Fifteen years of study of psychoactive snuffs of South America: 1967-1982--a review.

Much has been learned concerning psychoactive snuffs in South America in the past 15 years since I delivered a review paper in the now famous symposium "Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs" held in San Francisco in 1967 (Efron et al., 1967; Schultes, 1967). There is still much to be investigated, but it seems that a recapitulation at this time may be warranted. The advances in our knowledge have come about as a result of field work as well as laboratory research and have been effected by investigators in several disciplines: archaeology, ethnobotany, ethnology and phytochemistry.