An unemployed man of no fixed abode pleaded guilty in Wellington District Court today to importing LSD and Ecstasy.

Judge Denys Barry remanded Megatron Eardley-Wilmot in custody for sentencing in the High Court on February 22.

There you have it. This is mostly just an excuse for me to segue into promoting a completely off-topic blog called Things My Boyfriend Says, which is a running list of - wait for it - funny things the author's boyfriend ("e") says. It isn't getting updated anymore, but the archive is completely worth reading for treats like this:

While snuggling:

me: Who loves you?
e: Megatron.

"Here in the suburbs we observe the human habitat after sunset," intones the familiar voice, "even though dark there is a surprising amount of activity ... the conditions suggest a social gathering or breeding colony".

The documentary cameras venture into the house and observe different types of drug takers – as if they are wildlife species in their native eco-systems.

The cameras observe "the pill taker" on ecstasy who exhibits a "vigorous mating dance", a "young acid dropper" on LSD "caught on camera for the first time" and the "hibernating stoner" a cannabis smoker who goes on to vomit and is labelled "the common puker".

I can't find an embed link for it, but you can view the whole clip over on the Guardian's site. It's definitely worth a look. Strangely, it wound up feeling to me like an effective argument for moderation; even though the "documentary" singles out three individuals who seem to be having a rough time, the narrator also offers solid clues for how to avoid these situations ("stay hydrated," "mixing drugs can be risky") that don't inherently reduce down to abstinence. The entire rest of the party still looks like hella fun, and we're essentially left to infer that most of those kids understood the set and setting a little better - undercutting the ending tagline of "You never know how drugs will affect you." Of course, that's my thoroughly jaded take on this type of advertising; I'm sure this "tested well" with the "target demographic."

But 20.8% to 31.4% of patients taking taranabant had psychiatric adverse effects, including depressed mood, irritability, anger, mood swings, tearfulness, anxiety, insomnia, and nervousness. Those effects led some 15% of patients to drop out.

Eeep! Researchers believe this is potentially a dose issue, but fortunately, the drug seems to be effective at much smaller doses than the high end dose that produced the "psychiatric side effects". Future phases of the research will aim to find the sweet spot.

"Fight your way through 6 different exciting locations in hopes of being granted parole," the site says. "Escape prison riots in The Yard, slip glass into a mob boss' lasagna in the Cafeteria, steal painkillers from the nurse's desk in the Infirmary, avoid being cornered by the Aryans in the shower room."

The game includes five tokens representing a bag of cocaine, a handgun and three characters: wheelchair-using 'Wheelz," muscle-flexing "Anferny" and business suit-clad "Sal 'the Butcher."'

Yep... I am always going to choose to be the bag of cocaine.

"No state law could completely legalize marijuana for medical purposes because the drug remains illegal under federal law," Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote for the 5-2 majority.

Further, the state Supreme Court said the so-called Compassionate Use Act passed by California voters in 1996 had nothing to do with employment laws.

"Nothing in the text or history of the Compassionate Use Act suggests the voters intended the measure to address the respective rights and duties of employers and employees," Werdegar wrote. "Under California law, an employer may require preemployment drug tests and take illegal drug use into consideration in making employment decisions."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has revealed the secret of some of his strength - chewing coca, the source of cocaine, 'every day in the morning'.

Chavez let slip his drug use during a four-hour speech last week to Venezuela's National Assembly.

"I chew coca every day in the morning . . . and look how I am," the New York Post quoted him, as saying.

Hmm... chews coca every day, and when I look... he's the President of Venezuela! Holy shit! He also apparently "accepted a handful of coca leaves from his Bolivian ally President Evo Morales and chewed them during a summit meeting, saying 'coca isn't cocaine.'" Well, duh, but still... that sounds so much more rad than espresso in the morning!

Among the hundreds of proposals contained in Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s second executive budget, which he unveiled on Tuesday in Albany, is a provision that would impose a $3.50-a-gram tax on marijuana and a $200-a-gram tax on other illegal drugs, like cocaine....

The Spitzer administration projects that the proposal would raise $13 million in the 2008-9 fiscal year and $17 million each year thereafter.

Uh, riiiiiiiight. Presumably they are only able to levy these taxes in most cases after the dealers have already been busted, in which case aren't their bank accounts already forfeit to the state? Moreover, this type of law has successfully been challenged in other states under the grounds that it amounts to double jeopardy. I'm totally in the dark about how this makes any honest to goodness fiscal sense; seems like a waste of legistators' time, but clearly there's something I must be missing.

Withdrawal symptoms were self reported on a daily basis through out the week using a withdrawal symptom checklist that listed scores for aggression, anger, appetite change, depressed mood, irritability, anxiety/nervousness, restlessness, sleep difficulty, strange dreams and other, less common withdrawal symptoms. Patients also provided an overall score for discomfort they experienced during each abstinence period.

...

Sleep disturbance seemed to be more pronounced during marijuana abstinence, while some of the general mood effects seemed to be greater during tobacco abstinence. In addition, six of the participants reported that quitting both marijuana and tobacco at the same time was more difficult than quitting either drug alone, whereas the remaining six found that it was easier to quit marijuana or cigarettes individually than it was to abstain from the two substances simultaneously.

The study was led by Ryan Vandrey, Ph.D., of the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and they studied tobacco withdrawal along with pot withdrawal, which bears some similarities.

As a side note, I can say that the dreams you have when withdrawing from heavy marijuana use are unlike any other you will have in your life...

The Hershey Co. said this week it will no longer make a breath mint that children's advocacy groups and law enforcement say resembles illegal drugs and could be "extremely dangerous" for young people.

In its conference call about the company's fourth-quarter earnings report, Hershey CEO David West said that while consumers were "very satisfied" by "Ice Breakers Pacs," "some community and law enforcement leaders have expressed concern about the shape of the pouch...and the possibility that it could be mistaken for illicit items."