An Associated Press story printed in the San Jose Mercury News, Sunday
20 February 1994, p. 3B.

  NARCOTICS AGENTS ON HUNT FOR DRUG-SECRETING TOADS

_Bufo alvarius_ steals spotlight from Calaveras jumping frogs


Angels Camp- The war on frogs has moved into Mark Twain's frog-jumping
territory, and it's not pretty.

The drug carriers are green, squat, and lumpy, with big bulging eyes.
That's not a description of some comic strip villian.  These are toads
- _Bufo alvarius_.

The creatures secrete venom that is dried and smoked.  Users and
researchers say the hallucinogenic toad drug, bufotenine, produces a
high that eclipses LSD's.

One couple was arrested recently on charges of possessing bufotenine
from four toads.

Narcotics agents determined there was not a cult [!] of bufotenine
abusers in the region, but literature from the couple's house showed
there was an underground of enthusiasts for the drug.

The couple told agents they obtained detailed directions on how to
find and use the drug by writing for a pamphlet.

"What is the human race going to do next? Grind up clarinets and smoke
them?" asked Calaveras County narcotics agent Greg Elam, who headed
the investigation. [Could someone please confirm/deny the
hallucinogenic properties of ground up clarinets? ;-)]

Authorities have been criticized for pursuing the case.

"Here we've got murderers in the streets and we've got police going
after people catching toads," said Dale Gieringer of the California
Drug Policy Reform Coalition.

Agents from a task force of state and local drug agents based at a
Calaveras County shopping center received tips that led to the
arrests.

"It's a bizarre case," said Matt Campoy, commander of the task force.

Scientific journals trace abuse of the drug to ancient times
and laws against it in the United States to the late 1960s.  But the
task force was unable to find records that anyone had ever been
arrested for possessing the drug.

Unrelated environmental laws bar possession of the toads.

Ironically, the arrests came in a region rich for its history
of the toad's cousin, the frog.  A short story by Twain inspired the
Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee.

Bob and Connie Shepard are scheduled for arraignment next
month on charges of possessing the drug.

Bob Shepard, a 41-year-old former teacher and Explorer Scout
leader told agents he captured the four toads in southern Arizona and
kept them at his home.

Agents quoted him as saying that he got so high from the drug
he could "hear electrons jumping orbitals in his molecules."