In on Reuters today:

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who studied the lyrics of hundreds of popular songs, found that one in three mention alcohol or drug use.

...

Nearly 80 percent of rap songs mentioned substance use, followed by 37 percent of country music lyrics, 20 percent of R&B/hip-hop and 14 percent of rock songs. Only nine percent of pop songs referred to drug or alcohol use.

The researchers only included songs that clearly referred to using drug and alcohol. They also named the substances which included alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, prescription drugs, inhalants, hallucinogens, and substances of unknown origin.

Mmmm... Substances of unknown origin...

In other related news, Jay-Z's "American Gangster" set to top CD sales charts this week. Coincidence?

Well some days are all good news, like today! After a brief hearing Amy Winehouse made good and got her visa approved for travel to the US, so she's now got one last chance to clean up her act and make it stick.

Speaking of segueys, UK rocker Pete Doherty says he's sorry for shooting heroin last week and violating his parole, but also said it was like break-up sex, he just had to do it one more time before saying goodbye forever (yeah right).

SAFER, Safer Alternatives For Enjoyable Recreation, has passed Question 100 in the city of Denver, making marijuana laws the city's lowest enforcement priority. Modeled after Seattle's Initiative 75, passed in 2003, this victory makes Denver the 11th city to pass such a measure.

Congratulations to Mason Tvert and the rest of the SAFER crew on a job very well done.

I suppose you think this is another "look at the funny scare story" story, but you're wrong: this is good, old-fashioned useful information. The linked website is a collection of internet pharmacy links, with reviews. There's also a price comparison search engine for drugs, although it's not very good. Your best bet is to browse the pharmacy reviews, and search individually on each site until you find what you're looking there. And there's quite a bit out there...

Well, I don't personally put much stock in the "jenkem" rumors (see Dominic Holden's analysis), but then I see stories about "chugging" hand sanitizer, and it makes me wonder...

Tufts-New England Medical Center has taken measures to keep emergency room patients from chugging hand sanitizer in order to get drunk or injure themselves. Corresponding with the Annals of Emergency Medicine this month, Scott Weiner said that the changes came after a 27-year-old man poisoned himself by drinking a 15-ounce container of Cal Stat antiseptic hand rub -- twice during a two month period....

Since the liquid is mostly isopropanol, not drinking alcohol, he quickly became quite ill. Doctors tried unsuccessfully to revive him with naloxone, a drug used to treat opiate overdoses. As the situation worsened, his kidneys stopped working and he had trouble breathing. Physicians intubated him and moved him to an intensive care unit. At that time, his girlfriend indicated that her beau has a history of drinking rubbing alcohol. Blood tests showed that she wasn't kidding.

Eeep. I can see doing this once (okay, maybe I can't), but this guy repeated the exact same stunt two months later.

Okay, I admit I haven't tried it, so maybe I shouldn't be so judgmental. Especially when it comes in yummy aloe flavor...

In case you hadn't heard (get it? har har), Viagra may trigger hearing loss within hours or days of taking it. Hearing loss is already on the warning label for Viagra and other impotence drugs, but enough evidence has accumulated to convince the FDA to demand stronger warnings:

[T]he Food and Drug Administration decided Thursday to add a warning about the possible risk after counting 29 reports of the problem since 1996 among users of this family of medicines....

Viagra's label already mentioned hearing loss as a possibility, because a few cases were reported during initial testing of that drug. But given that hearing loss is a risk of advancing age and certain conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, that can lead to impotence, it wasn't clear if the link was real.

That still isn't clear, said FDA ear nose and throat specialist Dr. Robert Boucher.

But in poring over FDA's database of possible drug reactions, what struck him was these 29 reports said the hearing loss occurred without hours to two days of taking one of the drugs.... The reports involve hearing loss in one ear, which in a third of cases was temporary.

The warning also applies to Cialis, Levitra, and a drug for pulmonary hypertension, Revatio, which contains the same ingredient as Viagra.

Just one more thing to worry about...

A Salon columnist recounts the tale of giving his 15-year-old son a lecture about drugs - after smoking a doobie in front of his son at a Steely Dan concert:

"Well, obviously, I don't think smoking marijuana is a bad thing," I said. "Actually, in a lot of ways it's better than drinking. Drunks kill a lot more people and do a lot more harm to themselves than people who smoke dope. I don't smoke that much, but sometimes I think I should smoke more and drink less. Marijuana is a more interesting high than alcohol."

Zach said, "Mmm."

Somewhere in the course of this lecture a stray thought blew through my buzzed brain like a brightly colored piece of paper. I realized with horror that my lofty pronouncements about the mind-opening virtues of marijuana would lose some of their credibility if I were to start babbling incoherently like Cheech or Chong. I had to focus.

"But you can abuse any drug, including marijuana. It's probably better to wait a while before you try it. Like 'til you're 17 or 18, or in college. The longer you wait, the better."

Zach grunted.

The talk progresses from marijuana, to a panoply of other possible drug choices, on into the Sex Talk... and the upshot is a strangely straight edge son heading into college a few years later. Is there a moral to the story?

[S]ometimes actually telling your kids in a formal way what you believe is OK. Even if all you're telling them is that you want them to be a good person, try to make the world a better place, and avoid the brown acid.

Word.

Say what? Okay...

A study of more than 5,000 youngsters in Switzerland has found those who smoked marijuana do as well or better in some areas as those who don't, researchers said Monday.

...

In fact, those who used only marijuana were "more socially driven ... significantly more likely to practise sports and they have a better relationship with their peers" than abstainers, it said.

"Moreover, even though they are more likely to skip class, they have the same level of good grades; and although they have a worse relationship with their parents, they are not more likely to be depressed" than abstainers, it added.

Note these finding only apply to teens who smoke only marijuana, as opposed to teens who also use nicotine and alcohol. More details on this study can be found at canada.com.

You decide:

I was hipped to this artist by a DoseNation reader and thought I'd post a link and some eye-candy for you. Larry Carlson has a site full of videos and pictures inspired by psychedelics, some of it very good. You could spend some time digging around this place, there's lots to see.