A woman volunteered to donate an organ to her mother, but mom’s pee tested positive for marijuana, so no go. I could understand disqualifying the disobedient from receiving an organ from the limited pool of dead strangers, but how does this make sense even by drug war logic?

I’m surprised to see it acknowledged in two teevee shows that heroin is useful as a painkiller. (Charlie Stross, a former pharmacist, mentioned that “diamorphine (aka Heroin™) is carried routinely in ambulances in the UK.”)

In the first series of 24, Jackie’s arm is broken and her kidnappers inject her to keep her quiet. Kim, her fellow kidnappee, starts to protest but appears to accept that it’s the least bad thing to do at the moment. (I don’t think the drug is named, but the paraphernalia are those of heroin.)

Late in the second season of Lost, (spoiler) lies dying of (spoiler) wounds and Jack, MD, gives heroin — very explicitly this time.

Both shows were broadcast, not in the Freer Speech Zone of premium cable. So where’s the uproar from drug-warriors that they contradicted Official Truth?

the view from Saturn’s shadow

My latest finding of “dictionary translation”, at a pet store:

ONE-STORY CAT CAVE
UNE CAVERNE À CHATS D’HISTOIRE

I’d make it caverne à chats à une étage.

Funny that I missed this three years ago — Joseph Hertzlinger has a provocative idea about drugs:

I don’t think a suggestibility drug such as marijuana should be encouraged. . . . I suspect that marijuana might be particularly dangerous from the point of view of inducing groupthink. I have not had any direct personal experience but I have noticed that it is defended as reinforcing the approved habits in the social group of the user. [examples elided] If we put that together we can see that marijuana is a conformist drug – probably because of its ability to make people suggestible. (That might explain the thoroughness of the collapse of trendy drug use in the ’80s. Once its use declined, the remaining users would start conforming to the new trend and stop.) . . . Declare that any drug whose use declines will be legalized. That will encourage drug users to keep their friends off the drug and will eliminate the “everybody does it” defense.

Bastards.

Radley Balko has finished and published his report, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America.

The only effective treatment for Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s narcolepsy is no longer available, thanks to the risk-averse regulatory establishment.

You know what they say: if a regulation can save just one life (in six years) — who cares how many others it wrecks?

I like Bruce Fein‘s language:

The nation’s experiment with Prohibition underscores the limits of the law without moral consensus. The Prohibition Amendment was ratified as a type of homage that vice pays to virtue. Popular morality never celebrated abstinence. . . . Prohibition laws died in adolescence for lack of moral sustenance.

Immigration restrictions are even more problematic than their Prohibition counterparts. While alcohol consumption was not generally condemned, it was likewise not popularly acclaimed as a virtue. In contrast, the conduct and character of illegal aliens elicit accolades by at least half the population. . . .