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The Decline of American Peyote (vice.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the going-going-gone dept.

dmoberhaus writes: An investigation into the decline of America's peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus that is critically important to the rituals of the Native American Church, the largest pan-tribal religious organization in the U.S. Motherboard spoke with Dawn Davis, a researcher using satellite data to track the destruction of peyote's habitat, as well as Salvador Johnson, one of only four people who is licensed to harvest and sell peyote in the U.S. by the DEA. "In 2011, Davis traveled to the peyote gardens for the first time and met with Johnson," reports Motherboard. "Davis said that Johnson was following many conservation best practices, such as cycling through the areas where peyote is harvested, but this hadn't slowed the steady decrease in the size and quantity of peyote buttons in his harvests. Today, the biggest threats to peyote continue to be rapid land development, poaching, and rooting by feral pigs -- problems that responsible harvesting by peyoteros can't solve."

While there has been an increase in the number of indigenous people growing peyote in greenhouses, this is only a temporary solution to the conservation crisis. Davis is advocating for conservation easements or tax breaks for landowners to encourage the protection of peyote. She also said it will be necessary to push for the DEA to reschedule peyote, which is still considered a Schedule I substance that has "no currently accepted medical use." This makes it exceedingly hard for individuals to become licensed peyoteros.

36 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Religion legitimates ALL the things? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Can I found an "ancient reiligon" tht happens to require meth and orgies and killing traitors (lobbyists) as an integral part of its "belief system"?

    I mean who would object?
    And who would dare to 'offend my religion"? Iâ(TM)d sue for discrimination!

    Or does it need to be so old, that the one who knew it is a scam, is dead and forgotten?

    1. Re:Religion legitimates ALL the things? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In any case, how is this News For Nerds?

    2. Re:Religion legitimates ALL the things? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Judging by the way your 's get displayed, you're already member of a cult.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Religion legitimates ALL the things? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure you need religion to legitimize people eating whatever plants they want to in the first place.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re:Religion legitimates ALL the things? by TuringTest · · Score: 1

      Religion has always been a nerdy topic, as well as mind-altering drugs. Combining them is uber-nerdy.

      --
      Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
    5. Re:Religion legitimates ALL the things? by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure you need religion to legitimize people eating whatever plants they want to in the first place.

      They do it for meat.

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    6. Re:Religion legitimates ALL the things? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      HOW is this news for nerds? HOW??

      As an enthusiastic psychedelic drug user and self-professed psychonaut, who also happens to be a college-educated Mensa member who works in Silicon Valley and makes comfortable money, who also knows tons of other computer programmers, intellectuals, and nerds from many places and can speak for them....

      I assure you this is news for nerds. You may be too straight-edged to have ever opened your mind to the other places it can go and find out what other types of thinking exist, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have done the same. I've broken my mind, gotten lost in it, found beauty where I had never seen it before, comprehended things that can't be put into words, then put my mind back together again, and then gone to work again on Monday. I can't emphasize how important and useful exploring these other planes of thought has been for my psyche, my character, my disposition, my attitude, and my capacity for love and understanding. I am a deeper, smarter, more efficient...and here's the big one: MORE CREATIVE person than I was before, and more than I ever would have been without this in my life.

      So yeah, peyote and its history and its chemical effects on the mind are very fucking important to some of us. And not because we're lazy escapist losers who want to kill brain cells. That is a stereotype dreamed up by squares who want to justify living in their safe spaces and never really tasting life. It is important to us because the human mind is the most powerful and interesting and useful thing in all of science. Maybe it should be explored and understood, huh? Ya think?

    7. Re:Religion legitimates ALL the things? by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Somehow it's affecting BeauHD, so it must be important to us, right?

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    8. Re:Religion legitimates ALL the things? by Agent0013 · · Score: 1

      That is a stereotype dreamed up by squares who want to justify living in their safe spaces and never really tasting life.

      Just remember, those same squares are not abstaining from drugs. They just do the ones the doctors prescribe to them. It's more like, "my drugs are ok but we need to outlaw your drugs."

      --

      -- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
  2. Bing recommends piracy for peyote 2019? by zennling · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe check the links in the article, editor?

    1. Re:Bing recommends piracy for peyote 2019? by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

      Please mod up. (This is sad, BTW)

  3. One of those is easily solved by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and rooting by feral pigs

    Pigs are an invasive species in the wilds of North America. There is no conservation argument for protecting them under hunting regulations. Just lift all of the hunting regs and give hunters a standard meat value of a few bucks per pound donated to a charity, and you'll see the problem dry up quickly.

    1. Re:One of those is easily solved by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Informative

      Some States place restrictions on hunting feral hog populations, but Texas is not one of them. Nuisance hogs can be trapped en masse, killed at night using IR, and from a vehicle such as a four-wheeler or helicopter, and still:

      Best places to hunt

      It shouldn't be a surprise, but Texas by far tops this list of the best states to hunt hogs in the United States. With a hog population conservatively estimated at upwards of 1.5 million hogs, Texas has by far the largest hog population of any state. In fact, Texas is experiencing such a dramatic increase in feral hog populations (an average of 20% per year) that some think that the state is actually losing the war on feral hogs.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    2. Re:One of those is easily solved by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      Where they are a problem you can kill feral pigs by whatever means you want, they aren't restricted like deer. People joy ride on four wheelers and mow them down, but they apparently reproduce very quickly and it is exceptionally difficult to completely extirpate them from an area.

    3. Re:One of those is easily solved by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

      The idea of a tax credit like the GP suggested is a pretty good one. You have to cook feral hog well-done but it's quite delicious.

      Target practice may be the current standard but if that target is worth $200 then more shooters will be out bagging them.

      Avoiding the Saigon Cobra Problem is important but a simple lipid test should be able to determine feral from farmed - my tastebuds sure can. Maybe $4 cost on a $200 benefit.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    4. Re:One of those is easily solved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      They should introduce vast quantities of wolves to kill the boars. Then tigers to kill the wolves. Then when winter comes the tigers will die.

    5. Re:One of those is easily solved by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

      The idea of a tax credit like the GP suggested is a pretty good one. You have to cook feral hog well-done but it's quite delicious.

      Finally some government pork many (just not kosher or halal) Americans can get behind!

      Seriously though, a government program to collect nuisance or surplus game meat for donation to shelters or even for use in prisons would be nice. Shelters -homeless, battered women, etc-are always looking for donations and the food prisoners get served is total crap and processed a little fresh meat now and then would probably be welcomed.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    6. Re:One of those is easily solved by I75BJC · · Score: 1

      In an environment that Hates the Modern Sporting Rifle and a major, national, political party that wants to wipe out public ownership and any kind of MSR, it will impossible to eliminate the feral pig/hog problem. Even in Texas, with what I assume are reasonable gun ownership laws, the number of feral pigs/hogs harvested each year have not reduced the feral pig/hog population -- they keep growing in numbers and damage to the land and the crops and vegetation grown on the land. (IIANM, Texas requires a hunting license to kill feral pigs/hogs which seems counter-productive to eliminating unwanted feral pigs/hogs.) Thus far, it is not a problem easily solved.

    7. Re:One of those is easily solved by I75BJC · · Score: 1

      Wow! You have no idea of Governments' mandated public health laws. The resulting Government tax & regulation & enforcement personnel would waive and value of a wholesale program that bestows "free" pig meat to the poor, the homeless, the incarcerated, and the consumer. It would be cost prohibited because of the Governments' existing policies. (Not to mention the hew and cry of the SJWs about how poor prisoners are being fed sub-standard food -- American History teaches, IMHO, that Every Good Deal Will Not Go Unpunished!)

    8. Re:One of those is easily solved by I75BJC · · Score: 1

      It isn't as easy as you make it sound! (Ignorance IS bliss!) Feral Pigs/Hogs are not easy targets for the average hunter. It takes quite a lot of skill and quite a lot of expensive equipment to hunt feral pigs/hogs in any numbers greater than ones or twos. If you want to get the entire sounder, the personal equipment for night hunting starts round $4K and takes about a year for Federal Government approval. This doesn't include the costs of travel, vehicles, licenses, clothing/gear, clean-up of the carcasses, restoration of the land, harvesting/storing/preparing the meat, etc., etc. Daytime hunting is a little cheaper but it rises quickly if you use a helicopter, This is prohibitively expensive for a non-professional. There is not an easy under our current Governmental laws & regulations. It is nearly impossible within a culture controlled by SJWs!

    9. Re:One of those is easily solved by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

      Not to mention the hew and cry of the SJWs about how poor prisoners are being fed sub-standard food -

      Uh, they already do, because prisoners already are.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    10. Re:One of those is easily solved by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      I didn't realize that so much stupid could be compressed into one post.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    11. Re:One of those is easily solved by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      I'm no expert, but I'm not sure why total wild hog population is a useful number to determine how thick game is. Wouldn't Hog Density per Square Mile work better, since people tend to cover the same number of square miles per hour not the same number of states per hour when they hunt?

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    12. Re:One of those is easily solved by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      I'm no expert, but I'm not sure why total wild hog population is a useful number to determine how thick game is. Wouldn't Hog Density per Square Mile work better, since people tend to cover the same number of square miles per hour not the same number of states per hour when they hunt?

      Well sure. Since the square miles a State occupies is rather well known, all that's missing to figure Hog Density per Square Mile is, err, total wild hog population.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    13. Re:One of those is easily solved by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Total averages like that are pretty silly. After all, hunters are going to go where the hogs are. So, it doesn't take into account the vast ignored areas that are desert, or cities or whatever.

      I mean, you want to figure out the HDperSM on areas that are likely to be hunted. And if all 1.5 million hogs live in Hog Forest in the center of the state, it doesn't matter how big the state is, it matters how bi Hog Forest is.

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      Your ad here. Ask me how!
  4. Correct link by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 5, Informative

    15 Comments and still no one bothered to provide the correct link... sigh. Must be this one I assume:

    The Decline of American Peyote

  5. Slashdot died a long time ago. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    When CmdrTaco & co left and sold it to some vulture.

    Nowadays its purpose is only, to be a trap for some poor Internet addicts like you and me.
    And I guess they thought "addict is addict", and hence drugs and hence peyote.

  6. Re:Don't indians now use alcohol for their rituals by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Informative

    The founder of AA felt psychadelics were so important to combating alcoholism that he resigned from AA when the board refused to make it one of the twelve steps.

    So go ahead and criminalize (in 1972, as a political weapon) substances that societies have used for at least 180,000 years and see what the repercussions might be.

    Here's an example of where conservatism is wise.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  7. Re:The NEO layout is a cult? by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

    Or is this the noob/leet version of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where you falsely assume I'm an iTard, when really, you're the loser who's still using QWERTY and ASCII.

    Well, let me blow your mind: https://neo-layout.org/

    Well, that's good if you're German I guess.

    --
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  8. bad link by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    Why does the link take me somewhere completely off topic?

  9. Guys?!? Guys?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Did you see the size of that chicken?

  10. Re:The NEO layout is a cult? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    I'm using what's required to ensure my characters are properly represented in the medium chosen for display. Which means that I don't get all zealot about insisting that MY stuff is right and everyone else is wrong because they don't join my obviously vastly superior cult.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  11. What? by mark_reh · · Score: 1

    That's a shame.

    I'll volunteer a portion of my home to raise some of the little cacti if it will help...

  12. Re:Don't indians now use alcohol for their rituals by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

    Drugs were made illegal because assholes like Timothy Leary scared the shit out of normal Americans. He was going to give your kids LSD, and then they'd change their personalities and never come home again. He has a lot to answer for.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  13. Re:Don't indians now use alcohol for their rituals by cb88 · · Score: 1

    He was kicked off the board amicably... by the rest of the board.

  14. Re:Don't indians now use alcohol for their rituals by jythie · · Score: 1

    Ever notice how the people who seem to have a lot to answer for mostly just end up rolling in praise?