The DoseNation reject pile

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?

Another cheerful topic category is "the ravages of prescription drug abuse," which results in stories like "entire Appalachian region sues maker of OxyContin" (not making that one up), or "the kids are popping more and more pills" (which is also true, since, you know, their parents are doing the same thing), and delightful Big Brother stories like this one:

Legal prescription drugs being sold illegally is a growing problem in communities and on campuses across South Carolina. Now the government is getting tech-savvy with ways to track who's taking what and how much they're taking.

Beginning soon, if you have a controlled substance prescription, like amphetamines or painkillers filled, that information will no longer be between just you, your doctor and your pharmacist. It will be sent to a vast online database with a primary goal of cutting down on drug abuse.

The goal with that program is to cut down on "doctor shopping" and drug diversion. Thankfully, it will also have the pleasing side effect of making sure that people can buy your prescription drug history on Romanian IRC networks at the same time they buy your credit card and social security numbers.

Another unavoidable category is the whole swamp of stories reminding us that "hey, Afghanistan keeps pumping out heroin!" You remember Afghanistan, right? Apparently despite zillions of dollars and the mighty might of our military, farmers in Afghanistan continue to produce opium poppies at a tremendous rate, which results in all kinds of mayhem, such as:

Afghanistan, the world's biggest heroin producer, is struggling to cope with a drug problem as thousands of Afghans -- trying to cope with the traumas of war, displacement and poverty -- are becoming addicted to narcotics.

Ooops! But maybe there's hope:

As Afghanistan struggles to cut its raging opium production, aid workers try to find alternative crops, but for some former poppy farmers the choice was easy -- they planted marijuana instead.

Which sounds like trouble; it's all well and good for Afghanistan to be the world's biggest heroin producer, but can we really trust the Afghan culture to understand the attention to quality that we've come to expect from our marijuana growers? Only time will tell.

I could probably keep going on for a while yet - the "people getting caught with eight pounds of pot in the glove box because they're stupid" category, the "let's call 911 when we're high" category that came into vogue recently, and of course, the ever-classic "cops 'misplace' large amounts of drugs" category which never seems to go out of style.

In part, I don't bother covering these stories because they're overly familiar; they show up as "color" in local news all the time. In part, I don't bother because they're boring, unsurprising, and uninsightful; in part, I don't bother because they're depressing. Taken just by sheer volume, I sift through and reject hundreds of headlines before finding a story that seems intriguing enough to investigate further and possibly write about here on DoseNation. Of course, nobody has chained me to my feed-reader and forced me to do that; I do it because I care. Or something. It's just an occupational hazard of relying on the mainstream media as one of the inputs for DoseNation; the mainstream media is not in the business of pumping out happy happy drugs are cool stories. (Why, that's the job for alternative media, of which we're included!)

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to my point: we're always on the lookout for the stories that fall through the cracks, or the critical angles that most media outlets don't bother to take, or the unexpected favorable coverage of a drug-related theme. Keep sending us those cards and letters, folks, 'cuz every little tip helps! We're also always interested to learn about existing alternative outlets that might occasionally have sympatico stories. And of course, we're especially interested in having our readers pick up the pen and submit posts on topics we haven't been thinking about ourselves - I know this last part sounds like "work," but just remember, folks, you'd be doing it for the children.