Were Psychoactive Plants Designed for a Purpose or Just random evolution at work?

Castor bean extract (ricin) is nasty stuff.An ingenious, if not insidious, ploy was hatched by the KGB when they hollowed out the tip of an umbrella. Inside the umbrella was a tiny ball bearing which had perforations in it to inject ricin in to. This was used to quietly assassinate dissidents once loyal to Moscow.Once the agent had his mark , he would walk behind him and act as if he casually bumped the umbrella against the target's leg. In reality, he fired his ricin dart directly in to the mark's leg.Anyway, I realize that was a tangent but the point was mostly about how nasty ricin is.

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“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious" -C.S. Lewis

Heh. Actually, the urban legend part was about the fishermen actually throwing them back. Apparently that isn't the general case.Anyway, off topic for this thread. Was I able to clarify my point concerning the limited selection pressures on psychoactive plants? When humans have put specific plants under selection pressure (through cultivation, for instance), a lot of times it's specifically to reduce the toxins. One example is potatoes (the ones sold in the US f'rinstance contain <20% of the glycoalkaloids in the "wild" type found in the Andes). Tomatoes, broccoli, apples (seeds), etc, all have been bred to reduce toxicity. Think about that next time you're in a health-food store and see bins of raw cashews for sale - you're gonna destroy your liver eating them unless they are from the one or two varietals that have had the toxins bred down.

Oh well, I guess we'll never know for sure. It's not like the japanese fishermen a thousand years ago actually kept records of throwing them back to the sea or not.But you're right, the claim has been disputed.

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