I found this in an american DEA (federeal drug enforcement agency) website. Apparantly some brugmansia blooms were seized from a middle school student in Florida and then forwarded to the DEA for analysis. http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/programs/forensicsci/microgram/mg0404/mg0404.html Look for picture number 20 about a third of the way down the HTML version (I don't know what page it's on in the PDF version). The caption reads, "ANGEL TRUMPET IN MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA". From the medical description of what the symptoms of atropine poisoning are, it doesn't like much fun --- you get "hot as a hare, mad as a hatter, blind as a bat, red as a beet and dry as a bone". I'll stick with coffee and the odd beer, thanks.
Having browsed the whole article, made me realise how "behind the times" I am with all the different drugs. Looks like several plants are on the don't own list. Our local cop shop still grows opium poppies around the building, but then again, it is Salt Spring Island. I just bought grow lights for my school , everyone assumes that grow lights only grow one plant. sigh. Whats the world coming to?
A police state, apparently. Drugs from plants have been used forever, that leaves cracking down as the new development.
As bad as the law enforcement / right wingy-ness in the US has become, I think the level of outright police corruption is unsurpassed in the former soviet union, where one of my friends tells me (a resident of Moscow) that the local police in small villages will actually go around tearing up old ladies' poppy patches and then charging the old lady with narcotics posession and cultivation and then this is presented as a huge victory in the war on the evils of drugs. At least all the Salt Spring Island cops do is grow the poppies --- but let's not give them any ideas. :)
Thats very strange about the Brugmansias, we have been using them in the governor general's greenhouse for a while.
they have been after poeple with angel trumpets down here for years,they are considered hallucinogenic, and when a kid almost died from ingestion a few years ago they came down hard.a far as i know you cant buy them in florida,but if you already had one they cant do anything about it.i do know a houses near me that have them im in their garden
