Seth Underwood Stories: Smoking Cotton (est. reading time- 11 min.)

Editorial Note- This transcript story is designed to give readers background material for the time period that occurs before the A-4 Android Short Stories.

In the future America, the legalization of recreational use of drugs will become a commonplace source of taxation for States struggling with massive budget shortfalls caused by dwindling Federal program funding. The Supreme Court will permit such use and commerce except on Federal lands and the transportation of what is Federally illegal between the States.

Even so, Drug Lords and black marketers will still persist transporting drugs between state markets as well as being the source of either more powerful still illegal substances, or the backdoor supplier to local shops and merchants in an attempt to avoid State revenue agents.

The Nation will be placed on food rationing as a means to deal with the disruptions in food supplies caused by Global Warming, and the Federal Government will be forced to deal with massive civil engineering projects to help protect the Nation’s Capital and other important major coastal cities from flooding. In the middle of the Nation a major volcanic eruption will have occurred all because of man’s own carelessness involving fracking.

Mankind will have managed to fully harness through improved genetic editing devices, like CRISPR, the means to create a whole new species of plants and animals. The irony of such genetic improvements is that what man had originally intended doesn’t always end up as the final use. The genetically modified version of cotton designed to create a pest proof version of the plant paradoxically ended up creating one of the most popular street drugs of the era. Despite the legalization of drugs, some black marketers have turned it into a deadly addictive substance.

Below is a transcript from a Social Media Net show of the time on the subject.

Dr. Daisy Miles: On Boutcyclidine

[Beginning of Recorded Material]

Male Voice: This is Popular Street Drugs, a bi-monthly vidzine talk show where we have casual conversations with scientists about current popular street drugs facing America. Today’s show is brought to you by Pharmazon, the single largest direct deliverer of prescription medications today.

[Pause] Today’s guest is Dr. Daisy Miles, the scientist who was credited with the introduction of a drug twenty years ago whose refinement today has become one of the newest street drugs that is currently responsible for the deaths of hundreds of youths in inner City areas.

Gabrielle Mosley: This is Gabrielle Mosley, and I am here with Dr. Daisy Miles. The founder of Boutcyclidine, a PCP analogue, which is a novel psychoactive substance. Every year some new variant of PCP tends to hit the street, and Boutcyclidine and its newer cousin Boutcyclidine-b are no exception.

[Pause] Boutcyclidine is also known as Nirvana Puff Balls, Cotton Death Trip, Cotton Stiff, and NDE Cotton have been around for the last twenty years. But its newer cousin, the beta version, has only recently surfaced in the last five to ten years on the streets.

[Pause] So Dr. Miles, could you tell us something about Boutcyclidine?

Dr. Daisy Miles: I wouldn’t say I am the founder. More like the researcher who discovered it. I was studying pharmacokinetics as a Grad Student when I came across it.

Gabrielle Mosley: Can you elaborate more on how you discovered Boutcyclidine?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Well, as a grad student I came across a research paper from India in which some field workers had become paralyzed after inhaling smoke from a cotton field fire. The workers reported having unusual hallucinations where they thought they had travelled to Nirvana. I really became fascinated with the subject and turned it into my thesis.

Gabrielle Mosley: So how long did it take you to discover Boutcyclidine?

Dr. Daisy Miles: That is the funny bit. I discovered the properties rather quickly when I duplicated in the lab the basic conditions of what happened in India. Franklin, who was a fellow grad student, was helping me at the time, and was my test subject. I honestly thought I had killed him at first. He just sat there totally paralyzed after he inhaled the fumes. It wasn’t until an hour later that he came out of it and told me of the wild trip he had, of floating out of his body, going through the building, and then into space itself. Only to be snapped back down into his body as the drug wore off.

Gabrielle Mosley: Isn’t Franklin your husband?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Yes, that is right. We eventually got married.

Gabrielle Mosley: So, after your initial test where you paralyzed your future husband, what did you do next?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Well, we ran some blood work on him. Did some other tests. Didn’t really find anything out of the norm. I began to look at the cotton plant itself and that is when I discovered that the plant had in it a natural BTX compound.

Gabrielle Mosley: BTX? Isn’t that Botox?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Yes, that is correct.

Gabrielle Mosley: What is Botox doing in cotton?

Dr. Daisy Miles: That is what I asked myself. So I talked to the farmer where I got the plant from, and he gave me the seed manufacturer. I looked up the seed manufacturer in the Department of Agriculture’s GENOME database and they held a patent for a genetically modified cotton plant. The genetic patent indicated that it was modified to include BTX as a form of pest control.

Gabrielle Mosley: Well, that makes sense. But how does Botox become Boutcyclidine?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Now that is the part that took me the longest to figure out. I spent more than two years trying to crack that nut, and in the meantime, my initial research was spreading quickly around the campus. My fellow students were paralyzing themselves to experience the nirvana-like effects of the cotton puff balls.

Gabrielle Mosley: Are you telling me that your fellow students were getting high from this as soon as you discovered its effects?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Yup. That was pretty much what happened. You know, there is no way you can keep something like this a secret on a college campus. I would say within a week, or maybe it was two, people were smoking cotton on the campus.

Gabrielle Mosley: Weren’t you concerned? What did the administration do?

Dr. Daisy Miles: I was too preoccupied with figuring out how the BTX became Boutcyclidine to care about what was taking place on the campus. Besides, no one was dying or having any issues, so no one cared.

Gabrielle Mosley: What about the paralysis? This wasn’t seen as dangerous? I mean people are just lying stiff for an hour, couldn’t something bad happen?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Well, I guess if you put it that way. But back then no one really thought anything of it. Most people smoking cotton was doing it in their dorm rooms, so there were fewer risks or dangers. I guess today people are willing to smoke cotton in other places we never thought of.

[Pause] I mean, I have heard of people smoking it in the woods and having some wild animal come up to them. See that kind of stuff is just plain stupid. I mean this stuff causes paralysis while you are tripping, so you have to make sure you either have a buddy or you are in a safe place.

Gabrielle Mosley: What about any side effects from its use?

Dr. Daisy Miles: That is just it. In these early days no one knew the dose levels, or what if any side effects there were. And as far as I could tell from the anecdotal reports I heard from my fellow students, smoking cotton there didn’t seem to have any negatives. Even today there is no known side effects from smoking including cancer causing agents. Heck, the stuff leaves no metabolites in the body to trace. It is the perfect drug to get high with.

Gabrielle Mosley: Isn’t it possible to overdose? I mean all drugs like this typically have some sort of overdose limit?

Dr. Daisy Miles: See that is the odd thing with Boutcyclidine. You really cannot overdose on the stuff. When the BTX is changed into Boutcyclidine through heating, and the smoke is inhaled, it paralyzes from the C6 nerves down. Even if there is some smoke in the air, once the paralyzation takes effect, the body will not absorb any more. The only way you can overdose on Boutcyclidine is if you tried to concentrate the BTX from the cotton in the first place.

Gabrielle Mosley: Wow. I guess it is the perfect drug to get high with.

Dr. Daisy Miles: I would say the original stuff is, but the new street stuff isn’t.

Gabrielle Mosley: Oh, are you talking about Knockout, Wrath, Nitro, Reaper, and After Burner?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Is that what they are calling it? Go figure the Drug Lords would take a simple, harmless drug and jack it up. I mean, what I discovered was harmless and still is harmless by pharmacological standards. But the stuff they are making is pure death.

Gabrielle Mosley: Could you elaborate more?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Sure. A while back, I had to give a deposition before Congress on this whole problem. The BTX in the cotton plant is also in the seeds which can be found in higher concentrations in the cottonseed oil. But when I studied the cottonseed oil I noticed that the BTX had changed through the process of making the oil into yet another compound of Boutcyclidine. I called it Boutcyclidine-b. This stuff was more potent than the original Boutcyclidine, and I had no idea what its effects were exactly on people. Before I could conduct trials, reports were coming in from the police and coroners in the Los Angeles area of some odd deaths. When I examined these reports I realized it was from Boutcyclidine-b.

[Pausing] Someone was taking cottonseed oil, and crystallizing it after mixing in some other drugs like cocaine or heroin. The Boutcyclidine-b was surviving re-melting due to the other drugs mixed in and then when injected was at least a thousand times more potent. The paralysis was stopping the heart and respiration functions. This stuff was basically crystal death.

Gabrielle Mosley: I see. What do you think of California’s Proposition 648 where they are trying to license the use of cottonseed oil? Do you think regulations like this can help?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Not really. I think the Drug Lords have figured out how to make a more potent addictive version; no amount of regulation is going to stop them. Governments have tried for years to regulate raw ingredients for certain drugs with little success. I don’t think Prop 648 is going to work either. If anything, it is just going to drive up the street cost and fuel possible armed robberies to pay for it.

Gabrielle Mosley: Interesting. Would you say that your discovery was an economic boon to the US Cotton Industry? I mean, shortly after the discovery farmers in several states began to grow cotton for the first time in years. Many states saw a jump in tax revenues associated with cotton drug use.

Dr. Daisy Miles: Really? I wouldn’t go there. All I did was discover the drug effects of a genetically altered plant. Look, I cannot help the fact that as a Nation, we are in a financial mess. I mean Global Warming was known for years and don’t get me going on the stupidity of fracking along the New Madrid Fault causing the worst volcanic eruption in God knows how long. Just be thankful that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the home rule for states on drug enforcement issues allowing them to reap tax revenues. If my discovery happened to help the economy recover, that’s great. But I can tell you it is not like I am making millions from it. I haven’t made a single dime from its discovery despite what some on the Social Media networks are saying about me.

Gabrielle Mosley: Okay.

[Pause] Isn’t it still illegal to transport drugs between state lines?

Dr. Daisy Miles: Well, yeah for right now. But who knows. I hear there are some cases making their way up to the Supreme Court on that issue.

Gabrielle Mosley: Where do you see things going from here?

Dr. Daisy Miles: To be honest, I think this new street drug is going to make things worse for Boutcyclidine use. The Feds are already trying to get the States to clamp down harder on its use because of the deaths. Even though there are some interesting innovations happening with goat ingested variations of Boutcyclidine where the goats eat the cotton puff balls and either the milk or the waste is used to make Boutcyclidine products, I think further research in this area is going to dry up, and there is a current push by the Agriculture Department to go back to the original cotton GENOME despite the pest issues. Both China and India have already moved back to the original cotton GENOME as part of a larger trade negotiations. I think the days are numbered for Boutcyclidine.

Gabrielle Mosley: Fascinating. Thank you Dr. Daisy Miles for your insights on Boutcyclidine.

Dr. Daisy Miles: My pleasure.