Mormon Tea

[MikeWaters]

From article at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...=pubmed_docsum


Ephedra sinica, often known simply as ephedra and in
China as Ma huang (‘‘looking for trouble’’), has been
recovered from Middle Eastern Neolithic gravesites and
Vedic temples in India. The herb has been identified, although
controversially, as soma, the food of the Vedic gods
(Mahdihassan and Mehdi, 1989). A first century AD Chinese
book of herbalmedicine, Shen Nong Ben,mentions its use for
treating asthma and upper respiratory infections. The major
active component, ephedrine (7), was identified in 1887 by
Nagajoshi Nagai, a founder of the Pharmaceutical Society of
Japan. In the western United States, a stimulant tea was
brewed from a different Ephedra species, the herb Mormon
Tea (E. nevadensis), so called because it was not proscribed by
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, although a
recent report suggests that New World Ephedra lacks
phenethylamine-related alkaloids (Caveney et al., 2001).

[MikeWaters]

in the same article:

One percent of Wyoming’s population is now said to require treatment
for METH addiction (T. Egan, New York Times, December
8, 2002).