source @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/new...england-bristol-14762782

Charging people (some of which claimed to be terminally ill) £100 for a dose of Aya? I don't think dude should be locked up, but that's a dick move.

Wow I was just about to post how sad this is, how sickening the narc/sting was and the cost of being a fighter for freedom, etc. but just scanning the article indicates he took beaucoup $. 100 GB pounds is a lot of $ in my budget. And was administering as a cancer cure? :/

Yet another unfortunate reminder of what happens when people get greedy and start offering these things to the public for profit. It's sad to keep seeing ever moar bad press about aya and dmt. SMH

Yep, certainly a git according to the report. And he was found guilty of production of a class A drug, presumably for mixing the huasca, which is annoying, I did not realise they could spin it that way.
Fortunately, the line about raising awareness was probably bluffery, as the national drug strategy crew have much more real, much bigger problems to deal with. This is the fact that gives me hope.

This is disturbing on many levels.

First of all ,to claim it can 'cure cancer', is wholly vacuous and fails to take onboard that 'cancer' is an oft-tme end result of a variety of genetic and environmental factors and is such a heterogeneous term for many disease processes.

Secondly, say I had an inoperable stomach cancer and attended Mr Aziz' "clinic", the last thing I would need is a strong emetic which cauld cause me to expire through vomiting blood.Plus how is Mr Aziz to know what my serum potassium and chloride ions are (unless he has checked via a blood test); this is important as if I purge heavily even without bleeding, the loss of K+ could precipitate a lethal cardiac arrythmia.

Is he also aware of any meds I might be taking for my cancer or associated problems,and is his brew safe with these?

What if I had an undiagnosed metastatic deposit on my brain- vomiting can cause intra-craial pressure to increase (as well as being a sign of raised ICP).This increases the risk of a vascular event related to the deposit.

And I could go on.......

Mr Aziz has been very foolish and the taking of money for his (dis)service just adds insult to potential injury.

This is very sad. The fact that the person in question, Aziz, charged $100 for a single ayahuasca session takes away almost all Aziz' credibility. However, don't jump to conclusions about the cancer thing. We know there have been studies on harmine's effect on cancer. Aziz may have merely made comments to people about some of the potential anti cancer properties of ayahuasca, as in the same way that someone may talk about the known anti cancer properties of blueberries. You know how the media distorts things. That article also says dmt is a dangerous drug and suggests there's a reason it's in the same class as heroin. What kind of twisted truth is that?

Don't assume Aziz was claiming to terminally ill people that ayahuasca was going to cure their cancer. Also, we don't know how seriously ill the people were who drank, or if he was advertising ayahausca as some kind of cure, or if he even gave anyone with cancer ayahuasca. If he did give give anyone with cancer ayahuasca, maybe they were in remission. Maybe they were in a non critical stage, already receiving other treatment, or their cancer was already scheduled to be treated with surgery. Yes, it is likely that ayahuasca will make you throw up because the plant oils and acids irritate the stomach, but that's about the only physical health concern with ayahuasca, except of course, depending on whatever medication a person is on. I'm sure the people who took the ayahuasca knew they'd throw up beforehand. You know media leaves out all kinds of things, and distorts truths beyond recognition. Maybe Aziz made a comment at some point about ayahuasca having anti oxidant effects, and the newspaper is telling it as if he were scamming people in to drinking ayahuasca as a radical treatment for cancer. We don't know. The article doesn't say.... although we do know that these types of articles try as hard as they possibly can to make things seem a million times worse than they are.

However, I would agree though, that IF Aziz was telling people that ayahuasca will cure their cancer, that is low low low. And the fact that he was charging $100 was also very poor form. And even though it's very poor form, I wonder what the participants think about all this. I wonder if the participants are blown away in a positive way by ayahuasca as much as everyone else, or if there is something unusual about them..... sitting there all bitter and glad that Aziz was arrested, saying, "yeah, he got what he deserved.... what was I thinking taking ayahuasca, what a fool. This person needs to be locked in a cage and the public protected from people like him, and from dmt." Unlikely. It would be interesting to hear the perspective of one of the participants. Instead, we just hear about how evil Aziz is, and how evil dmt is without any thought as to the actual experience these people have had with it.

in a state in the rocky mountains that i used to live in a group of very wealthy and somewhat elderly new age people used to have aya sessions involving 'shamans',
the session prices were between $300-600 per person and would have around 10 people minimum.

I had mixed feelings about this. A lot of psychedelic conferences have very similar ticket prices and clearly both cater to the rich and disenfranchise the poor.
It is interesting to look at a parking lot for a psychedelic event and see it full of cars that cost 40-60K. I guess it is a sign of the times, after golfing at the country club they can go listen to psychedelic authors or sit around and puke into buckets.

Charging £100 for an aya session seems pretty low compared to what is happening in the USA in some circles. However telling them it was a treatment for cancer seems problematic at best.

Nice comment.

Sadly I've just sat through the bulletin on the local TV news, gloating about how clever they were to expose this "mind-bending drug"..."the same as heroin and cocaine"..."quite serious hallucinations"..."dangerous hallucinogen" and on and on with concerned sincere and disapproving stares into the camera.

We just seem to get further and further in the opposite direction from what we all know western society badly needs...so depressing really.

This is particularly frustrating for me, as I have just managed to come off twelve years of SSRIs purely with the help of the miraculous Caapi vine...do you think the local news would be interested in running a story about that?

On the other hand, what a f*ckwit. :evil:
.

Those claims need to be challenged and the news held to account for sloppy reporting.

I don't think it said anywhere that the guy was a doctor, but regardless, this is what happens when you mix money and the molecule. This guy was charging $150 for something that probably cost him less than $2 per dose to brew. Do I think he deserves to go to jail? I dunno... Probably, yeah. If he was advertising this as alternative treatment to cancer patients, most definitely.

Someone should send this to that knucklehead at Facebook who thinks he'll be spared prosecution for distributing by claiming religious exemption. Consider this and similar stories a warning of where we're headed. Be discrete or be prepared for the law to crack down much harder.

This is just another piece of poor reporting. Clearly the problem is to do with the fact that a non professional shaman was stepping into dangerous doctors only territory. It's normal to vomit and hallucinate on ayahuasca, which is why people take it. We know that dmt is class "A" like heroin and cocaine. However DMT should not be Placed there because it is a medicine, which has been used safely for 1000's of years by Amazonian shamen. It's not a dangerous drug if used wisely. You could say the same about Paracetamol.

-Leave the DMT out of this. DMT is fine, it's just a tool. The bloke chose to use the tool irresponsabley in order to profit, and was punished- silly fool. Let that be the end of that....

Well, that's kind of the point. DMT will not be left out of this. Don't expect the world to embrace it. If the media can demonize it and the law can shut it down, they will - and you can count on that. Every one of these public incidents is another nail in the coffin. People who seek to profit from it and/or refuse to fly under the radar WILL fuck this up for everyone.

I know, Art!
But let's have faith in the fact that there will probably, and hopefully also be plenty of people able to prove that DMT based hallucinogens have in fact been a healthy part of many societies for 1000's of years. Anyway, i looked at that " shaman's" site, and the guy looks a bit like a fraud. It looks like they were just looking for an excuse to bust him.

Does he deserve jail for that ? I don't think so. Does he deserve kick his ass for charging so much money for it ? Definitely yes.

I heard he was charging £2500 for 30 days ceremony - what a discount

Yeah, I just looked at the guy's website as well. The sad part of this, of course, is the negative attention focused on ayahuasca. On a positive note, however, there's going to be one less charlatan douchebag out there exploiting the weak and the desperate.

Call me a cold hearted materialist if you will, but anyone who insists on spelling magic with a k could use a hard shot to the solar plexus. I've got zero patience for those who appropriate indigenous shamanic practices for the purpose of making money and giving meaning to their lives. I propose a Beat Up Your Local Shaman Day to help preserve the integrity of our culture.

OMG, give these people some DMT to smoke

Well this fool got what was coming to him, but the negative attention on ayahuasca is just crazy ShT.

Shaman my ass...

I like his necklace

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cPcPxUcQes

But yeah, I can't stand the innaccuracies that the press insist on printing every time a story like this pops up. I agree with Laban that should be brought to the BBCs attention. I, for one expect better of them.

Lets hope it doesn't affect the rest of us responsible users enjoying these wonderful plants.

-Understood, Dagger.
However, this guy has a very dodgy website, and it looks like a complete load of rubbish to me. He broke the law by supplying a controlled drug in the UK. In Peru, Ayahuasca with dmt admixture is NOT a controlled drug. He could have just given Caapi, but he also added Chakruna containing DMT. It seems obvious to me that the authorities were on the lookout to get this guy done. And these illegal ceremonies were chosen as a way. Whilst i can understand personal choice to do so oneself, i do think it's wrong to do this as a money making business, because then it becomes a money making activity for him who is doing an illegal act, and also endangering other peoples legal position, and rights should they become ill,etc.

- bASICALLY he was wrong to give Ayahuasca to those people who may have already been seriously run down, and who knows-even on dangerous interactive medication. I read that one of his patients had to be rushed to hospital. Try doing a google search on this guy, and you'll see.