Inhalants on the rise? Uh, no

In the annals of stupid drug reporting, a special commendation must be reserved for NBC's Today show, which on Nov. 19 aired (video) one of the stupidest drug stories in broadcast news....

I could go on and on about the awfulness of the Today segment. I could write an angry paragraph about the hackery of playing "sad" music on the soundtrack as its reporter narrates the story of a 14-year-old who killed himself by inhaling Dust-Off. I could rail about the absence of any numbers to prove its assertion that huffing is a deadly trend. (It would be useful to know if more or fewer kids are killing or damaging themselves with inhalants than in previous years.) I could gripe about Today's failure to distinguish among the different kinds of inhalants (volatile solvents, aerosols, gases, nitrites, etc.) and the absence of any discussion of the nonlethal health dangers posed by the compounds. And I could close with a complaint about its hidden camera "gotcha," in which two child actors were video recorded buying inhalants in New York City stores.