The history of getting you to pee in a cup

Isabel McDonald’s article in The Nation about the history of the drug testing industry is fascinating:

The thirst for urine can be traced to the military’s 1971 Operation Golden Flow, aimed at detecting druggies among Vietnam veterans. Launched in response to rumors of heroin addiction, the test disproportionately netted marijuana users, since one byproduct of marijuana, carboxy-THC, lingers in the body longer than that of harder drugs. (In contrast, the body flushes out the byproducts of harder drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, within a day.) Nevertheless, before long, all service members were required to urinate in a cup at least once every two years.

Who’d have thought the US military could have a sense of humour? Be sure to read the part where one of the drug warriors regularly has her own adult sons drug tested too.

A feature, not a bug

Radley Balko excerpts a story that shows anti-meth laws regulating the sale of certain cold remedies have led to people making big bucks trawling chemists, buying up these medications and then reselling them at huge profit to meth producers. Balko snarks:

Meth use was also up 34 percent in 2009. So the new laws are inconveniencing law-abiding people who want to treat cold and allergy symptoms, have had either zero or a positive effect on meth use, have lured new people into the meth trade, and have created a bigger market for smuggling meth and meth ingredients into the country from Mexico.

But perhaps we should go easy on the politicians who passed these laws. I mean, it’s not like anyone could possibly have predicted any of this.

Really, it’s a win-win situation: the professional drug warriors have a new reason to keep their budgets intact or increased, the pharmaceutical industry makes money hand over fist from the artificial scarcity of Sudafed and similar drugs, Big Crime has less amateur competition and some lucky duckies get to travel the country buying cold relief cures to make a quick buck, which will come in handy since if I’m not mistaken, the biggest meth using parts of the US are also the most economically depressed.

First Junkie

Cindy McCain field recognition guide

“She was blonde and beautiful. A rich man’s daughter who became a politically powerful man’s wife. She had it all, including an insidious addiction to drugs that sapped the beauty from her life like a spider on a butterfly.”

You’d think the media would jump on a juicy story of drug addiction, dishonesty and outright theft by a potential first lady, wouldn’t you? Can you imagine the furore, the accusations of druggy baby-mamadom, if it were Michelle Obama? She’d be in jail by now and her kids in foster care. But it’s Cindy McCain and she’s blonde and rich – so she’s not and they’re not.

No, blonde rich junkies don’t get pokey, they get put in the White House.

Salon, October 1999:

GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s wife Cindy took to the airwaves last week, recounting for Jane Pauley (on “Dateline”) and Diane Sawyer (on “Good Morning America”) the tale of her onetime addiction to Percocet and Vicodin, and the fact that she stole the drugs from her own nonprofit medical relief organization.

It was a brave and obviously painful thing to do.

It was also vintage McCain media manipulation.

I had deja vu watching Cindy McCain on television, perky in a purple suit with tinted pearls to match. It was so reminiscent of the summer day in 1994 when suddenly, years after she’d claimed to have kicked her habit, McCain decided to come clean to the world about her addiction to prescription painkillers.

I believe she wore red that day. She granted semi-exclusive interviews to one TV station and three daily newspaper reporters in Arizona, tearfully recalling her addiction, which came about after painful back and knee problems and was exacerbated by the stress of the Keating Five banking scandal that had ensnared her husband. To make matters worse, McCain admitted, she had stolen the drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team, her own charity, and had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The local press cooed over her hard-luck story. One of the four journalists spoon-fed the story — Doug McEachern, then a reporter for Tribune Newspapers, now a columnist with the Arizona Republic (and, it must be added, normally much more acerbic) — wrote this rather typical lead:

“She was blonde and beautiful. A rich man’s daughter who became a politically powerful man’s wife. She had it all, including an insidious addiction to drugs that sapped the beauty from her life like a spider on a butterfly.”

What McEachern and the others didn’t know was that, far from being a simple, honest admission designed to clear her conscience and help other addicts, Cindy McCain’s storytelling had been orchestrated by Jay Smith, then John McCain’s Washington campaign media advisor. And it was intended to divert attention from a different story, a story that was getting quite messy.Read the whole thing.

More from Majikthise here and Kos here.

Mmmm. Kitteh-Fingers

If like me you watched the BBC’s Pacific Abyss programme last night you’ll be aware of the glory that is the South Pacific’s fish population. Also like me, you probably felt impotent fury at the expedition’s discovery of destruction of fish habitat and species decimation.

But if the fish disappear, it’ll be, paradoxically, partiallybecause of our love of animals – specifically our cats:

Spoilt Western cats endangering global fish supply

Cats with a fondness for gourmet meals are threatening fish supplies, an Australian scientist says.

Deakin University scientist Dr Giovanni Turchini has discovered an estimated 2.48 million tonnes of forage fish – a limited biological resource – is consumed by the global cat food industry each year.

“That such a large amount of fish is used for the pet food industry is real eye-opener,” Dr Turchini said.

“What is also interesting is that, in Australia, pet cats are eating an estimated 13.7 kilograms of fish a year which far exceeds the Australian average (human) per capita fish and seafood consumption of around 11 kilograms.

“Our pets seem to be eating better than their owners.”

I can’t even feel slightly smug; although I don’t eat fish at all, wild or farmed, and don’t buy fish for the cats, except for the occasional farmed-salmon, offcut-based wet food, even then I’m not off the hook, so to speak. Many dry catfoods contain fishmeal and bone, even the ones labelled things like ‘100% Fresh’ or ‘100% Natural, Human Grade’, or ‘100% Organic and Oven-Baked!’, or any of those other little codewords that appeal to the middle-class, ecologically aware cat lover. Like me.
Whole populations of wild forage fish like sardines and herrings are hunted almost to extinction by giant factory ships for this stuff. Buying these foods also adds to the enormous profits of giant international feed and commodity corporations – and commercial foods can kill.

The only ethical course I suppose is to feed them what I eat. Here kitteh, have a nicey mint imperial…

No, won’t work.

Last week I found myself paying 25 euro, twenty quid, for a bag of renal catfood for our Monty, who’s somewhere around 15 and slowly tottering towards eternity. I didn’t enquire what was in it: he’s our cat, he’s sick, we love him. And that’s the problem right there. Even someone who’s silly about fish, like me, is inadvertently contributing to their destruction in many different ways, inadvertent and not so inadvertent (see above).

There seems no way out of this dilemma – except to try and develop less self-indulgent, more utilitarian attitudes towards our pets. We can go aaah at tiny baa-lambs can’t we, and then happily eat a slice of the leg with a helping of mint sauce, or a kebab with extra shish, so why can’t we farm cats when the fish runs out? We’ll have to find something else to cover in breadcrumbs and feed to small humans when the oceans are empty – so why not the kitteh-finger?

Do Not Read If At All Groinally Sensitive

I don’t even have a penis and I’m wincing. Why you should always wear pants when drinking in public:

Nude sunbather impaled on spike after drinking session
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Thursday July 31 2008
Article history

A naked sunbather suffered minor injuries when he became impaled on a rusty metal spike during a drinking session with friends.

The 34-year-old had been drinking with two friends and his girlfriend near Haslar Lake, in Gosport, Hampshire, yesterday afternoon when he decided to sunbathe naked.

As he went to go to the toilet, he slipped and was impaled through the groin on the 8in iron spike.

Firefighters, ambulances, police and an air ambulance were sent to the scene, where paramedics gave the man oxygen.

The fire crews had intended to cut through the spike but were able to lift the man off it.

He was taken to the Queen Alexandra hospital, in Portsmouth, for treatment.