kids on the ballfield quickly organizes into sunny Saturday soccer games. More children run and scream around the jungle gym, making believe they're pirates. On the boardwalk, dogs big and small take their owners for a walk. At the water's gentle edge, a young boy in a blue hat tries to empty the bay into his yellow pail, one shovel-full at a time.
Nearby, a silent stranger lurks: a poisonous plant that has some residents concerned that its presence on the active, state-run Savin Hill beachfront presents a danger to toddlers and teenagers. Though lovely-looking in bursts of green and lavender that pop through the sand - it also comes in pink and in white - this wildflower can kill.
"Kids put things in their mouth. They see something that looks pretty, it could be a Froot Loop or a Starburst," says Bob O'Sullivan, 59, vice president of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association. "With teens, it's a daring age."
The upcoming fall harvest season is high time for this wicked weed - Datura stramonium - that has as many nicknames as harmful side effects: ditch weed, stink weed, loco weed, mad hatter, green dragon, thorn apple, zombie cucumber, angel's trumpet, devil's trumpet, devil's seed, and, most commonly, jimson weed. Many of the monikers stem from its intense mind-and-body-bending properties.
While the plant is not considered dangerous to the touch, medical specialists warn: woe to those trying to extract a hallucinogenic buzz from jimson weed by smoking or snorting or eating it, or brewing it into a trippy tea.
"Don't do it," says Mark Mycyk, an emergency-room physician and medical toxicologist at Boston Medical Center.
During the past decade, both here and in Chicago, Mycyk says, he's seen too many cases of nonfatal jimson weed overdoses to count: from a child as young as 2 accidentally chewing the plant to a senior citizen purposely looking for a cheap high - and everyone in between.
He's treated patients with racing hearts, spiking blood pressure, spastic limbs, flushed skin, pupils as big as saucers, mouths as dry as dust, some with their brain cells in danger of being fried by rising fevers.
While jimson weed won't appear on routine lab tests, Mycyk, 37, has grown experienced enough to ask delirious patients: "Is there anything you've been exposed to? Have you used any leaves, any herbal products? Anything you've learned online?"
Though the Web contains sites that push sales of the plant, jimson weed is not a New Age substance. It's an age-old one.
In the United States, the name jimson weed was derived from Jamestown, Va. - it's been shortened from Jamestown - the place where British soldiers were seen acting strangely when they were called upon in 1676 to suppress Bacon's Rebellion. It's unclear whether they were sabotaged or had ingested the herb accidentally, but one military man was described in historical accounts as kissing his comrades, another running after feathers, and a third sitting naked, grinning like a monkey. Not surprisingly, they were also overcome in battle by the protesting Colonists.
Lo these many years later, jimson weed remains legal, not a substance controlled by law. In fact, it's also a popular garden plant that can easily be found at local nurseries. Still, the medical literature is rife with garden-variety mishaps: A 27-year-old woman became nonsensical after putting jimson weed from her garden in a salad, mistaking it for lettuce. A 49-year-old woman turned crazed after making a natural mouthwash from a plant she'd borrowed from a friend's garden, only to find out it had been jimson weed.
Around these parts, the number of cases of jimson-weed poisoning reported each year in the combined Massachusetts and Rhode Island region remains low, averaging only five since 2000. Public health officials also say there is no evidence that jimson weed is regularly being abused here. Still, jimson weed has left a toxic trail as wide as the swath of the country in which it grows, from Texas up through New England.
In Milton, one high school teenager was hospitalized in 2003 after he and two friends swallowed jimson seeds after sleuthing for psychedelics on the Internet, according to a news account at the time. He recovered. Years earlier, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported that four Texas adolescents had imbibed a mixture of booze and jimson weed, and went to sleep on the desert floor. Two of them never awoke. Cause of death: Datura stramonium intoxication.
Even among many hallucinogenic hellions, jimson weed is considered far too freaky. Erowid is an online clearinghouse of information about psychoactive substances. Under the site heading "Bad Trips," an experienced drug user named Mikey offered his own troubled testimonial. After he drank three cups of jimson brew, he said, his muscles collapsed and he could barely stand. He crawled on the floor and ate bugs. He smoked invisible cigarettes. He talked to people who weren't there. He leapt off a balcony, and survived. A jimson friend landed in a coma.
Wrote another user named Russ: "If there is a hell, I was on a day trip."
When jimson weed is uncovered underfoot, some officials have moved promptly to get rid of it. "Seashore acts quickly to eliminate toxic jimson weed," read a 2003 headline about the plant being found on the Cape Cod National Seashore.
In Dorchester, some residents charge that the state Department of Conservation and Recreation has dragged its feet in trying to rid Savin Hill Beach of jimson weed.
"I would expect, knowing the problem and the potential health concerns, that they would address it," says John Moran, an avid gardener and civic-group member.
Moran, 67, remembers reading about the Cape's jimson weed woes. Several years later, during one of his regular walks, he recognized the very jimson sprouting on Savin Hill Beach. He alerted the state and, he says, expected officials to react swiftly to remove the noxious weed from an area into which they'd pumped millions for renovation.
The state certainly seemed interested in taking on the toxin. In 2006, members of the Legislature-appointed Metropolitan Beaches Commission solicited public comments about how local beaches could be improved. Moran raised the problem with Datura stramonium, and in its January 2007 report, the commission included this challenge about fixing Dorchester beaches: "Jimson weed seems to be spreading."
But since 2006, despite its attempts, the state has been losing the war of weeds to the wily jimson, which spreads easily and regenerates often. Eradicating it requires persistent vigilance.
On a recent visit, there were nearly a dozen visible jimson weed plants on Savin Hill Beach, from green-leafed babies to more mature samples, their lavender, trumpet-shaped petals announcing their hazardous existence.
State officials say they don't have a specific plan to target the jimson.
"If our folks see it, they will remove it," says Wendy Fox, spokeswoman for the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Imagine the Savin Hill Beach situation writ large, she says.
"It would be difficult for DCR to pull up every single plant that might be harmful in some way to someone," says Fox. "We do our best."
Still, Fox vowed that state officials would review their record.
"We'll absolutely look at this again," she says, "and see if there's anything more we ought to do."
Moran, who's provided the state information pinpointing the precise locations of jimson weed on Savin Hill Beach, says he has a simple suggestion for maintenance crews: "It's called a shovel and a rake."
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arpnuke
Always changing
Registered: 09/11/06
Posts: 230
Last seen: 12 years, 8 months
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Re: The other weed [MA] [Re: veggie]
#8964215 - 09/21/08 03:49 PM (15 years, 6 months ago) |
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New way to fix D.A.R.E.: In order to graduate, each child must eat Jimson weed with a bong hit of salvia in the middle of the trip. It would keep kids of drugs forever.
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AltecLansing
Trafalgar Square Pigeon Fiasco
Registered: 07/11/08
Posts: 950
Loc: Michigan
Last seen: 10 years, 8 months
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Re: The other weed [MA] [Re: arpnuke]
#8964316 - 09/21/08 04:13 PM (15 years, 6 months ago) |
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Wonderful, kids are going to read the headline, skim the article and think they can get stoned from Jimson Weed. Mission accomplished.
-------------------- I don't use jelly.
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Coaster
BaĘżal
Registered: 05/22/06
Posts: 33,501
Loc: Deep in the Valley
Last seen: 12 years, 5 months
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ya sometimes informing can be counterproductive
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WonkierBubble
Stranger
Registered: 01/29/08
Posts: 173
Last seen: 9 years, 7 months
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Re: The other weed [MA] [Re: veggie]
#8965124 - 09/21/08 07:30 PM (15 years, 6 months ago) |
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Calling it "the other weed" was probably a really stupid idea
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Noc_Rochee
student
Registered: 02/26/08
Posts: 141
Last seen: 11 years, 10 months
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ive made tea out of every part of that plant ive had no problems
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veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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Re: The other weed [MA] [Re: Noc_Rochee]
#8965961 - 09/21/08 10:27 PM (15 years, 6 months ago) |
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You were lucky.
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MHbound
Ballin Out At All Cost
Registered: 09/24/07
Posts: 6,512
Loc: Under The Rainbow
Last seen: 6 years, 11 months
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Re: The other weed [MA] [Re: veggie]
#8966241 - 09/22/08 12:07 AM (15 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
You were lucky.
Yes you were. There are so many plants that we have yet to discover. By the time I am on my death bed I bet there will be other drugs like LSD/Psilocin/Mescaline discovered in places we never saw coming.
The thing is, is that when these drugs are discovered they will be technically legal. Of course it won't last long so be on the lookout for the next plant from the heavens above.
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Invisible_Woe
Registered: 05/25/07
Posts: 11,708
Loc: Mabase
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Quote:
AltecLansing said: Wonderful, kids are going to read the headline, skim the article and think they can get stoned from Jimson Weed. Mission accomplished.
-------------------- These are not the answers you should be questioning.
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pong
kretan
Registered: 02/09/06
Posts: 4,311
Loc: west coast
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we need to make strains of plants with these chemicals, genetic engineering ftw.
i would love a mold that produced psilocybin.
you could grow that shit so Ez
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durian_2008
Cornucopian Eating an Elephant
Registered: 04/02/08
Posts: 17,576
Loc: Raccoon City
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Re: The other weed [MA] [Re: pong]
#8972489 - 09/23/08 11:11 AM (15 years, 6 months ago) |
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Maybe, he was not lucky, so much as he was very careful.
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