Big news today in the OTC drug market for kids: No more cold medicine for you.

Cold Drug makers voluntarily pulled cold medicines targeted for babies and toddlers off the market Thursday, leaving parents to find alternatives for hacking coughs and runny little noses just as fall sniffles get in full swing.

...

"The data that we have now is they don't seem to work," said Sean Hennessy, a University of Pennsylvania epidemiologist, one of the FDA experts gathered to examine the medicines sold to treat common cold symptoms. The recommendation applies to medicines containing one or more of the following ingredients: decongestants, expectorants, antihistamines and antitussives.

I guess it's back to opium tea for toddlers with coughs and sniffles.

I know everyone's dying to hear about what kind of flame-out soul-revival rehab-hating hijinks Amy Winhouse will get into next, and she has signaled to fans that she does not want to disappoint. In addition to giving shaky and lacklusters performances at recent live shows, she is also planning a duet with junky rocker (yes, that's his job title) Pete Doherty, and just yesterday got arrested in Norway for holding a sack of weed. Don't believe me? A clip from a recent concert review:

The singer tripped and staggered as she walked onstage to rapturous applause, causing fans to speculate whether she was intoxicated.

Now that sounds like a rock-star to me!

CLIFF HENGST & SCOTT HEWICKER
Issues, Confessions, and Psychedelic Crises
A public reading from Good Times: Bad Trips
Thursday October 25, 7:30 - 9:30pm
Gallery 16, San Francisco

Please join us at Gallery 16 on Thursday evening, October 25th, for Issues, Confessions, and Psychedelic Crises, a public reading from Hengst and Hewicker's new book Good Times: Bad Trips. The reading will feature many of the book's contributors including Kevin Killian, DodieBellamy, Lawrence Rinder, John Koch, Karla Milosevich, Shaun O'Dell, Margaret Tedesco, Ezra Feinberg, Cheryl Meeker, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Jennifer Locke, Scott Hewicker, Gerald Corbin, Leslie Shows, and IrwinSwirnoff, among others. Cliff Hengst will MC the event.

This book is a collection of true accounts exploring an under-recognized rite of passage: The Bad Trip. Pairing individual stories with paintings, collages and photographs by the artists, the book delves deeply into the romantic pathos of psychedelic crises."The thing is, it almost doesn't matter who wrote which story, so much so that the credits are tucked away, way in the back of the book, so the stories are just that, stories, removed from their authors, not overly writerly, instead conversational, like hanging out drinking and telling tales, where most bad trip stories actually get told. And these are some seriously demented stories. Some are super funny, some are really intense and brutal, some are so ridiculous they sound made up, others are more mundane, but resonate as experiences most of us have shared. It's an amazing read..." (Aquarius Records SF). Hengst and Hewicker's exhibition S.A.N.E at Gallery 16 continues through November 3, 2007. For additional information please contact Vanessa Blaikie at 415.626.7495 or email vanessa@gallery16.com.

GALLERY 16
501 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
415.626.7495 [p]
415.626.8439 [f]
www.gallery16.com

Gallery Hours:
Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm
Saturday, 11am - 5pm

In Australia, our "footy" (that's Australian Rules Football to the rest of you) stars are the bad boys of the body politic - always being caught in compromising positions. Pace Ben Cousins, the star player of the West Coast Eagles, who has been in and out and back into rehab over this year for various, if unspecified, drug-related issues. On Monday he was pulled over in his vehicle, searched, and arrested after the cops turned up some prescription drugs - all of which are arguably perfectly legal in Australia. But some analysis showed up a few naughty things:

WA Assistant Commissioner for Special Crimes, Wayne Gregson, said police had dropped the one drug possession charge against Cousins on advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Mr Gregson said a diazepam, or Valium, pill was found on Cousins, but the DPP said that it was only a prohibited drug in a liquid, injectable form.

However he said several other drugs were also found in the car, in which there were also two passengers.

"The following drugs were seized from the vehicle: oxycontin, which is a prohibited drug, diazepam, Viagra ... and a $20 note which preliminary indications and analysis show traces of MDMA, which is ecstasy and cocaine," Mr Gregson said.

I'm not sure how they manufacture MDMA in Western Australia, but (if, say, we asked Sasha Shulgin) I'm pretty clear that ecstasy + cocaine would not be the formula.

No one caught this gaffe, not at the prosecutors office, and not in the media. Sure, we're not all pharmacists (except, maybe, the readers of this site), but even a little Wikipedia action would help you get this one right...

For those of you who feel that recreational drug use needs further scrutiny from the field of science, we offer you the abstract of a recent study from illustrious New York City, where the designer strains of indoor marijuana are certainly a subject of intense investigation...

This paper documents the bifurcation of the market for commercial marijuana from the market for designer marijuana in New York City. Commercial marijuana is usually grown outdoors, imported to NYC, and of average quality. By contrast, several varities of designer marijuana are usually grown indoors from specially bred strains and carefully handled for maximum quality. The mechanisms for marijuana sales include street/park sellers, delivery services, private sales, and storefronts. Retail sales units vary from 5 dollars to 50 dollars and more, but the actual weights and price per gram of retail marijuana purchases lacks scientific precision. Ethnographic staff recruited marijuana purchasers who used digital scales to weigh a purposive sample of 99 marijuana purchases. Results indicate clear differences in price per gram between the purchases of commercial (average 8.20 dollars/g) and designer (average 18.02 dollars/g) marijuana. Designer purchases are more likely to be made by whites, downtown (Lower East Side/Union Square area), via delivery services, and in units of 10 dollar bags, 50 dollar cubes, and eighth and quarter ounces. Commercial marijuana purchases are more likely to be made by blacks, uptown (Harlem), via street dealers, and in units of 5 dollar and 20 dollar bags. Imported commercial types Arizona and Chocolate were only found uptown, while designer brand names describing actual strains like Sour Diesel and White Widow were only found downtown. Findings indicate clear divisions between commercial and designer marijuana markets in New York City. The extent that these differences may be based upon different THC potencies is a matter for future research.

It seems like a great deal of effort was put into discovering that rich white New Yorkers enjoy expensive designer bud more than poor colored people. In other news, rich white New Yorkers prefer designer everything, even the sex slaves they import from exotic locales all over the world. I mean, gosh, duh!

Thanks for the heads up Brandon, I'm going back to my serious "research" now...

I'm heading out on another vacation - this time back out to NYC for the wedding of DoseNation editor HellKatonWheelz. As such, things will probably slow down around here as my usual daily flurry of posts changes to, uh, zero posts a day and me stumbling around the Big Apple in a drunken stupor all weekend. OK, admittedly I didn't post yesterday because I slept through the alarm after seeing The Go! Team the night before, and today I only posted that one big post, but that one took as much time as writing four shorter ones, so anyway get off my back already and let me have my vacation, sob!

Anyway, yeah, send your best wishes to HellKatonWheelz, and maybe she'll reward you with a trippy video to tide you over until I get back next Tuesday.

After writing my recent round-up of salvia scare stories, I was inspired to provide a quick glimpse into several other categories of drug stories that I don't typically bother covering here on DoseNation.

One of the key categories is "wacky drug smuggling" stories. For instance:

An attempt to import ecstasy inside a smiling Mr Potato Head toy has been foiled by Customs officers at the Sydney International Mail Centre.

Almost 300 grams of ecstasy was found when officers selected a parcel containing children's toys for examination.

See, now that's wacky. Recent stories in this category include an attempt to smuggle cocaine inside rare dead beetles, and one of my favorites, an entire school bus full of marijuana that was left by the side of the road after it broke down. Imagine having to go back to El Jefe and explain why "the children didn't make it to school today" - yowsa!

On the complete, sordid, horrible, rotten, other side of the coin are the "drugs are the scourge of humanity" stories, like these:

In what one officer called one of the most despicable acts he can recall, a Saratoga County woman is accused of prostituting herself and then snorting cocaine from the stomach of her newborn son while breast-feeding him.

This category of story includes but is not limited to a) the horrible things people do to get drugs, b) the horrible things people do once they're on drugs, and c) the horrible things that happen to people because of drugs. Oh the humanity! etc.

Meanwhile, you might be surprised to learn that the whole "date rape drugs" category is still alive and kicking. Maybe it's because it was glamorized on Veronica Mars; who can truly explain the timeless appeal of this category's infamy? Perhaps this article can:

People spike drinks for a number of reasons: the most common motivations include wanting to sexually assault, rape or rob the person, wanting to see the effect it will have on the person, wanting to play a practical joke or wanting to liven up a party.

Frankly, most of the parties I go to could use some livening up, so I guess that makes sense. You'll be happy to note, though, that despite the sensationalism of the topic of "drink spiking," both the articles in this category that came across my path in the past week were clear about one thing: alcohol remains the most common date rape drug. Don't you feel safer now?

OK, OK, I'm catching up on my research for DoseNation, so of course when I see a video titled "Tossing Acid" I have to check it out. Turns out it's not drug related (although it does involve the consumption of white powders... how's that for foreshadowing??) but it's one heck of a great depiction of, shall we say, cognitive diversity. Man, this lady is NUTS!

Here's a nifty illusion to test dominance in your brain hemispheres. According to the lore, if you see the dancer turning clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain; if you see the dancer turning counter-clockwise, you are a lefty.

Personally, I see the dancer spinning clockwise, which means I am right-brained. However, if I cover my left-eye and stare at the image with my right eye for about twenty seconds, and then un-focus or narrow my right eye to a slit so the image blurs, the dancer suddenly changes direction to counter-clockwise, meaning my left hemisphere has taken dominance due to greater activity in my right eye (remember, brain hemispheres are contralateral). If I then close both eyes for five seconds and clear my visual memory buffer, when I open them again the dancer is going clockwise again.

Note: It was extremely frustrating for me to figure out how to see the dancer spin in the opposite direction, I couldn't even conceive of how it could be possible. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to establish dominance with my non-dominant side, but once I got it is was easy to reproduce. I would love to hear informal reports on how others fare in this test.

A group of 10 year-olds at a primary school south of Wollongong, New South Wales (about 80 miles south of Sydney) were rushed to hospital yesterday after eating some pills - presumably MDMA - which they thought were "lollies" - candy:

There was no suggestion the tablets were sold to anyone at the school, Chief Inspector Noble said.

"It doesn't appear that people are peddling drugs to school kids [but] we are very concerned about where the student or students obtained the tablets," he said.

"People aren't supposed to have illicit drugs in any case, but ones that do should be careful about where they store them - this girl got them from somewhere."

It was fortunate the children did not suffer more serious health effects from taking the tablets, he said.

NSW Education Department Illawarra spokesman Grahame Kennedy said it was understood the girl brought the substance to the school and shared it with the two boys.

"It's a very unusual and rare event in our schools anywhere but in a primary school it's totally unfamiliar," Mr Kennedy told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

Speaking from personal experience, the dizziness and ill-feeling associated with Australian MDMA is pretty much par for the course. I won't even touch the stuff these days...