Destiny Land writes: "My favorite part of Christmas is that every time someone plays a Bing Crosby song, I’m thinking about how he used to smoke pot with Louis Armstrong -- and that he loved smoking pot his whole life!"

A 2001 biography of Crosby by Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins says that Louis Armstrong's influence on Crosby "extended to his love of marijuana." Bing smoked it during his early career when it was legal and "surprised interviewers" in the 1960s and 70s by advocating its decriminalization, as did Armstrong.

Crosby even recommended that his son smoke pot instead of drinking alcohol, if Wikipedia is to be believed. They quote his son as saying that "There were other times when marijuana was mentioned and he'd get a smile on his face...."

Pat Robertson endorses ending cannabis prohibition for possession of a few ounces at the 4:20 mark of the video

Break out the recorders! Don’t let this one get away!

If I didn’t watch it with my own eyes I might not believed it possible: Televangelist and former Baptist minister Pat Robertson making a cogent argument on alternatives to arresting and incarcerating citizens who use drugs, with a clear emphasis on legalizing the possession of a few ounces of cannabis.

The 700 Club segment on alternatives to crime helps promote a new right-of-center organization that seeks to actively lobby for reform of the criminal justice system principally as a poor use of scant public funds called Right on Crime. Notable conservative activists such as Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist, American Conservative Union’s David Keane and Prison Fellowship Ministries’ Pat Nolan are spearheading this important new front in the now 40-year-old effort to reform cannabis laws.

[Thanks Beow!]

A waitress sauntered elegantly over to our table; she was dressed in a thin, light green blouse, which was cropped short and ran tight just below her breasts and a darker, thick pair of green Thai-fishing trousers hung loosely around her hips. Her long, dark brown hair was tied up very loosely. The area around her right eye and cheek was delicately painted with an intricate blue pattern, wave-like and layered with patches of sparkle. I remember watching as dolphins appeared, swimming in and out of the tide, until her eye caught me and she smiled. Bending down between Cole and I she asked: "Would you like some balloons with your hookah?"

"Nos?" We both answered.

"Nos. Hippie crack. Balloon?"

We nodded and she disappeared out back. Soon after, the slow hissing sound of a nitrous oxide filling balloon whistled and hissed out to our ears. When she returned she was holding one blue and one red balloon. They were small extensions of her arms. Handing me the red one, she said "enjoy", smiled and went and sat down with some trippers in the corner, immediately falling into her own bubble of conversation. An elation dashed across our faces: "Chin, chin" Cole said, proffering his balloon, "to Davy". We clashed the two balloons together and thus plunged into the first of a dozen or so nos-led ecstasies that late summer weekend.

Richards boasts of his constitution. He not only recounts his "acid-fueled road trip with John Lennon" but also makes sure to tell us that Lennon "couldn't really keep up." Richards recalls, "He'd try and take anything I took, but without my good training. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, couple of downers, a couple of uppers, coke and smack, and then I'm going to work. I was freewheeling. And John would inevitably end up in my john, hugging the porcelain."

At times, the book sounds like a consequence-free version of William Burroughs's "Junky." In one extended passage, Richard describes his daily diet:

I would take a barbiturate to wake up, a recreational high compared to heroin, though just as dangerous in its own way. That was breakfast. A Tuinal, pin it, put a needle in it so it would come on quicker. And then take a hot cup of tea, and then consider getting up or not. And later maybe a Mandrax or quaalude. Otherwise I just had too much energy to burn. So you wake up slow, since you have the time. And when the effect wears off after about two hours, you're feeling mellow, you've had a bit of breakfast and you're ready for work.

Richards is proud of many things, including his capacity to stay up for days at a time. His all-time record, he says, was a nine-day coke-assisted session of wakefulness, at the end of which he merely tipped over, slamming his head against a stereo speaker: "It was just a curtain of blood."

[Thanks Mason!]

The University of Cambridge has paid students £250 to be injected with the nightclub drug ketamine as part of a research project.

The experiments, carried out by the Department of Psychiatry, were designed to investigate treatment methods for schizophrenia.

People suffering from the mental illness sometimes believe that external objects have become part of their body -- a sensation also experienced by ketamine users.

Researchers injected 15 participants with ketamine before testing whether it made them more or less likely to identify a false rubber hand as their own.

The hallucinogenic drug, which is legal in liquid form but a Class C drug when converted into a grainy powder, is most commonly used as a horse tranquilliser.

One PhD student, who took part in the study, which found links between ketamine and schizophrenia, told how the experience was "disturbing" and "scary".

The United Nations' drugs czar told Nato that Afghan insurgents were withholding thousands of tonnes of heroin and treating their drugs like "savings accounts" to manipulate street prices in the west, according to a leaked US cable.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN's office on drugs and crime, told Nato representatives that the Taliban and organised crime gangs had withheld 12,400 tonnes of opium from the international market to keep the price of heroin and opium at a profitable level. The opium allegedly withheld by insurgents was worth around $1.25bn. Each tonne of opium is said to be worth around $100,000 and can be used to produce 100kg of heroin.

The US cable appears to show that the UN believed that the Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan were well-organised, aware of the market and focused on maintaining a viable price for the drug...

Under the heading "Opium Stocks Remain High", the cable states: "Costa said that Afghanistan has 12,400 tonnes of opium stocks because it produces more than the world consumes. Costa believes that the insurgency is withholding these stocks from the market and treating them like ‘savings accounts'. He said the stocks pose a serious threat as it could be used to finance the insurgency. Costa encourage intelligence organizations to to keep focus on the storage and movement of Afghanistan's opium stocks."

[Thanks Mr. Tumnus!]