Arne Løining's Library tagged Weapons →  View Popular

While the media focused on the sensationalistic dosing of unsuspecting "subjects" with LSD and other psychoactive substances during unethical CIA and Army experiments, purportedly as a means to gain "control" over the minds of "enemy agents" or "target populations," the demise of MKULTRA supposedly signalled that research into these forbidden zones were a closed book.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. While "mind control" as a weapon of war has proven chimerical, the Pentagon has hardly neglected its search for biochemical agents as mechanisms for repressive domination. Under the broad heading "calmatives," such research continues to this day. The now-defunct Sunshine Project offered a preliminary assessment and defined calmatives as,

chemical or biological agents with sedative, sleep-inducing or similar psychoactive effects. Chemical calmative weapons such as BZ (3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, a compound related to scopolamine) were developed during the Cold War. Proponents of calmatives are creating a new and alarming legal ambiguity surrounding their use. ...

The US Department of Defense (DoD) arguments imply the creation of two loopholes in the Chemical Weapons Convention: the possible definition of psychoactive substances as riot control agents, and a distinction between "military operations other than war" [MOOTW] and armed conflicts. In the latter, DoD argues that even toxic chemicals would be of operational utility. ("Non-Lethal Weapons Research in the U.S.: Calmatives and Malodorants," The Sunshine Project, Backgrounder Series #8, July 2001)