Recently in Drugs Category

I'll agree with Jonathan that Michael Phelps has been found guilty of nothing worse than being a young adult in America today. In that sense, the loss of endorsement earnings may seem absurd and unfair. Next, a Hollywood starlet will be dropped by a shoe company for driving 56 on the 101.

But while advertising is a silly and obsolete enterprise (a subject I'll be writing about sometime soon), it's based on a company's perception that a spokesperson is a meaningful symbol of their products. Given the huge dollars that Phelps and others earn to serve as these symbols, I say that companies are free to dump them for the smallest blemish. Companies would be even smarter to realize that spokespersons are an outdated form of marketing altogether. My choices in cereal have nothing to do with my perception of an athlete.

A hundred college presidents say here that the over-21 drinking limit is a sham that actually promotes binge drinking. I agree.

The Culture Code, by famed marketer Clotaire Rapaille, contains a gripping analysis of America's peculiar relationship with alcohol. Americans view alcohol almost the way fundamentalist jihadists do -- as a naughty instrument of moral rebellion. It's naughty to the MADD crowd, and it's naughty to the frat-boy crowd. The naughtiness is the very fuel for the bingeing.

Europeans don't binge in nearly the same way (except for British dockworkers and football fans), because alcohol isn't "naughty" there. It's something that brings out the taste of good food. Ten-year-olds are given tastes of it and are encouraged to cultivate a sophisticated appreciation of it, and so it becomes demystified.

And after all, anything that mom and dad want you to try can't be all that cool. But if mom and dad and Uncle Sam forbid you from drinking it, now that is cool, and that increases the temptation to do it in feckless abundance.

... apparently the drug does make you mellow. It so relaxed Scott Snow that the Danbury, Conn., man had no qualms about walking into the local police department puffing on a blunt. Quoth Fox News:

Capt. Robert Myles says Scott Snow walked into the station early Saturday and blew smoke from his cigar into a small opening in the bullet-resistant glass separating desk officers from the public.

Myles says the 24-year-old man was told there's no smoking inside the building and he allegedly stubbed out the cigar on the counter.

Officers came out and smelled the distinctive odor of marijuana and arrested Snow.

Police say they found more alleged marijuana in Snow's pants. He has been released after posting bond.

I love the term, "alleged marijuana." Hey, maybe it's just medicine!

The San Francisco Chronicle has a wonderfully entertaining piece about two Berkeley 20-somethings who decided to open a "medical" marijuana business, which they named "Compassionate Collective of Alameda County."

Well, compassion has been good to these guys. Their business grossed $26.3 million in the first six months of this year alone. But dealing drugs is tricky business, as the Chronicle reports:

Two years ago, on Super Bowl Sunday, a team of armed hoods busted into the dispensary, tied everyone up and robbed the place of about $50,000.

Four months later, a masked gunman fired four shots into a dispensary worker's car as he pulled into the parking lot. The worker hit the gas and plowed through a fence to make his getaway.

In July of this year, one of the club's customers was ambushed and killed at a nearby gas station and his pot taken.

And this past February, the brothers themselves were involved in a shootout at a Fremont hotel.

"These girls lured them to a party through MySpace," Rosenthal said. "Six guys showed up heavily armed and the bullets started flying."

Both brothers were wounded, and both have had to undergo repeated operations.

I'm all in favor of giving marijuana to sick people who can truly use it, but with dopers getting rich, bogus prescriptions gladly written, and crime following, could it be any more clear that the medical-marijuana experiment in California has failed?