Salon.com > Drugs http://www.salon.com Wed, 03 Jul 2013 01:14:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 How Humboldt became America’s marijuana capital http://www.salon.com/2013/06/30/how_humboldt_became_americas_marijuana_capital/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/30/how_humboldt_became_americas_marijuana_capital/#comments Sun, 30 Jun 2013 16:30:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13340019 Late one morning in the winter of 1970, when Mare Abidon was a young woman of thirty, with blond hair that streamed down her back, she stood outside her San Francisco apartment holding a cardboard box and prepared to say good-bye. The box in her arms brimmed with the remnants of the life she was leaving behind, and all the lives that came before that: art supplies from school, horn jewelry purchased on the street in India, and batik granny dresses from her years in the Haight. Len was waiting in his truck nearby. Brooding Len with the dark beard and strong arms, who had made Mare’s heart skip a beat the first time she laid eyes on him years ago at the post office.

Instead of feeling melancholy about the life she was leaving behind, Mare was brimming with excitement. The Beast, Len’s old green Chevy, was loaded down with their belongings and ready to carry them north. Six years earlier, Mare had arrived in San Francisco with her new husband, Gene. When her marriage fell apart a year later, she fled to the Haight-Ashbury. What a refuge the Haight had been. The neighborhood was brimming with creativity and hope. The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane all called it home. The Diggers served free soup down the Panhandle from Mare’s apartment. The Haight was famous the world over. During that summer they called Love, even more dreamers flocked to San Francisco. There was such a spirit of freedom and communalism to the place that, for a moment, Mare really believed love could conquer all.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/30/how_humboldt_became_americas_marijuana_capital/feed/ 19 “How to Make Money Selling Drugs”: The war America keeps on losing http://www.salon.com/2013/06/26/how_to_make_money_selling_drugs_the_war_america_keeps_on_losing/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/26/how_to_make_money_selling_drugs_the_war_america_keeps_on_losing/#comments Wed, 26 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13336804 Despite its slick packaging and overtly facetious premise, director Matthew Cooke and producer Adrian Grenier’s faux-educational documentary “How to Make Money Selling Drugs” packs a wallop. While imparting lessons about the economic realities of the drug trade – a thriving, booming and ever-diversifying realm of entrepreneurial capitalism, in spite of the massively expensive attempt to shut it down – Cooke’s film reminds us that America’s destructive global misadventures of the last 20 years have a corollary that’s every bit as bad right here at home.

If anything, the “war on drugs” has been even worse and even stupider than the “war on terror,” although they’ve become so intimately interconnected in moral, technological and philosophical terms that it’s not like we get to choose. America’s police departments have been increasingly transformed into thousands of high-tech paramilitary squads, just as our overseas military operations have become ever more defined by special-forces ops and targeted assassinations. Seeing cops in middle-size heartland communities driving armored personnel carriers would almost be comical, if it didn’t so often lead to incompetent and illegal home invasions in which the wrong people are arrested, injured or killed. (Wrong-address police break-ins happen several times a week in the United States, according to an attorney seen in the film.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/26/how_to_make_money_selling_drugs_the_war_america_keeps_on_losing/feed/ 44 Chasing the dragon with Tao Lin http://www.salon.com/2013/06/22/chasing_the_dragon_with_tao_lin_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/22/chasing_the_dragon_with_tao_lin_partner/#comments Sat, 22 Jun 2013 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13333337 Los
Angeles Review of Books“POT IS A REALITY KICK,” reads a protest sign Allen Ginsberg is holding in a photo from a 1963 rally for the legalization of marijuana in New York City. In another, “POT IS FUN.”

Fifty years ago, it was still possible to believe that drugs could free our minds and transform the world; the chemical evangelist had not yet become a figure of total ridicule. The spirit of Rimbaud, with his systematic derangement of the senses for transforming poets into seers, could be felt among the Beats; the psychologist Timothy Leary, drawing on his Harvard Psilocybin Project experiments of 1960–62, hymned the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics; and in 1964, with all these precedents as inspiration, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters embarked on the psychedelic cross-country bus trip that would be immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Just a few years earlier, Kesey had eviscerated America's conformist culture in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but now he claimed that fiction writing was an old-fashioned and artificial form. The promise of a different world lay in the trip itself:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/22/chasing_the_dragon_with_tao_lin_partner/feed/ 4 State Department accused of covering up sexual assault overseas http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/state_department_accused_of_covering_up_sexual_assault_overseas/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/state_department_accused_of_covering_up_sexual_assault_overseas/#comments Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:05:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13324209 Officials at the U.S. State Department may have covered up sexual assault within their ranks and called off investigations into sexual misconduct and other crimes overseas, according to a leaked memo obtained by CBS News.

The State Department inspector general's memo includes eight specific examples of manipulated investigations and coverups, including allegations that a State Department security official sexually assaulted embassy guards in Beirut. Other cases include an alleged drug ring operating around the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and an ambassador in a "sensitive diplomatic post" suspected of "patronizing prostitutes in a public park."

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at a press briefing that the memo includes "a number of unsubstantiated accusations."

"Prior to the drafting of this memo, the department's bureau of diplomatic security had already started looking into or completed the process of looking into these individual incidents," Psaki said. "The notion that we would not vigorously pursue criminal misconduct is not only preposterous, it's inaccurate," she added.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/state_department_accused_of_covering_up_sexual_assault_overseas/feed/ 4 Teacher may face disciplinary action after reminding students of their Fifth Amendment rights http://www.salon.com/2013/05/28/teacher_may_face_disciplinary_action_after_reminding_students_of_their_fifth_amendment_rights/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/28/teacher_may_face_disciplinary_action_after_reminding_students_of_their_fifth_amendment_rights/#comments Tue, 28 May 2013 17:10:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13310919 An Illinois high school teacher may be facing disciplinary action after reminding his students that they had a constitutional right not to incriminate themselves while handing out a school-administered survey on drug and alcohol use.

After noticing the questionnaire dealing with drug and alcohol use had come already printed with each of his student's names, social studies teacher John Dryden delivered a quick lecture on the Fifth Amendment.

"Somebody needs to remind them they have the ability not to incriminate themselves," Dryden told the Daily Herald.

"I made a judgment call. There was no time to ask anyone," he said, adding that he would have taken his concerns directly to school administrators if the survey had been handed out earlier, but that there was no time. Instead, he handed out the survey (and his attendant constitutional warning) to his students and spoke with school officials afterward.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/28/teacher_may_face_disciplinary_action_after_reminding_students_of_their_fifth_amendment_rights/feed/ 18 Toronto Mayor Rob Ford apologizes to media for calling them “a bunch of maggots” http://www.salon.com/2013/05/28/toronto_mayor_rob_ford_apologizes_to_media_for_calling_them_a_bunch_of_maggots/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/28/toronto_mayor_rob_ford_apologizes_to_media_for_calling_them_a_bunch_of_maggots/#comments Tue, 28 May 2013 12:48:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13310748 Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been on the defense ever since the news site Gawker alleged that video footage of Ford smoking out of a crack pipe exists. Addressing the allegations for the first time, on Friday, he said, "I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine.” On Sunday, Ford insulted the media during his weekly Newstalk 1010 radio show, calling the media "a bunch of maggots."

On Monday, however, Ford issued an apology at City Hall, where he also addressed the resignation of his press secretary and deputy press secretary.

From the Toronto Sun:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/28/toronto_mayor_rob_ford_apologizes_to_media_for_calling_them_a_bunch_of_maggots/feed/ 4 Diet soda rots your teeth “like meth and cocaine” http://www.salon.com/2013/05/25/diet_soda_rots_your_teeth_like_meth_and_cocaine_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/25/diet_soda_rots_your_teeth_like_meth_and_cocaine_partner/#comments Sat, 25 May 2013 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13308559 the fix
Turn that smile upside down, Diet Coke addicts! A new study claims that a diet soda habit can rot your teeth just as badly as using meth or cocaine. "You look at it side-to-side with 'meth mouth' or 'coke mouth,' it is startling to see the intensity and extent of damage more or less the same," says Dr. Mohamed Bassiouny, a professor of restorative dentistry at the Temple University School of Dentistry in Philadelphia. In the findings of the study, published in the journal General Dentistry, a woman in her 30s who drank two liters of soda a day for three to five years had the same dental damage as a 29-year-old meth user and a 51-year-old crack cocaine user. "None of the teeth affected by erosion were salvageable," says Bassiouny, and all three study participants needed all of their teeth extracted. The woman said she consumed extreme amounts of diet soda because she was concerned about weight gain, and also because she associated regular sodas with tooth decay. But Bassiouny says that sugar-free soda is just as damaging to teeth as regular soda "if they are consumed in the same frequency, the same amount and the same duration.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/25/diet_soda_rots_your_teeth_like_meth_and_cocaine_partner/feed/ 19 Is recreational pot use safe? http://www.salon.com/2013/05/23/is_recreational_pot_use_safe_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/23/is_recreational_pot_use_safe_partner/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 12:18:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13306373 Scientific American

Marijuana is more popular and accessible in the U.S. than any other street drug. In national surveys, 48 percent of Americans say they have tried it, and 6.5 percent of high school seniors admit to daily use. So it was not too surprising when two states, Washington and Colorado, became the first to legalize recreational marijuana in the November 2012 general election, albeit in limited quantity, for anyone over the age of 21. Activists expect that similar measures will soon win approval in other parts of the country.

Some success with medical marijuana helped to pave the road to wider legalization of pot. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia permit possession and consumption of the drug for medical purposes. Doctors in those jurisdictions may prescribe cannabis to treat or manage ailments ranging from glaucoma—an eye disease in which the optic nerve is damaged—to menstrual cramps. Cancer patients sometimes smoke pot to relieve the pain and nausea brought on by chemotherapy, and some people with the inflammatory disease multiple sclerosis rely on marijuana to ease muscle stiffness.

Although many physicians agree that marijuana is safe enough to temporarily alleviate the symptoms of certain medical conditions, the safety of recreational use is poorly understood. Researchers worry that both the short- and long-term use of the drug may harm the body and mind. Marijuana's continued popularity among teenagers raises particular concern because the drug might hinder the ongoing maturation of the adolescent brain. Making matters worse, new growing techniques for the Cannabis sativa plant—from which marijuana is prepared—have dramatically increased the drug's potency. Some experts suggest that such high-octane weed is fueling a rise in cannabis addiction. Finally, although investigators still debate how the legalization of recreational marijuana will change road safety overall, studies indicate that the drug slows reaction time and impairs distance perception behind the wheel. Despite such evidence, most new marijuana regulations, for medical or recreational use, fail to account for these potential risks.

Weeded Out

Whether rolled into a joint or mixed into brownie batter, marijuana profoundly changes behavior and awareness. The primary psychoactive compound in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), mimics the structure of molecules called endocannabinoids that the human body produces naturally. Endocannabinoids act on a group of cell-surface molecules called cannabinoid receptors that help to regulate appetite, mood and memory. Because of its shape, THC fits into these receptors, too. After all, jokes neuroscientist Giovanni Marsicano of the University of Bordeaux in France, “We don't have a receptor in the body just to smoke marijuana.”

When THC strikes specific cannabinoid receptors, it triggers domino chains of interacting molecules in neurons that culminate in both unusually elevated and abnormally low levels of various neurotransmitters (the molecules that brain cells use to communicate with one another). The result is the well-known “high” of marijuana. Suddenly, the mundane seems hilarious, and ordinary foods taste delicious. People generally feel merry, relaxed and introspective, although undesirable effects—such as paranoia and irritability—are common as well.

Marijuana also temporarily impairs an array of mental abilities, especially memory and attention. Dozens of studies have shown, for example, that people under the influence of marijuana perform worse on tests of working memory, which is the ability to temporarily hold and manipulate information in one's mind. Participants in these studies have greater difficulty remembering and reciting short lists of numerals and random words. Research has further revealed that cannabis blunts concentration, weakens motor coordination and interferes with the ability to quickly scan one's surroundings for obstacles.

Such mild cognitive deficits may not endanger anyone if a marijuana user lazes on the couch, but it is a different story when someone takes that high on the road. In driving-simulation and closed-course studies, people on marijuana are slower to hit the brakes and worse at safely changing lanes. Investigators still debate, however, at what point these impairments translate to more traffic accidents. A 2009 study found an increased risk of accidents for levels of THC higher than five nanograms per milliliter of blood, which some evidence indicates is as impairing as a blood alcohol concentration around the legal limit of 0.08 percent. Typically one would have to take several puffs of a joint to reach such a concentration. Consequently, voters in Washington State have adopted 5 ng/mL as the upper threshold for drivers.

Enforcing that limit presents a technical challenge, however. Unlike alcohol, marijuana cannot be detected with a relatively unobtrusive Breathalyzer test. Police officers would have to look for it in blood—something that often requires a warrant. “There is currently no practical method for law-enforcement officers at the scene to collect blood samples from suspected DUI cannabis drivers in a timely manner,” says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the Washington, D.C.–based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which advocates the legalization of marijuana. Instead of using a blood test, Armentano says that police should look for poor maneuvering and the smell of pot wafting from the vehicle.

Smoke Signals

Although marijuana's immediate effects are relatively easy to monitor in the lab, the drug's long-term effects on body and mind are harder to determine. So far the results—which admittedly are subject to multiple interpretations—indicate the need for caution. In one recent study, clinical psychologist Madeline Meier of Duke University and her colleagues examined data from 1,037 New Zealanders. They found that people who began using pot earlier in life and used it most frequently over the years experienced an average decline of eight IQ points by the time they turned 38. By comparison, those who never smoked pot had an average increase of one IQ point by the same age.

A reanalysis of the New Zealand data by Ole Røgeberg of the Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research in Oslo, however, suggested that the IQ difference could be explained by socioeconomic factors. People who start smoking marijuana at an earlier age are often less intelligent to begin with. Even if this is true, Meier says, her study shows that the IQ drop is greatest for those who started smoking pot as teenagers rather than in adulthood, indicating a worrisome cumulative effect regardless of intelligence. This finding, she thinks, makes it all the more important to discourage the early use of marijuana among teens.

Increasingly potent marijuana of recent years may be driving a sharp rise in cannabis addiction among adolescents, according to a report released last year by the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Between 1993 and 2008, the average concentration of THC in confiscated marijuana jumped from 3.4 to 8.8 percent. Meanwhile hospital and rehabilitation center admission rates for minors abusing marijuana soared by 188 percent between 1992 and 2006. In contrast, admissions for alcohol abuse for the same group over the same period declined by 64 percent.

In addition to tracking levels of THC itself, some researchers have focused on the dangers of lingering contaminants in marijuana sold on the street. Dealers typically sell cannabis by weight, so some use sand or glass beads to make their products heavier. Breathing in these particles over the years may inflame and eventually scar the lungs. An analysis published last year of data on more than 5,000 Americans did not find a decline in lung function among individuals who smoked joints two or three times a month over two decades. The authors emphasize, however, that they did not assess the effect of daily use on lung health. “Somebody should do that study if marijuana is going to become legalized and prescribed” more widely, says Mark Pletcher, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who co-wrote the paper.

Some opponents of legalization worry that lax regulation of medical marijuana foretells even looser laws concerning recreational marijuana. In states that have legalized medical pot, current laws do not guarantee the safety or quality of cannabis products or standardize levels of THC. In Oakland, Calif., people can fill a marijuana prescription at Harborside Health Center, a massive dispensary with a strict quality-control system. Elsewhere in the state, however, people get their medical marijuana at mom-and-pop outfits or on the street. The next big round of ballot initiatives to legalize cannabis in states other than Washington and Colorado could happen as soon as three years from now, in the 2016 presidential election. Until then, researchers have plenty of marijuana health risks to weed through.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/23/is_recreational_pot_use_safe_partner/feed/ 219 Punk, dance music and drugs http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/punk_dance_music_and_drugs/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/punk_dance_music_and_drugs/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13301493 Dear Reader,

Today, we talk a little about music subcultures, drugs and the human soul. I thought this letter was very interesting, but in trying to answer the questions it raises, I encountered my own limitations in knowledge and insight. I just don't know in detail how drugs influence crowds and vice versa, but do think social scientists can provide clues. And there is also recent evidence of music's own curative powers. My notes on it are a little dry, and a little hazy, and quite unscientific, but I am just a writer, not a scientist or philosopher. In the days to come, I'd like to write about my first experience of punk music and speculate about why it seemed so powerful and alluring.

Dear Cary,

I appreciate your column immensely and I have drafted many letters to you over the years which I have never sent -- as a sort of self-therapy to verbalize my frustrations. Sometimes the act of just putting it into words has helped me see my problems more clearly and enabled me to advise myself. Well done us!

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/punk_dance_music_and_drugs/feed/ 19 Toronto mayor reportedly caught on video smoking crack http://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/toronto_mayor_reportedly_caught_on_video_smoking_crack/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/toronto_mayor_reportedly_caught_on_video_smoking_crack/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 13:26:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13301379 A video, viewed already a number of times by journalists, is being passed around by a group of Somali men in the drug trade. It hasn't been made public yet, though, because it has a six figure price tag. Probably something to do with the fact that it reportedly captures Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.

Ford is also known for conservative views and the occasional extremely racist remark.

Gawker's John Cook -- who went to extraordinary, border-crossing lengths to see the footage -- wrote:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/toronto_mayor_reportedly_caught_on_video_smoking_crack/feed/ 9 He made me his drug mule http://www.salon.com/2013/05/01/he_made_me_his_drug_mule/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/01/he_made_me_his_drug_mule/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13282888 Facebook has been used to find ex-lovers, childhood BFFs or the one who got away.

I used it to find the guy who, without my consent, made me his drug mule.

It was 1989, long before Israelis were involved in the international ecstasy trade. I was a University of California, Santa Cruz, student in need of a break. My plan was hardly original: Go to Israel, live on a kibbutz, learn some Hebrew.

Before leaving, I attended a Jerry Garcia Band show at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. After the show, my friend and I got a ride back to Santa Cruz with some random guys, one of whom was Israeli. When I mentioned I was going to Israel in a few days, he asked if I would take a birthday present to mail to a friend. It was already late.

Given my strong Israeli-dar, I knew he would do no harm to Israel. What I failed to consider was whether he would cause any harm to me. He told me it was jewelry. He wrote his name and return address in Israel on the back of the envelope, and his friend’s on the front.

My mom was adamant that I not take it. Duh. But I was 20. I believed that my fellow Deadhead and Jew could be trusted; he was a brother.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/01/he_made_me_his_drug_mule/feed/ 47 FDA lets drugs approved on fraudulent research stay on market http://www.salon.com/2013/04/17/fda_lets_drugs_approved_on_fraudulent_research_stay_on_market_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/17/fda_lets_drugs_approved_on_fraudulent_research_stay_on_market_partner/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:14:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13273561 ProPublica On the morning of May 3, 2010, three agents of the Food and Drug Administration descended upon the Houston office of Cetero Research, a firm that conducted research for drug companies worldwide.

Lead agent Patrick Stone, now retired from the FDA, had visited the Houston lab many times over the previous decade for routine inspections. This time was different. His team was there to investigate a former employee's allegation that the company had tampered with records and manipulated test data. 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/17/fda_lets_drugs_approved_on_fraudulent_research_stay_on_market_partner/feed/ 4 Going green at California’s first pot farmers’ market http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/go_green_at_californias_first_pot_farmers_market_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/go_green_at_californias_first_pot_farmers_market_partner/#comments Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13269407 Modern Farmer Northern California’s first pot farmers’ market is like most other farmers’ markets, except you buy weed instead of kale and there’s the possibility you’ll go to prison – which gives visits to the Organicann Harvest Market in Sonoma County a bit of an edge this chilly morning.

Driving through Sonoma’s famed pastures and rolling vineyards, I note billboards advertising casinos and hydroponics — a favored tool for cultivating pot indoors. This is pot country as much as wine country. Marijuana is the second most-popular intoxicant in the world (after alcohol) and largely legal in the Golden State thanks to 1996 and 2003 laws that allow its use for medicinal purposes.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/go_green_at_californias_first_pot_farmers_market_partner/feed/ 16 Prescription pill epidemic has spiraled out of control http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/prescription_pill_epidemic_has_spiraled_out_of_control_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/prescription_pill_epidemic_has_spiraled_out_of_control_partner/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:55:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13264541 AlterNetIn the small coal towns of southern West Virginia, the poorest patch of Appalachia, the police blotters these days read like big-city tabloid fodder. Last month, a 23-year-old man received up to 25 years in prison for wheeling a quadriplegic to a house against his will, carrying him inside, beating him and stealing his prescription painkillers. That same week, a 25-year-old man was charged with child neglect resulting in death for taking three prescription painkillers and passing out, suffocating his one-month-old son in his arms. The child's 21-year-old mother was charged as an accomplice.

A couple of weeks ago, the manager of a pain clinic in the Mingo County seat of Williamson (nickname “Pilliamson”) pleaded guilty to “reluctantly selling drug prescriptions illegally”--abetting doctors in writing scripts for thousands of prescription pill addicts. “Patients” would line up at the clinic before it opened, like bargain shoppers at a Black Friday Christmas sale. And now, as the nation knows, the Mingo County sheriff is dead, shot at point-blank range as he sat in his car eating a sandwich.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/prescription_pill_epidemic_has_spiraled_out_of_control_partner/feed/ 17 Can the Supreme Court hike drug prices? http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/can_the_supreme_court_hike_drug_prices/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/can_the_supreme_court_hike_drug_prices/#comments Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:14:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13254274 The Supreme Court oral arguments on marriage equality deserved all the attention they received -- but it's another case heard this week that will affect even more people over the course of their lifetimes. And it could cost Americans millions in prescription drug bills.

The case falls within a sadly predictable continuum for the Roberts Court, which virtually always sides with the corporate litigant over the government or individual. This time, the arguments in FTC v. Actavis revolve around an insidious tactic common to the nation’s largest drug companies, and known as “pay for delay.” As a result of the likely ruling in this case, drug companies will be able to charge consumers as much as five times the potential cost of their products. And both government regulators and consumers will watch helplessly as pharmaceutical companies bribe generic drug makers to retain their exclusive holds on the lifesaving medicines we all inevitably require.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/can_the_supreme_court_hike_drug_prices/feed/ 25 SCOTUS: No sniffs without a warrant http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/scotus_no_sniffs_without_a_warrant/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/scotus_no_sniffs_without_a_warrant/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:50:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13252388 The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police could only use sniffer dogs to investigate a property and its surroundings if they first obtained a warrant. "A police officer not armed with a warrant may approach a home and knock, precisely because that is no more than any private citizen might do," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the 5-4 majority decision.

The decision upheld a 2011 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court suppressing evidence uncovered at Joelis Jardines' home with the help of Franky, a chocolate Labrador retriever with a strong record of sniffing out drug stashes. The Economist explained the justices' reasoning, the decision and its relevance to privacy laws more broadly:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/scotus_no_sniffs_without_a_warrant/feed/ 4 Losing my twin http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/losing_my_twin/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/losing_my_twin/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13249292 In October 2001, something terrible happened to my twin sister, Cara. A capstone to some bad things in our lives that had gone before. That October, my sister was raped in the woods while she was out walking her dog. One of the consequences of the rape was that she was afraid to be alone. She needed me with her all the time. She asked if I would stay with her in Massachusetts, though she knew I had photography classes to attend in New York City. In my graduate studies, my only assignment was to photograph, which made it relatively simple to accommodate Cara. I selected her as my subject.

Cara refused to dress, so I made adjustments for the pictures that allowed for this. We wore identical long black cloaks. Cara buttoned hers over her nightshirt and pants, painted red lipstick on her mouth, pinked her cheeks. I copied her makeup, became her duplicate. We looked like old-fashioned harlots wearing long blank faces, in our long black coats. It was the middle of a harsh winter. I had a vision: identicals in the snow. I used the doppelgänger in the literary Gothic sense: landscapes were to describe the psychological state of the characters of our novel. It was easier for me to think of us as characters than to grapple with the truth of our new reality. I wanted Poe’s warring sisters, forever lost, women written with hysterical vapor. I wanted the fraction of history we owned.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/losing_my_twin/feed/ 9 Elmo voice actor Kevin Clash sued over allegations of crystal meth-fueled sex parties http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/elmo_voice_actor_kevin_clash_sued_over_allegations_of_crystal_meth_fueled_sex_parties/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/elmo_voice_actor_kevin_clash_sued_over_allegations_of_crystal_meth_fueled_sex_parties/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:02:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13246630 Months after Elmo voice actor Kevin Clash resigned from "Sesame Street" over accusations that he engaged in sexual acts with teenage boys, a Pennsylvania man, Sheldon Stephens, 24, is suing the puppeteer, alleging that Clash gave him drugs and engaged in sexual activity in 2008. This is the fourth lawsuit against the voice actor alleging sex abuse.

From the lawsuit, via the New York Post:

" 'On one occasion, a male chauffeur drove Clash and Sheldon to the chauffeur’s apartment, where they had a crystal meth sex party,' said the lawsuit, filed in a Pennsylvania federal court.

'While in the apartment, Clash smoked crystal meth while engaging in sexual activity with Sheldon.' "

The lawsuit comes after Stephens, the first man to publicly accuse Clash of sexual abuse late last year, later recanted his accusation and signed a statement saying that he had "an adult consensual relationship" with Clash. Stephens is stepping forward now to "save other children."

“It disgusted me inside because I knew what had happened to me,” he said. “That motivated me and my parents to reach out to ‘Sesame Street’ and kind of warn them against Kevin Clash and about him potentially harming other children."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/elmo_voice_actor_kevin_clash_sued_over_allegations_of_crystal_meth_fueled_sex_parties/feed/ 2 Your tap water is probably laced with antidepressants http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/your_tap_water_is_probably_laced_with_anti_depressants_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/your_tap_water_is_probably_laced_with_anti_depressants_partner/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:01:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13229450 the fix The idea that we’re being unwittingly drugged when we drink a glass of ordinary tap water smacks of dystopian science fiction or political conspiracy theory. Accusations that Communists were spiking America’s water with sedatives—under the cover of the federally instituted fluoridation program—were such a staple of Cold War–era paranoia that Stanley Kubrick satirized it in his 1964 masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove. While such fear-mongering may seem quaint, what’s truly ironic is that Americans today are consuming prescription drugs—including addictive psychoactive ones—via the water supply. Who knew?

There’s a good chance that if you live in an urban area, your tap water is laced with tiny amounts of antidepressants (mostly SSRIs like Prozac and Effexor), benzodiazepines (like Klonopin, used to reduce symptoms of substance withdrawal) and anticonvulsants (like Topomax, used to treat addiction to alcohol, nicotine, food and even cocaine and crystal meth). Such are the implications of environmental studies that have been leaking out over the past decade. Whether or not this psychoactive waste has any effect on the human nervous system remains unclear, but when such pharmaceuticals are introduced into the ecosystem, the fallout for other species is demonstrable—and potentially dire.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/your_tap_water_is_probably_laced_with_anti_depressants_partner/feed/ 9 Was an ex-girlfriend trying to out Whitney Houston? http://www.salon.com/2013/03/05/whitney_houston_had_even_more_drama_than_we_knew/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/05/whitney_houston_had_even_more_drama_than_we_knew/#comments Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:55:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13218954 As if it weren't enough that she had an overbearing mother who shooed away her best friend (and possible girlfriend), an erratic husband, and an out-of-control drug problem, the troubled late singer Whitney Houston was also battling a crazed fan and a blackmail plot that threatened to expose personal details about her private life, it was revealed on Monday, when the FBI released and posted 128 pages from its file.

The FBI file on the cases — which were opened at the pinnacle of the Grammy winner's career — was released through a Freedom of Information Act request, reports Reuters, documenting over a decade's worth of threats against the singer, from 1988 to 1999. The pages, however, are so heavily redacted — names and details — that they're nearly inscrutable.

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