pistachio nuts are highly flammable when stored in large quantities, and are prone to self heating and spontaneous combustion.

for that matter, pistachios are actually drupes, not nuts.

Will a New Study Force Changes in Drug Law?
A two-year study from a British commission is recommending a reality-based approach to drug law, rooted in science and focused on reducing harm. Americans should take note.
March 15, 2007
By Bruce Mirken

On March 8, a high-powered British commission recommended tossing that country’s law on illegal drugs onto the scrap heap and starting over again. Given that the U.S. Controlled Substances Act parallels the British Misuse of Drugs Act in important ways, the suggestion deserves attention in America as well.

Indeed, it would be a fine start if Americans could simply begin the sort of rational, thoughtful debate on drug policy that the British seem to be having. If we could manage such a thing, we might start changing illogical and unscientific laws that now lead to more U.S. arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined.

The RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy, was convened by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, a respected think tank with a 250-year history. After two years of research, this panel of experts and laypeople came to a number of conclusions so sensible and so obvious that it’s astonishing how consistently our elected leaders have avoided confronting them. In particular:

• The notion of a drug-free society is “almost certainly a chimera. … People have always used substances to change the way they see the world and how they feel, and there is every reason to think they always will.” Therefore, “[t]he main aim of public policy should be to reduce the amount of harms that drugs cause.” A policy based on total prohibition “is bound to fail.”
• The concept of “drugs” should include tobacco and alcohol. “Indeed, in their different ways, alcohol and tobacco cause far more harm than illegal drugs.” These substances should be brought into a unified regulatory framework “capable of treating substances according to the harm they cause.”
• The heart of this new regulatory framework must be an index of substance-related harms. “The index should be based on the best available evidence and should be able to be modified in light of new evidence.”
• We need a new way of evaluating the efficacy of drug policies. “In our view, the success of drugs policy should be measured not in terms of the amounts of drugs seized or in the number of dealers imprisoned, but in terms of the amount of harms reduced.”

As an example of the sort of harms index they envision, the RSA Commission points to an index developed by a pair of British scientists, David Nutt and Colin Blakemore, and published in a House of Commons report last year.

Based on scientific evaluations of physical harms (e.g., acute and chronic toxicity), likelihood of dependence, and social harms (including damage done to others, health care costs, etc.), Nutt and Blakemore ranked 20 different classes of drugs, both legal and illegal. Not surprisingly, heroin was at the top of the harm scale, followed by cocaine and barbiturates. Alcohol and tobacco were rated as significantly more harmful than marijuana and several other illegal substances.

While not specifically endorsing the Nutt/Blakemore index, the RSA Commission clearly considered these rankings a good example of what they have in mind, using them as a starting point for illustrations of how such an index might translate into law. Marijuana, they wrote, “should continue to be controlled. But its position on the harms index suggests that the form this control takes might have to correspond far more closely with the way in which alcohol and tobacco are regulated.”

Both the United States and Britain now have drug laws that rank drugs into a series of classifications. The problem — well, at least one problem — is that these classifications have little connection to what the science actually tells us about the dangers (or lack thereof) of different substances. Britain’s version, the commission noted, “is driven more by ‘moral panic’ than a practical desire to reduce harm. … It sends people to prison who should not be there. It forces people into treatment who do not need it (while, in effect, denying treatment to people who do need it).”

And Britain’s law is, on at least one key point, far more rational than the U.S. Controlled Substances Act. The British classify marijuana in the lowest of three classes of illicit drugs — still illegal, but treated as less dangerous than cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine. Simple possession, without aggravating circumstances, is generally a “nonarrestable” offense.

Our CSA ranks marijuana in Schedule I, the worst class of drugs — considered not only to be at high risk of abuse but also to be unsafe for use even under medical supervision — along with heroin and LSD. Amazingly, cocaine and meth are in Schedule II — considered acceptable for use under medical supervision. That such a ranking is insane should not need to be stated.

There are plenty of specifics in the RSA report about which reasonable people can disagree. But the important thing is not what they say about any specific drug — and indeed, the report is careful not to advocate specific legal changes for particular drugs. What’s important is that it suggests a framework that’s far more rational than what now exists in the United States, Britain and most other countries: A reality-based approach rooted in sound science, focusing on how to reduce harm.

Even more encouraging is the generally level-headed reaction thus far. Some commentators are arguing with parts of the report and disagreeing with some suggestions, but even critics seem to be acknowledging that the RSA has raised important issues that need serious discussion.

As a commentary in the March 9 edition of the London paper the Mirror put it, “Hasn’t the time now come to hold a public debate on whether our current drug prohibition is working any better than the alcohol prohibition of Al Capone’s day? Aren’t we now adult enough to discuss whether a legally regulated drug trade would work better than our gangster-run market? We think we are.”

Sadly, it’s hard to imagine such a rational discussion taking place on the national stage in the United States. Meanwhile, in the time it took you to read this, 12 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges.

Shooting Pain
The future of heat-beaming weapons.
Feb. 17, 2007
By William Saletan

If you’re worried about terrorism, upset about the war in Iraq, and depressed by global chaos, violence, and death, cheer up. We’ve just invented a weapon that fires a beam of searing pain.

Three weeks ago, the U.S. armed forces tested it on volunteers at an Air Force base in Georgia. You can watch the video on a military Web site. Three colonels get zapped, along with an Associated Press reporter. The beam is invisible, but its effects are vivid. Two dozen airmen scatter. The AP guy shrieks and bolts out of the target zone. He says it felt like heat all over his body, as though his jacket were on fire.

The feeling is an illusion. No one is harmed. The beam’s energy waves penetrate just one-sixty-fourth of an inch into your body, heating your skin like microwaves. They inflame your nerve endings without actually burning you. This could be the future of warfare: less bloodshed, more pain.

Military technology has always sought greater precision from longer range. In the Gulf War, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, we exploited the increasing accuracy of laser-guided bombs. In the post-9/11 terrorist hunt and the occupation of Iraq, we’ve sent hundreds of remotely piloted aerial drones to spy and kill. But the lives protected by drones are ours. The pain beam is more ambitious: It can spare civilians and even the enemy. Precision isn’t just the ability to kill. Sometimes, it’s ability to disperse and deter without killing.

That kind of precision is becoming more important. Twelve years ago, the Department of Defense observed that our armed forces were increasingly being used for peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, and protection of civil society. More of our enemies were blending in with, or disguising themselves as, civilians. Through the media, more eyeballs, hearts, and minds could see the infrastructure we destroyed. The DOD proposed the development of weapons “to incapacitate personnel or materiel, while minimizing fatalities, permanent injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property and the environment.”

Like lethal weapons, nonlethal weapons have evolved from short- to long-range. Batons and pepper spray required hand-to-hand combat. Water cannons, rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, and sting ball grenades have extended our reach, but not far enough to keep soldiers clear of rocks or small-arms fire. Some of our weapons are insufficiently discriminate. Tear gas torments a whole crowd, not just the miscreants using it for cover.

Projectiles are also unpredictable. At long range, particularly in crosswinds, rubber bullets can hit the wrong people, or the right people in the wrong places. At close range, they can kill. Look at the absurdly named "FN303 less lethal launcher." It’s supposed to fire "non-lethal projectiles at established non-lethal ranges." But when you’re launching things, less lethal is the best you can do.

That’s where the pain beam comes in. Unlike projectiles, beams are "directed energy." They travel in a straight line over long distances, ignoring gravity and wind. They cause no more damage at 10 feet than at 1,000. Unlike gas, they’re discriminate. Raytheon, the pain beam’s manufacturer, points out that the weapon "allows precise targeting of specific individuals" and that the pain "ceases immediately" when the beam is diverted or the target flees.

The shift from hardware to software, from matter to energy, can do more than control the unpredictability of weapons. It can control the unpredictability of the people who fire them. Early nonlethal devices, such as rubber bullets and Mace, often caused injuries due to abuse by hotheads. When the pain beam was initially being developed, somebody accidentally fired it on a high setting, inflicting a second-degree burn. The designers responded by programming limits on the beam’s power and duration.

Years of work have gone into making the beam safe. It’s been tested thousands of times on 600 volunteers. It’s been reviewed and revised by a human-effects review board, a human-effects advisory panel, and military surgeons general. It’s been tested for effects on skin cancer, fertility, jewelry, and drunks. The results have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Never has an organization licensed to kill jumped through so many hoops to make sure nobody gets injured.

The nonlethal weapons program is a pacifist’s dream. Its “vehicle lightweight arresting devices” are built to stop cars with minimal damage, allowing minor injuries only if you’re “not wearing a seatbelt.” Its “acoustic hailing devices” are engineered to deliver sound waves “below Occupational Safety and Health Administration hearing limits for prolonged exposure.” Its founding directive pledges to avoid environmental damage. Even the less lethal launcher projectiles are “non-toxic.”

But the ability to inflict pain without injury doesn’t just make injury less necessary. It makes pain more essential to military operations—and easier to inflict. To achieve the desired “repel effect,” I have to make you suffer. Knowing that your agony will be brief and leave no physical damage makes the weapon easier to fire. It’s almost as though, like the imagined flames on the AP reporter’s jacket, your pain isn’t real.

That’s the metaphysical gap nonlethal energy weapons exploit. The rain of pain falls mainly in the brain. The long-range acoustic device, for instance, “can target narrow sound beams at excruciating decibel levels, but below the threshold of hearing damage,” according to a military account of a presentation by its project manager. Four months ago, Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation to prosecute torture, defined as intentional infliction of “serious physical or mental pain or suffering.” But that rule applies only in captivity. On the street, pain administration won’t be a crime. It’ll be a policy.

Two weeks from now, military leaders will convene in London to discuss the pain beam and the next generation of directed-energy weapons, including microwaves and lasers. Law enforcement agencies are interested. Raytheon is already advertising the technology for commercial applications. We’re even developing a “personnel halting and stimulation response” system—yes, a PHaSR—to stun targets instead of killing them. But don’t worry, nobody will get hurt. Sort of.