What if I told you there was a way you could get rich off this upcoming election season. No, I'm not talking about selling "Anybody But Romney" T-Shirts at the Republican National Convention. I'm talking about gambling.  You can put your money where your mouth is by betting on candidates through a little known gambling system called a "political prediction market."

So what is a political prediction market exactly? Well, its sort of a cross between a stock market and sports betting. People buy “shares” of a particular candidate and they either make or lose money depending on whether or not that candidate wins their election. The price of a candidates’ “share” is determined by the probability that they will win the election, and that probability is determined by the amount of "shares" people are buying. In an interesting twist, these probabilities are often more accurate than so-called scientific polls.

A Dublin-based prediction market known as InTrade accurately predicted the winner of all 50 states during the 2004 presidential election. InTrade also accurately predicted the winner of all Senate races in 2006, all but 2 of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election and all but 2 of the Senate races in 2010. Move over Gallup, there's a new game in town.

So what are the odds on the Republican nomination right now? Well, as of 2 pm on Monday, January 23rd InTrade's probabilities were as follows:

Mitt Romney - 66.7%
Newt Gingrich - 28.8%
Ron Paul - 3.3%
Rick Santorum - 1.1%

So if you put $6.67 down on Romney and he wins the  nomination, you'll get $10 once he makes his acceptance speech. Make a 33 cent  bet on Ron Paul, and you could walk away with your own Alexander Hamilton if he pulls off the upset.

The system is sort of like the stock market in that it depends on there being another bettor willing to take the other side of that action, so the "odds" fluctuate almost by the minute. They also swing wildly with each primary. Days before voters went to the polls in South Carolina, Romney was over 90%, and Gingrich under 5%.

So who will actually take the White House in November? InTrade puts Obama at 55%. A competing site, BetFair, says Obama has a 60% chance at winning re-election. And the Iowa Electronic Markets, a non-profit marketplace set up for academic purposes by the University of Iowa, gives the Democrats a 59.4% chance of keeping the White House.

InTrade doesn't limit its prediction markets to politics alone. In fact, it allows you to bet on just about anything, even the probability that NASA will announce the discovery of extraterrestrial life (17.7%, by the end of 2015, 5% by the end of this year) . If you happen to have any inside information on the search for E.T., now might be a good time to put your money down.

There's also a 26.5% chance that the United States or Israel will bomb Iran by the end 2012, and a 57.3% chance that Meryl Streep will win the Oscar for Best Actress at this year's Academy Awards. At least we can still sleep easy knowing that the odds of us going to war are lower than the odds of Ms. Streep winning another Oscar.

While betting on prediction markets might seem like relatively harmless fun, the U.S. government doesn't quite agree. The for-profit political prediction markets are currently banned in the United States. That's right – these things are illegal. But just like with online poker, bettors can circumvent American gambling laws with InTrade and other prediction markets that are based outside the country. And if gambling isn't your thing, you can always check InTrade to get an idea of how well each candidate is doing this election season. After all, they are more accurate than most of the polls.

As interest in political prediction markets continues to rise, more people are calling for their legalization in the United States. On January 5, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission began a 90-day review of the rules surrounding these prediction markets, leading some to believe that they will soon be regulated in the United States. This is something you definitely want to keep on your radar as the presidential campaigns start to heat up. If things go well, you could win millions! And if that doesn't work out, you can at least impress your friends by calling the winner long before election day.

Personal liberty, freedom, and the Constitution are at the core of the Republican presidential candidates’ talking points. With the 2012 primaries in full swing, talk of protecting your liberties and constitutional freedoms are all over the airwaves. So what exactly does freedom and liberty mean to the GOP Presidential candidates? Here’s a quick look…

• Avowed libertarian Ron Paul breaks with the rest of the field in opposing the Patriot Act, a bill designed to combat terrorism, that some feel goes too far, infringing on privacy and other liberties. Challenging America’s role as "World Policeman", Paul claims that 75% of Americans are calling for the troops to come home, and since the American people have to pay for war and die for war, they should have a greater say in America’s foreign policy. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, supports the Patriot Act. He is of the opinion that civil liberty means “the right to be kept alive” and therefore it can be left to the President to conduct surveillance for national security purposes. Rick Santorum, who has not wavered in his support for the act since its inception, believes that it protects us and does not violate our civil liberties.
• Paul has attracted the attention of marijuana activists and young voters across the nation with his passion to end the war on drugs, which he believes has been a real abuse of liberty. Commenting on the prison crowding issue, he is of the opinion that many individuals who have used drugs should be treated as patients and not criminals, because they are non-violent. Paul tells young people to use their personal liberty for “excellence and virtue,” but asks “Why shouldn’t you have free decisions on what you eat, drink, smoke, and put into your own body?” Likewise, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, a candidate who is polling at less than 1 percent, believes that opposition to the drug war is perfectly consistent with true Republican Party values. In his opinion, “…2.3 million prisoners in the United States are victims of a public policy that criminalizes behavior that—without condoning the behavior—is a personal choice.” He goes on to say, “as long as people don’t put anyone else in harm’s way, they should be free to make that choice.”
• Newt Gingrich is displeased with the Supreme Court, which he believes has become a “Constitutional Convention.” According to a website that breaks down the candidates’ views on civil liberty, he thinks judges need to understand that “our rights come from God, not the Constitution.” Taking a position that even drew criticism from conservatives, Gingrich proposed that judges who make controversial rulings should be compelled to justify their decisions before congressional hearings, and arrested if they don't comply. Romney has been critical of Gingrich’s notion, and states that he would appoint members of the Supreme Court who would overturn extreme rulings, but he would not allow Congress to subpoena judges to explain their rulings or remove judges. Paul is a long-time supporter of the We The People Act that would severely curtail the power of federal judges and U.S. Supreme Court justices in hearing cases challenging state laws on religion, privacy or marriage, thus leaving these decisions to the states. In short, Paul wants to remove federal courts from the business of deciding whether state laws violate the federal constitution.
• All the Republican candidates are beating the "small government" drum but Paul may be the most fervent supporter of this notion. He thinks that government should just leave us alone. He thinks the American people are more than capable of making their own decisions, and that an individual is more powerful than any group. That’s where the candidates start to differ. Santorum has a totally different view. Here’s what he told NPR back in 1996:“This idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues… Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone." Santorum’s 19-year-old nephew, a Paul supporter, claimed that his uncle has an “irrational fear of freedom not working.”  How’s that for a clash in family values?

That's all for now liberty lovers; happy Primaries season!

I’m not sure what all of you have been taught about the Holocaust, but my teachers always considered it a vital subject for students to learn, so that it never happens again. Knowledge is power and inaction is just as bad as villainy, right? Unfortunately, it is clear that anti-Semitic sentiment is present in our nation which is supposed to embrace faith of all kinds.

A few weeks ago in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, three cars were torched and the words “fuck the Jews”, “KKK” and “SS” were drawn on benches to mark the anniversary of Hitler’s Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass.

Quick synopsis: November 9 and 10, 1938 in Nazi Germany and parts of Austria — the Nazis destroyed synagogues, shops, and entire towns to terrorize the Jews. Seventy-three years later to the day, neo-Nazis in Brooklyn were making sure that Jews fear for their lives. Several Jewish residents in this neighborhood are Holocaust survivors, and this incident produced flashbacks to the inhumanity and cruelty they suffered.

Jewish students at universities across the country have fallen victim to odious behavior too, in the past decade. In fact, in 2006, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a study that documented an alarmingly high rate of anti-Semitism on college campuses.

Six years later, we don’t have to look far for evidence of hatred. According to Brooklyn police, there were beer bottles lying all over the ground near the site of the vandalism, and one detective said it “looks like they had a party.” This anti-Semitic party, fueled by historical knowledge (creepy!) resulted in thick black smoke pouring from the torched cars. The vandals woke up several horrified residents on the block in the middle of the night. It is clear that Corona bottles and detailed knowledge of the Holocaust make for a terrifyingly ironic combination.

Following the violence, state and city elected officials and Jewish leaders marched in Midwood on Sunday, November 13 to rally for tolerance, acceptance and better security in their neighborhood. But the hatred continues. Just last week, someone defaced the Avenue J subway stop in the neighborhood, adding the letter “EW” to make a sign read “Avenue Jew.” Police are still looking for the perpetrator.

I have been pretty critical of the of the Occupy Wall Street movement. You can find my published thoughts on the topic here and here.
Standing outside the library the other night I was baffled as to why there were a bunch of helicopters hovering around my neighborhood. When I went inside and checked the news it was a bit unclear what was going on but it seemed like it had something to do with the occupy protesters. The news being unhelpful I went straight to twitter, immediately I was able to see the commotion was because thousands of occupy protesters were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and assembling in Cadman Plaza Park. I did a double take; the bridge leads right past my school. In fact the park that the protesters were gathering in is across the street, I could see it from where I was sitting out the library window.

I'm in law school and certainly don't have free time to sit in a park with a bunch of protesters handing out free socialist news letters, calling for anarchy or even just to hold a sign with a cleaver slogan on it; so I haven’t made it down to Zuccotti Park. How could I pass up checking out a movement that I have been so critical of being across the street? I packed up my things in the library as quickly as I could and went home to get my camera and I was off. The closer and closer I got to the park the more and more cops I saw, many in riot gear. It seems that the cops in my neighborhood were ready for anything.

When I finally got there I happened upon a drum circle. The bane of  my existence. Nothing says don’t take me seriously like standing in a circle banging on a drum all day. But I have to say it created a festive mood as everyone was disembarking from the bridge on the path that leads into the park. People were laughing joking singing and chanting, waving flags, everyone was in high spirits. I took some pictures and then went on to the General Assembly meeting that the protesters were holding by the WWII monument in the park. A huge monumental structure straight out of lord of the rings, you know where there’s the statues of the giant kings, it’s kinda like that. (for a photo gallery of the night at SensibleReason.com click here)

The following video is one of many that I took that night. While many of the speakers are clearly on message some are not. Some of the "non leaders" leading the "leaderless" protest are addressing many of the same concerns that I have with the protest itself. They encourage the protesters to educate themselves. This of course is not a selfless call to bring people out of ignorance but the hope that when protesters are interviewed by the media, the movement can be portrayed as knowing what its fighting for. They encourage the protesters to clean up after themselves. An obvious reference to the mess left at Zuccotti Park after the protesters were cleared out. This video is unedited, I have a bunch more but this is the largest chunk I have of people speaking to the crowd. While I am still critical of OWS I do want many of the same things they want so I'll check back in at a later date and see where they are at that point. Please watch this video and make up your own mind about the protesters and the movement in general. This is the heart of movement, an open forum where anyone can speak about anything.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

When Roger McNamee and his band Moonalice play “American Dream Rag” at Occupy Wall Street protests, not everyone knows he’s one of Silicon Valley's most successful investors.

Here’s a 55-year old, long- haired guy singing “They took everything we have, but we don’t cry/We can’t afford to drink, but we still get high.”

Would anyone guess that he’s Bill Gates’ self described “sounding board”? Or that he’s an early investor in Facebook? Or manages $1.9 billion in investments with an Irish partner… named Bono?

But the truth is that McNamee, who has spent the last 30 years helping to build technology companies in Silicon Valley, is firmly on the side of the occupiers.

“The country has been stolen,” says McNamee bluntly. “I expect to be involved in getting it back for the rest of my life.”

The Facebook page for his band Moonalice includes posters created for Occupy Wall Street by the band’s artists, including Chuck Sperry and Chris Shaw. McNamee has also appeared on CNBC’s news show “SquawkBox,” explaining to individual investors why they should support Occupy and debunking false reports about the movement.

On the evening when 10,000 protesters flooded the streets of Oakland, he shared his thoughts with us…

On what really happens on Wall Street:

I have been angry about this way longer than Occupy has existed. My first boss told me that “Wall Street is not the world’s highest calling,” but it wasn’t a bad place until the past decade. Irresponsible deregulation combined with unbridled greed has broken the back of our economy. And no one has been held accountable.

On his unique perspective:

I really know Wall Street. At one time my firm was an investor in the technology system that makes NASDAQ work. It wasn’t designed to rip people off, but it’s being used that way now.

On how he came to write “American Dream Rag”:

Somehow we wound up with a two-tiered legal system, where there is frequently no consequence for rich people who do horrible things. Wall Street has been increasingly dishonest for a decade. Wall Street was never an angel, but until recently it also wasn’t the devil. Every step of the way it has been aided and abetted by our government. And the press slept through the whole thing. When none of the major banks had been prosecuted by 2009, I took matters into my own hands and wrote this song in 2009.

His visits to Occupy Wall Street:

I’ve visited Occupies in several towns. My favorite was Philadelphia. I was there on the day they launched it. 500 people who showed up... watching them organizing themselves was a thing of beauty. I loved the simplicity of it. The fact that there was no political agenda. There isn’t any magic to it. It is the American Spring. It is analogous to the Arab Spring . . . and based on the same issues. After all, our income has become as unevenly distributed as Saudi Arabia. This is so disappointing.

Getting caught in a police parade:

In New York, Moonalice had the most amazing experience. We went down in the rain and played the song a bunch of times at Zuccotti. The next day we were scheduled to play a gig at BB King’s, which is a club on the edge of Times Square. It happened to be the day of Occupy Times Square. We didn’t really know it, but the demonstration went right past our hotel. We boarded our bus to go to the gig, and only got around the block when police stopped us at an intersection. While we waited, 8 or 10 paddy wagons turned onto Broadway in front of us. Our bus went up Broadway behind the paddy wagons. They were pushing traffic onto side streets, so our bus was the only civilian vehicle going up Broadway. Next thing you know, we are in the heart of the demonstration. That’s when we began tooting the bus horn. At first the crowd didn’t react, but pretty quickly they figured out we were on their side. That’s when the crowd went CRAZY. We took a really funny video of it. Big Steve Parish, who was Jerry Garcia’s roadie, was convinced we were going to get arrested. I tried to calm down by pointing out the irony of me getting arrested for supporting Occupy.

On New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s comments that Congress, not the banks, is responsible for the financial mess:

He knows it’s not true. There is no question that the government played a huge rule in enabling everything that happened, but the notion that the banks are not responsible is just crazy. The sub-prime market is not the portion of the market that Fannie and Freddie [Mac] were doing. Nearly all sub-prime loans were made by commercial banks.

How this was all inevitable:

History is very clear that when an economy sustains unemployment around 20%, social unrest is an inevitable consequence. The official U.S. unemployment rate is 9%, but an equivalent number of people are either underemployed or have given up looking. More important, America is no longer a land of equal opportunity. A handful of industries have paid for the right to set their own government policy. This has produced a huge change in the distribution of wealth in this country, entirely at the expense of the middle class.

The ‘brilliance’ of OWS:

What Occupy is doing is merely leaning against any obstruction put in its path. So the organization system is really nothing more than that. And therein lies its brilliance.

About the future of Occupy:

When Occupy started, our country was buried in a ridiculous national conversation. One party had pushed our country to the brink of insolvency and was arguing that $10 in spending cuts was not enough to justify one dollar of tax increases. Then Occupy began. Within a month, the national conversation had changed completely. We’re now talking about the right issues: jobs, income distribution, the failure of government, and the limits of capitalism.

The vast majority of Americans support Occupy on the issues, even if some are ambivalent about tents in parks. My hope is that the movement has grown beyond -- and is no longer dependent on -- what happens in city parks.

About the attempts to eradicate Occupy:

There is a story going around that the Department of Homeland Security may have organized a conference call with more than a dozen big city mayors to coordinate the eradication of Occupy camps. If that story proves to be true, U.S. government will find itself in the position of behaving like the dictators we have worked so hard to eliminate. The First Amendment guarantees Americans’ right to peaceful assembly. Unfortunately, mayors and police officers in several major cities seem to have forgotten.

Occupy is not a political movement. It is a protest against overreaching by businesses and the government, which means the more the government behaves like Syria, the bigger the protest will become.

The status quo is bad for America. It’s going to change. It will change peacefully unless the government chooses a different path. I hope our leaders will wake up and engage in a thoughtful discussion about the issues being raised by Occupy.

Mississippi might be on the brink of a new sexual revolution - one that radically alters reproductive rights as we know it.

When Mississippi voters go to the polls tomorrow, they’re voting on when life begins.

Passage of Initiative 26 would grant “personhood” status to a fertilized egg. Proponents say it’s a way to protect life and end abortion. Opponents see it as one of the most broad-sweeping and under-handed pieces of legislation limiting reproductive rights.

Critics argue that the initiative would end hormonal birth control methods including the pill and the morning after pill; It could also lead to deaths of women because fertilized egg cells could not be removed during ectopic pregnancies. And abortion would be criminalized.

Interestingly enough, the word “abortion” won’t appear on the ballot in Mississippi at all. Instead, it will ask voters to redefine “person” to include “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the equivalent thereof.” Changing the definition could block access to abortion by making it equivalent to murder and would make no exception for rape, incest or when a woman’s life is at stake.

There appear to be a lot of unintended consequences the way the initiative is written. So much so that pro-life backers of the proposed legislation are mostly quiet. Governor Haley Barbour (R-Miss) already voted in favor of the measure but cited the initiative's ambiguity. The Yes on 26 website lists supporters including politicians, religious leaders and medical professionals (though many doctors are speaking out against it).

So what does this all mean? Even if the initiative fails at the polls in Mississippi tomorrow, rest assured this won’t be the last you hear of it. Similar pieces of legislation are in the works in several states for 2012. That means politicians will be forced to take sides. In fact, Mitt Romney (R-Mass, and Presidential hopeful) recently announced his support for a constitutional ban on abortion based on the “personhood” model.

As I read eyewitness accounts and watched videos of the police crackdown on the Occupy Oakland protest the other day, I was flooded with emotions ranging from disgust to disappointment. However, once the initial shock wore off I was left wondering: What was the Oakland Police Department thinking? Don’t they realize that these kind of aggressive tactics only strengthen the movement they’re trying to destroy?

The footage of crowds of people running from tear gas and of some kind of "less lethal" device exploding as a group of people come to the aid of a wounded (Iraq War veteran) protester reminded me of something I heard from a facilitator at a civil disobedience training back in April. “Civil disobedience has become a pretty ineffective tactic in the past few decades,” she said, “because police have come to understand its dynamic better than most protesters do. They understand that it is a better idea to let an action run its course than it is to give it unnecessary media attention by acting in an aggressive manner.”

And if you think about it, this point makes a lot of sense. How far would the civil rights movement have gone if TV screens across America hadn’t been flooded with images of dogs being loosed on peaceful protesters and police officers beating up innocent people? Would anyone even remember something like the 1999 Seattle WTO protests if the police hadn’t been so aggressive?  Would Occupy Wall Street have gone much further than Day 1 if those videos of girls being maced hadn’t blown up all over the internet? Recent history is full of reasons why it’s in the best interest of police to just let these things run their course, or to at least make it seem as though absolutely all alternatives have been exhausted before resorting to heavy-handed tactics like those used in the video below.

What did the Oakland Police Department think was going to happen? Did they think these protesters would just go home and forget the movement to which they had dedicated so much time? Law enforcement in Oakland has enough of an image problem as it is. Why would they do something that fits perfectly into an already existing narrative of excessive force and unnecessary police violence? The cops claim that they had to respond with force because they were being pelted with bottles and other objects, but so far I’ve yet to see any videos of such things (though if you are aware of any, please post them in the comments section). These same cops also denied using rubber bullet, but there’s no lack of evidence with which to counter that claim, and it’s not like police have never been known to lie.

Much to no one's surprise, the use of excessive force in Oakland has already led to a blowback. More people are more committed to the protest than ever before, and the mayor, under pressure from outraged citizens and city officials, has now said that the occupiers can return to the plaza they were camping in. Perhaps the OPD could learn a lesson from their counter-parts in Albany, NY where the police refused orders to force the dispersal of Occupy protesters because they knew it would be counterproductive.

As an American I am disgusted by the use of excessive force to deny people their constitutionally protected right to freedom of assembly. Yet as a supporter of Occupy Wall Street, I’m also forced to acknowledge that few things have helped this movement grow more than the apparent willingness of the police to so quickly resort to violence. Perhaps the cops don’t understand the dynamic of civil disobedience as well as we thought.

If I've learned anything while writing my first blast, it’s that you should be thankful for your freedoms. Personal liberty means so many different things to so many different people — whether it’s the freedom to go to class without being drug tested, or the freedom to discuss your feelings on gun control. Something that may not affect you at all could be disturbing another’s freedom across the country. Stay up to date and be grateful that you live in a nation where you can make your opinions known!

• We are all ambivalent about adding our employers and co-workers on Facebook, right? We don’t want to stress over the photo or status we posted and who will see it. For good reason. A former “Teacher of the Year” in Florida voiced his objection to gay marriage on Facebook and subsequently faced the loss of his job. Jerry Buell claimed that he was exercising his 1st Amendment rights, but his school wasn’t buying it. The Lake County School Board asserted that he violated a code of special ethics. They also feared that gay students would feel intimidated or scared when entering his classroom. Fortunately for Buell, the superintendent of his school district decided to reinstate him in his teaching position three days into the school year. The ACLU also supported him in his right to post these statements, but certainly did not agree with the content of them. Unfortunately for Buell, his wife won’t let him go on Facebook anymore. What a buzzkill, eh?
• I’m sure none of us would feel very comfortable being pulled out of a college classroom to piss in a cup…and oh yeah, have to pay $50 out of pocket for it. This is the procedure that Linn State Technical College was employing before the ACLU intervened mid-September. As a technical college, Linn State claimed its students needed to operate heavy machinery and therefore could not be under the influence. Do you think these students are being stripped of their money and their fourth amendment rights, or is Linn State right to drug test them when public funds are going toward their education? A federal judge sided with the former and placed a temporary block on the school’s program.
• In Miami, a federal judge has blocked enforcement of a law that restricted what physicians are allowed to say to their patients about guns and was pushed by gun rights supporters. If doctors violated it, they could lose their medical licenses and be fined up to $10,000. Fortunately for the medical community, in this case, free speech for doctors and patients prevailed.
• When transit police in San Francisco killed a transient man armed with a knife in a BART station in early July, it sparked protests. A month later, when BART shut down cell antennas in several of its SF stations during rush hour to prevent on-site protests, chaos ensued. Whether you were in San Francisco in late August, as I was for Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival, or watching from a TV set at home, it was hard to miss these BART demonstrations. Using the communication “kill switch” to prevent an uprising as the first order of business was undoubtedly a bold move. Were SF and BART officials ensuring public safety, or limiting its citizens’ First Amendment rights? How can America denounce censorship in other countries while similar practices are employed at home?
• Republican Michele Bachmann has some serious beef with HPV vaccines, and she didn’t try to hide it in the recent GOP presidential debate. Bachmann is currently supporting the claim that it’s a violation of personal liberty to require a vaccination, especially because she is a mom, and to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat-out wrong. It’s up to you to decide whether her belief that this mandatory vaccine is dangerous is justified, or if she is simply spreading panic.

That's all for now liberty lovers! I look forward to keeping you in the loop on all the important issues. As always, stay up to date by reading the blog, joining us on Facebook and following HeadCount on Twitter.

A group of festival goers calling themselves the Bunk Police are on a mission to test the purity of illegal drugs being sold on the shakedown streets of music festivals around the country. They're finding that more often than not, things are not what they seem. From the Bunk Police website:

Since the inception of our group in June, we have tested over 2,500 substance samples presented to us by patrons of music festivals and concerts.

The results have been truly sobering.

Nearly 100% of samples are cut with one or more substances, and they aren’t using baking soda anymore.

Research chemicals, sold as “bath salts” or “plant food,” have become an alarming issue. Over half of “Molly” (MDMA powder) samples tested at Wakarusa, Bonnaroo, Electric Forest, Camp Bisco, Gathering of the Vibes and The Big Up contained large quantities of or were completely comprised of these substances. Many of these “research chemicals” present very real overdose fatality risks and have been in news all over the world.

An overwhelming majority of tested LSD samples were negative for the chemical.

Despite the fact that being in possession of illegal drugs can result in lengthy prison sentences, the Bunk Police claim they are not doing anything illegal and "have a very methodical process that does not involve possession by our staff." They have a lawyer and are branding their message and organization. The group has a logo, website with a schedule, and a Facebook Page where you can find results from festival testing or vote on where you'd like to see them next. You can even call/text them at (512) 200-BUNK.

I had a chance to chat with the Bunk Police (anonymously and through email) about what they're doing.

HeadCount: Why did you decide to start the Bunk Police and what are you trying to accomplish?

Bunk Police: The Bunk Police started... at the Wakarusa music festival. While packing for the weekend, I decided to purchase a Marquis substance screening kit (a very useful test that screens over a dozen substances). In using this kit, we not only discovered the appalling state of the current underground substance market, but also realized that there is an incredible demand for substance testing services at shows and festivals.

Our intention is to distribute testing kits to as many people as possible, and to educate them about the use of these kits. We have recently launched an interactive website at www.bunkpolice.org that will feature online ordering and instructional videos in the near future.

Once you test a drug and find it's impure, how do you get that information out?

The first step we take is to inform the person who brought the sample to us about its contents. Although we can’t control what people do with their negative results, a good amount of patrons will return to the person that provided the substance and give them feedback. In many cases, we’ll see the same sample multiple times, eventually leading to the provider being forced to stop distributing that substance. At smaller festivals, the impact of our services can be substantial. The Big Up is a good example.  We watched the ratio of adulterated to pure substances improve dramatically over the course of the event. In the future, our group hopes to send out updates and warnings (with links to pictures) through either a Twitter or a text-based system.

Do you think music festivals should embrace this type of harm reduction practice?

Absolutely. In the last few years, the underground substance market has been turned upside down by a series of substances known as “research chemicals.” These chemicals, such as Methylone and 25I-NBOMe, are being substituted for common recreational substances, MDMA and LSD being the most common. The dosages and effects of these new (relatively un-researched) substances are substantially different from the ones they are posing as and have led to both short and long term damage in users. Another issue to consider is that the market is so flooded with these RCs in disguise that many frequent users are under the impression that they have a tolerance to something like MDMA, when in fact they have a tolerance to Methylone. This leads to massive overdoses when this user comes in contact with a legitimate MDMA sample.

Have you heard of Boom Festival in Portugal? It's an event with more than 30,000 people, completely free of corporate sponsors, and because drug use is decriminalized throughout the country, testing of drugs being used/sold onsite is allowed and results, along with images, are displayed with a projector for all to see. Could such a thing be possible here in the U.S.?

I am not familiar with this particular festival, but it sounds like quite a groundbreaking event. I am, however, very familiar with the legal system that exists in Portugal. In my opinion, they are leading the world in a positive direction as far as dealing with substance use and abuse is concerned. In regards to the possibility of an event like this happening in the U.S., all I can say is that we’re taking the first baby steps in that direction.

What has been your most startling find? Where was it?

Well, we had a very inebriated gentleman walk into our tent at Electric Forest with a sample of what he called “Charlie Sheen.” In testing this mystery substance, we realized that “Charlie Sheen” was not a single chemical, but somewhere in the neighborhood of five. We were able to isolate Ketamine, MDMA, Methylone, a 2C-(x) compound and some sort of opiate. Let’s just say the guy who came in with it was definitely not “winning” at anything.

It seems like the harms associated with most of these drugs, like MDMA or LSD for example, can be greatly reduced when available in pure form and also when information on dosages and combinations is provided. Would you agree?

I think you’re absolutely right. The key to reducing injuries and deaths related to substance use is to simply inform the users of the content, effects, dosages and dangers, be it anything from cigarettes to heroin.

Don't you think what you're doing will actually encourage more drug use?

This is a very valid question, one that I’ve struggled with since the inception of our group. In the end, I’ve come to the conclusion that our services actually work as a deterrent, and here’s why: the information that we’re gathering and distributing about the substance market is beyond shocking. Well over half of the samples we’ve received are Research Chemicals instead of popular recreational substances. For many users, this can be a bitter pill to swallow.

I'm always surprised at how little so many people on the festival scene seem to know about the drugs they're consuming. Do you think they're actually disinterested in learning about this stuff, or that the information just isn't there?

Many members of the festival culture are extremely skeptical of anything presented to them, so we have to earn their trust. The vast majority of people are very interested in our findings once they realize that we have a methodical process that produces accurate results. People will often stand around our tent watching us test for hours completely aghast at the results we’re finding.

Do you think policy changes need to happen? If so, what?

I can only hope that our society finds a better option than the current “war on drugs.” As far as what needs to happen, it’s hard to say. Portugal is an excellent success story to take note of.