In Bratislava, the Slovak capital, there’s a rather disturbing news story. Someone is wandering round the city, stabbing people with syringes full of ketamine.
As I understand it, the victims of these attacks have all been women and girls, and the motive appears to be robbery or sex. Nonetheless, it’s a strange crime, that I wouldn’t have expected in a place like Bratislava.
It’s a city that seems to me to be pretty safe, and the Slovaks are down-to-earth types, the last people you’d expect to be attacking each other with exotic pharmaceuticals.
And ketamine is indeed exotic. It’s a derivative of phencyclidine, more commonly known as angel dust. It’s used as an anaesthetic for minor operations – it has the advantage that it’s short-acting, and usually doesn’t require any special monitoring.
Ketamine has become popular as a recreational drug, though I’m not sure why. Surely if it’s used properly, with sufficient dose and purity, it would just knock you out?
Which is what happened in Bratislava. The victims were out cold, for a number of hours. Yet whatever the depraved motives of the attacker, why did he go to so much trouble? Can high quality ketamine be so easy to get hold of, in this Central European backwater?
Then I’m reminded of astrology. The planets Jupiter and Neptune are forming a conjunction.
Whatever people’s plans, however evil, drugs might be seen as a useful tool. The conjunction might also make it easier for people to get hold of drugs.
That’s one, rather nasty side of Jupiter and Neptune’s influence. We could also regard Jupiter as being the planet of freedom – it can release the chains that are holding something back.
Over the course of 2009 the decriminalisation of drugs has been hitting the news. Several Latin Amercian countries have taken this route, and partially as a result of the Obama presidency, the United States is taking a softer line.
This does, I believe, fit in with the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction. It happened on May 27 and July 10 2009. And there’ll be a final conjunction on December 21.
If you want to know why the conjunction happens three times, it’s because of retrograde motion – from the Earth’s perspective, Jupiter goes backwards, then goes forward again. It therefore has a chance to make three contracts with slow-moving Neptune.
To give examples of what’s going on in the United States, in Detroit a cannabis college has opened, where students are taught about the cultivation and preparation of cannabis, for medical purposes. And in Oregon a marijuana coffee shop has opened.
The Jupiter-Neptune conjunction takes place in Aquarius. Astrologers regard this sign as being independent-minded, and being able to think outside the box.
So under its influence legislators are able to look at novel ways of tackling the world’s drug problems.
On the other hand, there are going to be less savoury developments. New recreational drugs being developed and marketed, and illicit laboratories being built, perhaps in response to the recession.
Which raises the question of where exactly the Bratislava syringe-attacker got his ketamine. Was it from a doctor’s surgery, or was it, directly or indirectly, from a back-street lab in the Ukraine?
I don’t think anyone’s seriously considering the legalisation of ketamine – in many countries it’s only been made illegal in the last few years.
However there seems no doubt that legalisation is the best way of weakening the criminal and terrorist cartels that are making people’s lives so miserable. Let governments get the tax revenue from cocaine and heroin, not the Taliban or the mafia!
Copyright © 2009 Archie Dunlop
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