Vice media has improved in recent times, however I still have a few major issues with some stories that they released:

Phyllomedusa bicolor is a psychoactive frog located in the Amazon, VICE did a story titled "the sapo diaries" where it was claimed that Phyllomedusa bicolor was hallucinogenic.

Perhaps it was confusion with the tryptamine producing bufo toads that led vice to label this frog as hallucinogenic, or perhaps it was just bad journalism.

Phyllomedusa bicolor's skin secretions contain: deltorphin, deltorphin I, deltorphin II and dermorphin, these are exogenous opioid heptapeptide compounds.

This erowid report elucidates effects of Phyllomedusa bicolor intoxication

Sounds more like an ordeal poison than an opioid, but I can definantly say it's not a psychedelic.

Next,

The vice media report titled "the world's scariest drug"

...which turned out to be scopoloamine derived from a south American brugmansia tree.

Scopoloamine, atropine, hyoscyamine, and several other tropane alkaloids are commonly found in datura species (jimson weed), atropa belladonna, brugmansia species, and other plant species...

And while these compounds have been used to poison people through out history, and while they can have some pretty scary effects, I felt the report was alarmist misinformation hyped up to draw in viewers, or scare them.

I feel it was absolute misinformation, I can think of many drugs which are far more scary than scopoloamine...

And last

The "krokodil tears" report, they made claims of this new drug epidemic, yet they failed to identify the substance or explain how it was being produced, they failed to dispel or confirm any of the myths surrounding this compounds, and mostly just documented Russian heroin users.

I'll fill in some information which their report never got around to: "Krokodil" is Desomorphine, it's made from codeine, the HO grouping at position 6 has been removed, they are basically using the Nagai Nagayoshi method for methamphetamine, only the pseudoephedrine has been replaced by codeine. (In meth synthesis you are removing a hydroxyl group from the beta carbon of pseudoephedrine, in desomorphine synthesis you are removing a hydroxyl group from position 6 of the codeine molecule, in both cases it's a reduction involving red phosphorus and iodine )

Regardless, their report gave little to no information and only seemed to spread the myths around this compound...

Which is actually far more rare than the media would lead you to believe, many of the cases did not even involve desomorphine.

This stuff is out there and it is real, but vice and the media on general has done a terrible job covering it.

VICE has gotten better, I actually like some of their programs, they have a television station now, and the reporting has gotten better as a result...

...but when it comes to these drug stories, vice media does a terrible job...

You will hear your friends state some media disinformation in a conversation, so, you try to correct them, and they think you are wrong because "TV doesn't lie"...

There is so much fear and confusion surrounding drugs, and the media creates a good deal of it...vice has gotten better, but when it comes to drug reports they should probably quit (their cannabis shows are actually fairly accurate, but other than that, they shouldn't report on drugs)



-eg

Vice is the tabloid media in hipster clothes - imo.

I'm gonna stick my neck out and say that Vice is a largely-welcome addition to the corporate mediocracy (mediacrazy?) IMO.

Sure, the kambo article wasn't the greatest, although there are documented accounts of vague visual effects (everything turns green for a few minutes) in the literature, though I never experienced it.

Lately, there's been quite a few positive articles on therapeutic mushrooms, MDMA and aya. The weed biz, and the racial barriers around it. Prison/police brutality. TTIP. Lots of stuff that ought to receive wider coverage, but never does.

And this one, which was particularly depressing:

http://motherboard.vice....ckel-fischer-switzerland

It's far from perfect, of course, but what isn't these days?

Vice isn't all bad...

...but when it comes to psychoactives, I think they do a terrible job, it's all alarmist misinformation or a half-assed attempt to get a story that people will watch...

...the thing is, there are real stories out there that would be just as good or even better if they were covered accurately and thoroughly...

If you want to do a story on scopoloamine, that's great, there is a story there, but why all the alarmist nonsense?

If you want to do a story on a psychoactive toad, great, there is a story there, how ever the toad they covered was not the traditional psychedelic bufo toad, but was a frog containing opioid heptapeptide compounds, still interesting, but not the famed psychedelic toad, and not a true hallucinogen...

Don't get me wrong, they make some good stuff from time to time, I like some of their documentary features and shows, just when it comes to psychoactives they should stop. They actually do ok with cannabis, but other than that, they should leave psychoactives alone.

...not just vice, but the media in general has never done any favors for psychoactive compounds, it seems inaccuracy, misinformation, disinformation, and lack of clarity are par for drug reporting...

-eg

Don't get me wrong, I still like Vice and appreciate their clickbait articles. But, the writing the past several years has really devolved into lazy "journalism", lacking detail, misspelling and many times lacking purpose. I think it will only become worse in the foreseeable future as they venture out into being their own 24 hour channel and into the mainstream media limelight. On the topic of Vice and psychedelics, I really did like Hamilton's Pharmacopeia. Did you know he is the son of famous documentary filmmaker Errol Morris?

I did not know that about Hamilton, crazy.

I actually like some of the vice programming that doesn't involve psychoactives, they have some good music, travel, and sports shows on their TV station...

They did a show called "venom superman" that highlighted a man with one of the most bizzare addictions I had ever encountered, he seemed to actually be addicted to injecting snake venom, and he really was not educated, he admits that he doesn't understand what these toxins are doing to him, and has obviously had issues in the reptile community...

They did a show called "the iceman" that was about wim hof that I really enjoyed...

so it's not all bad...

But when they cover psychoactives it seems like they are spreading absurd "party myths" rather than covering the actual situation, bad scientific information, and spreading of inaccurate information is only further muddying the waters regarding the public's drug knowledge...

part of the reason why drugs are illegal is because the general public is so clueless regarding them, these people don't know what is or is not possible, and they tend to believe the alarmist media without doing any follow up research...

They actually do ok covering cannabis...

-eg

Really? That guy rubs me the wrong way, I can't stand to watch more than 2 minutes of anything he has produced. He seems totally unprofessional, disrespectful to indigenous people, and immature. His attitude reminds me of a privileged hipster goofing off in the jungle with drugs. I remember watching a psychedelic panel discussion and every word out of his mouth made me cringe.

Vice's misinformation has done a lot of damage among my friends and people I've known... True, they are better in recent times, but it's no less the sensationalist garbage that pollutes the media at every turn.

As long as drug prohibition exists, this huge market for fearmongering will prevail over real education.

If you do not mind me asking you to elaborate, what kind of damage?

I know people who think scopolamine is "the world's scariest drug" because of vice...

I know people who think that the opioid heptapeptide compounds found in Phyllomedusa bicolor are psychedelic because of vice reporting...

...I could keep naming incidents like these, and it's this type of misinformation that drives me crazy...

Its almost as bad as the "party myth" stuff like "toad licking" or the myth that "if you eat LSD you are legally insane"

...but other than that, their stuff doesn't bother me any more or less than any other media corporation...

-eg

Hamilton Morris is the vice pseudo-expert for psychoactives right?...in one "documentary" he was in Africa looking for land strains to chemically analyze (which he never did), in that report he told a group of Africans that he has known people who had gone "permanently insane" from psilocybe mushrooms (the African people seemed interested but confused, they were talking about weed making people go crazy, then this guy (Hamilton) says he knows people that went permanently insane from mushrooms, the Africans seemed as if they were 100% unaware that psychoactive mushrooms existed...which is a shame, because they are probably around psilocybe fungi quite frequently in nature...

(I know about HPPD, but I also know a good deal of these claims are fabricated, and "permanent insanity" seems very very unlikely to me...even bad cases of HPPD generally clear up with time)

I think it may have been that Hamilton guy in the Phyllomedusa bicolor frog episode titled "the sapo diaries" which I could not sit through...

Ok, kappa opioid receptor agonists can have psychedelic-like effect, but the frog contains the exogenous pioid heptapeptide compounds deltorphin, deltorphin I, deltorphin II and dermorphin, which are delta and mu opioid receptor agonists...the frog is psychoactive, but I feel.it was represented as an actual psychedelic, maybe he was confusing the bufo toad and it's actual psycedelic effects for Phyllomedusa bicolor, but that seems very very unlikely...

Again, New vice has gotten much better, their TV station has some good shows on music, film, sports, and travel, but when it comes to psychoactives I feel their reporting is total trash, then again most psychoactive reporting in the media is trash...

I consider myself a "psychoactivist", and I am completely for education and decriminalization (even legalization) of all drugs. (I'm against the addictive and destructive drugs, yet I can understand that prohibition is only fueling the fire, it's sounds counterintuitive, but if you want to save lives and have drug use rates drop, you need to legalize and regulate)

Education is key.

Most people still spout out drug enforcement myths as if they were facts...

...and bad reporting can actually be linked to most drug misinformation...

-eg

Did you know he's a Nexus member under the name Hamhurricane?

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...&m=281267#post281267

He may have his mistakes, but I mostly like his docus, because you can't find these anywhere else. Shulgins i have known and loved was good. He also coauthored several scientific papers, which I guess most Nexians haven't.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih...amp;cauthor_uid=24678061

This one I like too, since I'm not aware of similar material. I mean who investigates RC manufactureres on site?

http://www.vice.com/read...etic-marijuana-gets-made