When news came out on Monday that Willie Nelson and his crew were busted on their bus for possession of pot and shrooms, the Associated Press used the phrase "narcotic mushrooms." (Previous post here.) I'd never heard psilocybin mushrooms described as a narcotic before but apparently the word "narcotic" has a more general meaning when used by police. Over at the excellent new 10 Zen Monkeys webzine, RU Sirius has the real dope:
Among the drug hip, the use of the word narcotic to describe mind-active drugs other than opiates carries with it an implicit irony. (Implicit only because irony, by its nature, can't be explicit.) On the other hand, the mainstream media, even the San Francisco Chronicle, from the drug-sophisticated Bay Area, tends to use law enforcement misnomers for illicit drugs, when reporting news around drugs. For instance, one report called the disassociative hallucinogen Ketamine a "date rape drug." There is, of course, no such thing as a date rape drug. There are drugs that were developed to be used – and are used – for other purposes that are, on rare occasions, used for date rape. And then there's alcohol, which has been the more easily available and frequently used substance of choice for date rapists since time immemorial. Unlike some other US papers, The Chronicle, at least, never reported on an LSD overdose, something this is virtually impossible to achieve, however hard some of us may have tried back in the days of heroic dose experimentation.
