A new Lancet study finds—contrary to conventional wisdom, but confirming what anyone familiar with actual users of these various drugs could already have told you—that E and LSD are less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. In one sense, this ought to be beside the point: Adults should be allowed to do things that are harmful […]

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A letter to the editor in this morning’s Washington Post reminds us that when government treats citizens as though they’re incapable of making basic decisions about their own lives, you get plenty of citizens who decide they can’t be expected to make basic decisions about their own lives: In his March 12 letter, Edward Yingling […]

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The New York Times considers whether playing the lotto is “irrational.” Money quote: Addiction researchers and some economists struggle to explain this behavior, describing it at best as an irrational fever, and at worst a pathological addiction to a regressive, government-run numbers game. But researchers spend little time in corner-store lines. “The people who denigrate […]

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Baylen has a prediction.

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Radley fumes over the latest proposed addition to the duty roster of Nanny State: Vermont lawmakers are considering a measure that would ban eating, drinking, smoking, reading, writing, personal grooming, playing an instrument, “interacting with pets or cargo,” talking on a cell phone or using any other personal communication device while driving. The punishment: a […]

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Unqualified Offerings spots prophecy in The Onion.

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Via Pitchfork, I just came across an especially amusing example of that “Above the Influence” anti-drug campaign, in which teenagers are exhorted to be their own, autonomous, individual selves by OBEYING OUR COMMERCIAL. Here’s the text of the spot: FEMALE VOICE: (Computer voice) Being popular was all I could think about last year. I wanted […]

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The (white) mayor of a Texas town is proposing a ban on (avert your eyes if you have issues with the use-mention distinction) the word “nigger,” the use of which he rather stunningly describes as “the most controversial issue throughout the United States today.” The law would require a complaint to trigger any prosecution, apparently […]

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…in The Atlantic. (H/T: DCist)

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Via Liz at Yellow is the Color, schools are apparently now sending home “obesity report cards,” I suppose on the premise that our culture is insufficiently weight-obsessed as it stands, and that parents lack the expertise necessary to detect whether their kids are getting fat.

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