OFF THE WIRE
Compared to anything else, the psychedelic drug DMT is nuts.
As the UFC is to a toddler slapfight, as Niagara is to a bath, so DMT
is to marijuana ... plus the Challenger disaster, your first orgasm and
electroshock therapy all mixed together.
Explaining a DMT trip is like a horse who's been brought skydiving explaining it to the other stallions. "There was this wind and the barn was small and I was like above the barn somehow and … holy fuck dude."
So you'd think smoking DMT would be a whole big ordeal, an epic
adventure, a huge event. After all, to trip on the DMT-containing tea
ayahuasca, which is actually the training-wheels version of smoked DMT,
users often drive or fly to a remote location, do a ritual diet, are
guided by a shaman who's been trained for generations before spending a
few days "integrating."
DMT, though: kids are smoking it at parties. Kids vape it in their
car after school. If you cultivate an awareness of the odor — like
grandma's burned shag carpet — you can smell it at Red Rocks. Kids smoke
it like it's a cigarette or a Swisher Sweet, instead of the closest
thing we have to interdimensional space travel. And then these kids go
right on with their lives.
And when we say kids we often mean kids — 15 to 17 year olds.
"I use to like to smoke it before school," one regular user, who started manufacturing DMT in his basement at 17, tells Rooster. "It's a real pick-me-up."
It's even stranger to hear these stories because the majority of teens and young adults are actually less druggy than the generation before them, just as they're less likely to have sex and have a driver's license.
But, anecdotally, it looks like a small minority of kids compensate
by being unrepentant fiends. The internet has given them knowledge of,
and the dark net access to, an alphabet soup of mind-cranking molecules,
from 2c-b to 4-ac0 to 5-meO. Truthful information on the internet
teaches them these psychedelics are relatively physically harmless, and
so these psycho-nots are nom-nom-noming a whole cheese plate's worth of
drugs. (The stories of kids getting spun out on psychedelics are less well-shared online.)
No other drug carries the sleek cultural approval and awe that DMT
does, and if a kid smokes a breakthrough dose at a party, it can get her
the kind of respect other kids in other generations got from jumping
off a rooftop or smashing a beer can into their foreheads.
And then there's this ultimate sign of DMT's ubiquity:
DMT vape pens.
A vape pen, of course, is a simple, sleek, pen-shaped electronic
device that lets users easily inhale drugs — usually nicotine or THC.
But modified versions of them can easily be filled with DMT. That
obviates the need to use a complicated smoking apparatus like a dab rig,
that can be clumsy and prone to misfires.
There were tutorials uploaded about DMT vape pens at least six years ago.
The first time we heard about DMT vape pens was a year and a half ago, when comedian Shane Mauss told us a story about loading up two vape pens with DMT to get higher for longer. Since then, we've seen them for purchase off the Dark Web, in the inventory of dealers and bragged about on Facebook.
Now discussions of them are much more common, teaching anyone, step by step, how to modify the e-cig, mix DMT with alcohol and blast off.
As DMT vape pens become more common, expect more people to more easily try it out. No doubt, they'll all come back with their own interpretation of the weird DMT world.
The fact DMT is tentacling into everyday lives probably has to do
with a heightened tolerance for bizarreness. Now that everything is so
apeshit all the time, at least according to the internet, a regular dab
sesh or day drunk just doesn't cut it, and we need to be totally shocked
out of our minds in order to feel, like a soldier ripping off a toenail
to feel something besides the inanity and cruelty of war, which is how
regular people feel now after they've spent more than five hours reading
Twitter.
DMT is insane, but it's here to stay. And DMT vape pens put the insane right in your pocket.
A Florida judge for the 13th circuit, judge Gregory P. Holder,
a law professor at the University of Phoenix, perhaps handed down a
cruel and unusual sentence for ordering a man who refused to turn over
his cell phone password to serve 60 days in jail.
That is, unless he hands it over.
"Basically,
my client has been deprived liberty today without due process,"
Patrick Leduc, an attorney representing William Montanez.
Montanez was arrested for possessing a few grams of weed during a traffic stop.
He refused to allow an officer to search his vehicle for drugs after he was pulled over for improperly yielding.
A drug dog was brought in.
A small amount of marijuana was found in his vehicle and cops asked to search his cell phone.
Montanez wouldn't allow police to search his car.
Montanez refused and detectives got a warrant.
Leduc says cops are on a fishing expedition, which brings us the case to a constitutional challenge.
"There is no
information that the state can show, until I can challenge the warrant
itself, that says, ‘Hey, what’s on these two cell phones are directly
related to a possession of misdemeanor marijuana,’" Leduc explained.
Tony Falcone, a prosecutor countered the argument, saying the warrant is lawful.
"I think it's appropriate the court order the defendant to show cause."
After just minutes of arguments, judge Holder ruled officers could go through both of Montanez's cell phones.
However, when the
phones were brought out from the evidence bag, Montanez said he could
remember the password since he'd just bought the phones.
"I don't know the code, sir," he tells judge Holder.
Judge Holder then requests Montanez unlock his second cell phone, but he gave the same answer.
Judge Holder found Montanez in contempt of court and threw him in jail for 60 days.
Leduc says what happened to his client could happen to any of us.
"If
they arrest you for anything — whether it’s drugs, guns, you name it —
and an electronic device is nearby, they can get a search warrant and
search it. And if you don't provide that information to search it, to
unlock, because you want to keep the information private, we'll put you
in jail," he told Fox13.
After jailing Montanez, Judge Holder said he would be released if he suddenly remembers his password.
According to public records, the telephone number to judge Holder's 13 circuit court is (813) 272-5894.
