Optimi Health's head of mycology Scott Marshall is one of a select number of ex-underground mushroom growers to have become a licensed psilocybe cultivator in North America, after laws controlling the use of psychedelic fungi were eased after decades of murderous, futile drug war.Scott moved to Princeton for the job, and has become so obsessed with his lab work that he hasn’t left town in over a year. “I’m not trying to be ‘Mr Mushroom,’ but when I got hired they were like, ‘We need to fill this vault,’ so I did it,” he tells VICE. “It's a dream come true. It’s going to have a super therapeutic effect on the world.”Read the full article on vice.com.
Behind a newly launched campaign against sexual strangulation, 'Breathless', is 'It’s Time We Talked' – a violence prevention project that targets pornography’s influence on young people. When we talk about young people and sex, porn is wielded as the ultimate excuse, loaded with the blame for encouraging and normalising “unsafe” and “dangerous” sexual practices.
Even the original researchers who published the survey on The Conversation did so with an early preface: “For some people, strangulation is a high-risk but acceptable part of consensual sex, and it is important not to stigmatise people who use it.” But the survey's results have provoked the same conversation about how porn – and exposure to it at a young age – ought to be held responsible for some of society’s biggest failings.
Read the full article from @rari.ferrarri on vice.com.
It’s music review time. We love music review time.
VICE Reviews: Your Music is a fortnightly series where we listen to the first three music submissions we get sent, and give it our very, very honest opinion.
Does our opinion matter? If you’re sending your music in, that’s for you to decide. You’re asking for it.
We’re not scholars here, we just enjoy (good) music.
If you think we’re full of shit, let us know.
If you think you make better music than these guys, also let us know.
Call out for the next round of submissions is next Monday, July 8.
Listen to these tracks in full on the VICE Reviews: Your Music playlist at the link in bio.
Thousands of frozen sperm donations in Queensland are being destroyed after an audit revealed many samples in the state had a medium to high risk of misidentification.
The Queensland Health Ombudsman reported many potential errors within 42% of audited sperm samples in the state, including “identification mix-ups, loss of viability of gametes or embryos, and suspected deterioration beyond laboratory standards”.
They’ve since recommended that all clinics in Queensland “dispose of stored donor material not meeting current identification standards”.
The number of donations that will be thawed and discarded is unknown but the report said “thousands” of high-risk were discovered by an audit at a single clinic.
Australia already has a significant lack of donated sperm, which will now be further affected.
At the end of 2023, police in the Netherlands pulled over a driver who’d ignored a stop sign and quickly noticed three things. One, he didn’t have a valid licence. Two, he appeared to be high. And three, in the passenger seat beside him was a massive bag of Nazi-branded ecstasy pills.
The irony is inescapable: to see an ecstasy pill (a drug synonymous with feelings of love, euphoria, and empathy) juxtaposed with Nazi insignia is jarring in the extreme.
Yet this isn’t an isolated incident.
“Yesterday, a member of the French Psychedelic Society, who works in a harm reduction association in western France, sent us this,” Dr Zoë Dubus, a post-doctoral researcher specialising in psychotropic drugs, wrote on X this week. Attached to the post was a photo of two grey pills, also stamped with the Nazi Eagle.
According to Dr Dubus, the pills are “starting to circulate in France” and have “been spotted since early 2024 in Switzerland, Iceland, and Holland.” Testing in Zurich revealed this design has also been used to make 2C-B (in 2023) and MDMA (this year).
The trend exists in an interesting context. Far-right political parties have made massive gains in Brussels of late, a situation lubricated by a grim uptick in youth support. In Germany, 16 percent of under-25s voted for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the EU elections earlier this month, triple the number for the same election in 2019. The National Rally (RN) in France was the most popular party for people aged below 34, increasing ten points to 32 percent of the vote for that demographic. Meanwhile, Poland’s far-right Confederation party saw an 18.5 percent increase in support from voters under 30. Similar shit has gone down in Portugal, Spain, Austria, and the Netherlands.
Is it possible that we’re seeing Europe’s far-right surge play out through the medium of party drug designs? The first sample spotted with a Nazi symbol was in Switzerland in 2019, followed a few years later by a swastika LSD tablet. But until now, Dr Dubus explains, it’s been a “limited phenomenon.” That’s changed this year, however.
Read the whole story on vice.com
For VICE Spotlight, we’re rounding up some of the best emerging talent coming out of Australia and showcasing their releases over the last month.
Here are some of our picks for June, featuring @joesipodtouch , @og.mammoth & @ericspice , @ugly_esther , @soundbyjerome and @an.so.ie & @zsa.zsa.gyulay .
Follow the VICE Spotlight playlist at the link in bio.
