[Via Jason Soon at Catallaxy.] The SMH reports:
DRINKERS who quench their thirst with four or more middies of beer will be defined as binge drinkers under new national guidelines released next month.
The new top limit for safe drinking follows a review by the National Health and Medical Research Council and will apply equally to men and women.
In what one health professional has slammed as a message that “makes no sense at all”, the guidelines will say that more than four standard drinks per day constitutes a binge. A middie of beer is about 1.1 standard drinks and an average glass of wine is 1.5 standard drinks.
“That means that, if a man is sharing a bottle with his wife and takes a slightly larger share, that he’s had a binge,” said Paul Haber, the medical director of Drug Health Services, Addiction Medicine, at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
Nope.
Not when I was “in me cups”, anyway.
Sounds a bit like middle-class wankery again. Like when you are some sort of five-headed monster if you give your kid a smack in the supermarket, when it throws a tantrum because it can’t get its way over lollies or toys.
Nowadays I’m pretty abstemious in my drinking, but if this latest research [?] is right, in the four or fives times a year I drink, I’ve binged-drank for three of them.
Should I tell my doctor?
In the interests of fairness, and following the lead by our nanny betters I will now unilaterally define the pejorative “binge sobriety” for anything less than 5 drinks in a single night.
When Tony Abbott decries a “moral panic”, you know something ain’t right.
When Tony Abbott is right, you know something is wrong!
I think that makes one of my favourite drinks (pint of Guinness) a binge in a glass.
I love it - binge in a glass.
What they really seem to be talking about is that drinking over this level involves greater risk of injury, accident and illness. That maybe true. But of course, everything in life represents risk. Take away risk you take away pleasure.
It’s entirely counter productive to recommend levels of safe drinking which people are just going to laugh at.
Surely individual physiology has some say, not to mention different ethnic groups tolerate alcohol less well than others.
Still… we have a booze-soaked culture so perhaps it’s about retraining people in how they think about this particular drug. (And yes, it’s a drug folks!)
It sure is! I imagine if this is used as a criterion in future studies of drinking, the “binge drinking” problem won’t be measured - or reported - in any way that corresponds to reality. It has the potential to powerfully redefine the debates about grog based on an alteration to definitions.
Talk about a complete joke!
Yes it’s a drug. So?
>
This is a move to counter the bad behaviour of people who get smashed and do stupid things by going too far the other way entirely. One glass of wine a day is good for you. Two glasses not so much. Three and you start to do damage. However that doesn’t mean you’re a drunkard and most of us know that. Boring.
Gawd! Until c200 years ago, our European ancestors (don’t know about everyday diets of other post-Mesoolithic cultures) started on alcohol with breakfast - in England, a mug of ale or, if hungover, porter - and continued until their “nightcap” before bed. Even kids started on watered wine and other alcohol soon after weaning. Water and non-human milk, unless very well boiled, were invitations to ghastly deaths from cholera, typhus, typhoid, dysentery and a host of other nasty diseases. Today’s alternative drinks (tea, coffee, chocolate/ cocoa, ’soft’ drinks) were prohibitively expensive, or weren’t in common use. Even temperate drinkers were, by current standards, permanently p**sed.
Incidentally, how does Jesus of Nazareth’s miracle at the marriage feast of Cana (turning water into wine to save the bride & groom’s families’ embarrassment) fit with the control-freak “do-gooders” who (it seems to me) would run the Saviour himself in for binge drinking?
In more than a few conservative evangelical churches the control-freaks argue that “wine” is a mistranslation for a non-alcoholic grape juice product, that’s how.
I wonder what this makes of a significant proportion (male usually) of the people of Lightning Ridge, opal capital of the nation?
I have yet to convince the circuit Magistrate there, (privately of course) that the difference between an alcoholic and sober person in the Ridge is the difference between one and two cartons of full strength beer a day!
The sober person in the Ridge, by this new criterion (and my definition of ’sober’), is now a fully fledged daytime binge drinker by virtue of swallowing their own saliva at 11 o’clock the following morning, after the night out with the real binge!!!
(For the 2 carton a day people, I recommend a new minimum in the Ridge: must have, to avoid a charge of attempted suicide, at least a level of .05 blood in the alcoholstream.)
Sounds like another media beat-up to me. Another way to bash the government by the back door. The mainstream media are big time BSers in this country. Like most other places these days. Thank GAWD for the blogs. Well, a few of them…;)
Considering I’d drink that in an hour or less, it’s good I abstain most of the time these days.
Six o’clock swill no more…no more
never say never again
Four drinks but over what period of time? Some people would go out for an evening and have at least 4 drinks, and that would not be binge drinking. Binge drinking is scoffing it down, and when tipsy still keep going, until a person falls over or goes unconscious..or ends up in hospital with alcoholic poisoning. Wouldn’t that clarify what binge drinking is. Like binge eating for instance.
Too right, Margo.
What they’re talking about here is more a ‘alcohol-related accident/long term health risk zone’, to which they’ve appellated ‘binge drinking’ in order to catch on to the moral panic du jour. Binge drinking is not having more than five standard drinks over the course of a day, and anyone who thinks it is probably looks like this.
“Sounds like another media beat-up to me. Another way to bash the government by the back door.”
Well…actually no, nasking, that’s what the NH&MRC alcohol guidelines say and Minister Roxon was on ABC Radio within the last hour insisting that “new evidence” had led to these conclusions. If you feel inclined you can check the new draft guidelines out at:
http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/consult/_files/draft_australian_alcohol_guidelines.pdf
It’s worth noting that the committee that formulated these guidelines is largely comprised of clinicians working at the bottom of the alcohol consumption cliff in indigenous health, addiction services, fetal alcohol syndrome and etc.
There was one “representative of consumers” among the Professorial line-up but I suspect that he was drawn from the consumer health advocacy constituency rather than the ute-driving, bundy&coke RTD demographic.
Basically, these guys approach booze entirely from the public health/problematised perspective
I salute them for their work but the presser from the Chair of the Committee, under, suggests that Kim is quite right to be sceptical. Two phrases stand out: the
spine-tingling, “at a population level” (which usually translates into “not my individual lived experience”) and - “the responsible consumption of alcohol is a health issue, not a cultural issue” - which is breathtakingly blinkered (in my opinion).
“The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has reinforced the quality and accuracy of its draft alcohol guidelines, saying they are based on the best available scientific evidence.
Chair of the NHMRC Alcohol Guidelines Committee Professor Jon Currie was responding to criticism of the guidelines from the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia.
“We welcome the submission from the Winemakers’ Federation, as we welcome all submissions,” Professor Currie said.
“But I want to reinforce that we have been rigorous and systematic in searching for the best available, peer-reviewed evidence and assessing that research, as we always do when developing guidelines. These are based on more than 400 international research papers.
“This evidence indicates that at a population level, more than two drinks a day is damaging to health.”
In response to claims that the guidelines were “culturally irrelevant”, Professor Currie said, “The responsible consumption of alcohol is a health issue, not a cultural issue. People make their own choices – it’s not our role to tell them how to behave.
“But it is our role to ensure people have solid, evidence-based information so they can make educated and informed decisions on health issues. These new guidelines will allow people to make those decisions.”
The NHMRC received about 160 submissions on the draft guidelines.
http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/news/media/rel08/080122.htm
appropos 13
Trust the Hymies to scrimp on reduced alcohol at a wedding.
On a serious note, the comment from adrien, I think, about societies like Australia needing to take a look at some of their behaviours goes down as sensible.
tigtog @ 13 replied
Yeah, right.
Alcohol is, originally, a neolithic product; a natural byproduct of fermentation in over-heated, poorly stored, unrefrigerated fruit, grains and other food crops. Unfermented grape-juice stored after harvest in barrels in c33AD Palestine … and still unfermented after days, weeks, months?
The earth’s flat; fossils were buried by the devil to lead the faithful astray; Harold Holt was a spy and was picked up at Portsea by a Russian sub, and Elvis is alive and well, and living wherever …
And fairies live in the bottom of my garden!
indeed. Alcoholic beverages are something of a social pharmakon, both poison and remedy.
The medicalisation of social problems is only useful for gaining an initial understanding of a problem and there after for sound-bite politicising of the issue. As if people drink too much because alcohol itself is a problem? People drink too much because their lives are shit, valorise drinking as a masculine sport, simply young and lacking experience, or are trapped in some kind of late-modern ennui feedback loop. Trying to tackle these issues is much much harder than introducing laughable quantitative conceptions of ‘binge drinking’.
A little wine for the stomach is what the Bible states! So, wine, alcohol in moderation is good for us. The telly had a bit on about red wine and it can stave of dementia…so…..how many drinks do we have to have per day to stave off dementia. Not being funny here but it is a fact.
Kim and all:
I’m safe - I’m a pensioner.
[Though the donation of an 1100ml bottle of fine 15+-year-old scotch whisky could turn me into a delightful temporary binge-brinker].
Umm Yasmin [8]
Tend to agree with you.
I feel that this measure will be no more effective than was the gun buy-back scheme in achieving its stated aims either. Still, where do you start? Alcohol has been a very effective instrument of social control over the “lower classes” since the founding of the colony of New South Wales; it’s not an instrument that will be relinquished without a struggle …. “keep them boozed or they’ll be revolting” [or words something like that].
This new binge drinking definition represents the apotheosis of the problem in Australian drug and alcohol research and activism - a complete failure to incorporate into their activities any allowance for the possibility that drug use could be pleasurable.
It’s inevitable that these kinds of bullshit unusable guidelines will be issued so long as all the major actors on the health and research side of the debate are consumed with the notion of drug use as a harmful activity with no pleasurable benefits. It’s doubly ridiculous because there is almost no-one in the drug and alcohol research sector who doesn’t drink to get drunk. Until everyone involved - researchers and NHMRC strategists alike - accept that people take drugs and drink alcohol because its fun, they will just keep doing this.
It’s ludicrous to read people in this field talking about “drinking to get drunk” as if it’s a bad thing when that is the main reason people drink.
Geoff Honnor, thnx for the update. Well, there’s no way I’m going to argue w/ Nicola Roxon, she’s one strong & convincing lady. I reckon she’s right to push the for the expansion of nurses’ roles too…& expose the AMA for the elite money grabbers some of their lot are. I say “some”.
I doubt I’ll be binging much anymore anyway, not after the look my wife gave me when I told her I might do a six o’clock swill next Friday. Think I’ll keep it to a couple of chilli beers…or a Stella Artois & be done w/ it. Drank enuff to kill a horse anyway, time to HEAL I reckon. Gotta set by example too. I’m not too impressed w/ the drinking habits of many younguns these days…they put me & my old Polish & Canadian drinkin’ partners to shame.
Makes ya wonder about how fulfilling their lives are to need to drink so much. Somethin’ rotten in some of the jobs, media & other aspects of society in general I think…not to mention that damn war of FEAR (Neo-Crusade)…for younguns to feel so depressed, trapped into excessive drinking & gambling.
I know sometimes when I binge it’s to BLOCK OUT things & deal w/ fears, insecurities, tryin’ to turn the world off…but I reckon it’s better to meditate, eat well, exercise, write, read & do other things to rid yerself of poisons or deal w/ stress. It’s too easy to have accidents, say the wrong thing, go berserk, do things you regret when you get off your tree.
You’d think the Libs & media would know that…especially the journos.
I reckon it’s better the younguns know that excessive drinkin’ can really screw you up…rather than hearing it’s COOL. Many of us sound like hypocrites sayin’ it…and obviously we’re all gonna have those days when we do celebrate & let loose a bit…but it’s not a positive if we end up like Russia in the depth of vodka problems.
Surely we can all give moderation a go, sip our drinks a bit slower to provide the youth w/ a better example…& take the pressure off our hospitals? Especially considering how many older people are gonna need those hospitals freed up because of chronic & acute problems in the future. Only so much money to go around. So many hospital beds & doctors.
lost in moderation…:)
The draft NHMRC guidelines, and Tony Abbott’s statement in response, suggest that both alcohol and illicit drugs can cause rapid deterioration in brain function simply by being thought about and spoken about, without having to be consumed in any quantity.
It seems to me that the NHMRC’s safe drinking limit of no more than two standard drinks a day means that if a person exceeds this limit by a drink or two per day over a long period, the probability of them suffering certain kinds of (minor) impairment later in life will increase from vanishingly small to non-trivial but still quite small. Most people in real world social situations (such as being invited to linger for a second schooner after work, which will put one into the “unsafe” zone) will not be discouraged by this prospect.
The proposed definition of binge drinking means that a friend and colleague of mine who has long been in the habit of sharing a bottle of wine with her husband over dinner has been binge drinking throughout the time that she has earned a University Medal for Outstanding Academic Excellence and completed a Ph.D. in soil science.
Methinks the NHMRC needs to talk to some social and behavioural scientists about its draft guidelines.
Mind you, I’m sure my social life would improve if I shared my nightly bottle of chardonnay with a couple of friends rather than gutsing it all by myself.
My main issue with the NH&MRC guidelines is in the assumptions. They have gone for the point at which harm is demonstrable in terms of increased risk of anything. The problem arises from ignoring the quite clear benefits, mainly on cardiovascular disease, of drinking. If you use a balance of risks, in other words a pooled outcome, the number of standard drinks per day with a significant risk is rather unpleasantly high. (Dutch study, can’t be bothered finding the reference, PubMed will provide)
This is actually measured rather infrequently. Most alcohol studies lump together everyone above a certain threshold to avoid coming to such conclusions, mainly due to an excessive rather than inadequate concern for public effect.
Wowserism. Hypocritical wowserism as the same epidemiologists know damn well where the break even point for the balance of risks is and it’s not two standard drinks.
I think it’s a shame that we’re seeing the opportunity for a much-needed sensible debate about alcohol consumption in Australia effectively defeated by this sort of sensationalist nonsense.
Personally I think our key problem is we don’t have a particularly well-developed culture of responsible drinking in Australia; drinking to get drunk is highly prevalent, as opposed to the perfectly reasonable example of sharing a bottle of wine with a meal. The former to me is largely my experience of Australian drinking culture; the latter is practiced by a much smaller subset and comes at least to my mind from more productive cultural (usually European) traditions.
Australians abuse alcohol as a drug with powerfully deleterious consequences for the individual, the innocent (newborns, victims of violence) and society. We need to have both a conversation and a revised relationship with alcohol devised in this country to start fostering a healthy & responsible approach to drinking. I see some positive signs of it [eg over the last 10 years working it’s become a) less accepted that at a work function free alcohol will be provided and b) vastly less acceptable to get hammered]; but then the last couple of times I’ve been out I’ve sworn never to do so again because watching people sink hideous combinations like redbull and vodka with the inevitable consequences feels both unsafe and decidedly un-fun. I don’t know what it’s like in other capitals, but if you’re out in Hobart past midnight, the vast majority of people out with you are drunk. Being sober and out at such times is a surreal and uncomfortable experience.
And while I hate that narky feeling that I’m buying into a media beat-up, it’s hard not to notice that an early drinking culture seems to be becoming more accepted, not less, from since I was a teen 15-20 years ago. Perhaps there’s simply more media attention rather than more underage people getting legless - my concern is that is still seen as cool & appropriate. I was hoping my generation would be the last to accept that.
My concern with this new suggestion of 4 drinks = binge drinking (and btw what was the time frame given?) is that it will raise people’s hackles and make it that much harder to have a serious conversation about alcohol consumption & culture in Australia.
I thik there is also much to be said in favour of the Jewish attitude to alcohol in preference to the Christian and Muslim attitude. The Jewish attitude, if I understand it correctly, is not that drinking is sinful, but that drinking to excess, or behaving badly whilst drinking, is seriously uncool: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived by them is not wise.” That most Jewish of rock musicians, Gene Simmons, explained it in terms of the fact that by staying sober he was much more likely to succeed with the opposite sex than if he got lit.
And thanks to Dr S for formulating more precisely the point I was trying to make in my first comment.
“I was hoping my generation would be the last to accept that.”
Telling.
That’s the conciet that allows public attitudes to society (and language) to stray so far from the reasonable - that nobody wants their children to be exposed to the same things kids ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. What about this is realistic? Or desirable?
It’s so easy then to dress it all up in an utterly confected “increase” in the “problem”, spal on a few scary anecdotes and get to work devaluaing perfectly good words like ‘binge’.
So you can binge without getting drunk? Who knew?
concietconceitspalslapcoffee…
As SG bove pointed out, it’s important to remember that people like the feeling of being drunk, although I suspect this wanes as we age. But unless health experts also talk about the pleasures of use and abuse, they’re not fully addressing the issues. Consequently, they’ll be unsuccessful in changing attitudes.
A relevant article is one that Nick linked to in the Bill Henson thread. It’s about the pleasures and benefits of youthful transgression.
It sure does wane as you age.But maybe that’s because some of us can’t be bothered socialising.Still, this 4 dreinks + a binge just sounds stupid to anybody, including moderate drinkers.
Fine, I’m not certain that enjoyment of being drunk wanes with age. I’m nearly 60, and not too unhappy about being labelled a binge drinker (and by implication an alcoholic). Admittedly, I haven’t drunk enough to throw up for over 30 years, as I don’t drink as heavily as I used to, just more frequently.
Hey FDB - not quite sure how to respond to your response, other than to elaborate a little to hopefully explain what I meant.
I grew up in poorer areas of rural Victoria and Tasmania. Throughout my childhood I witnessed a highly prevalent level of adult alcohol-fuelled violence and accidents (my mother worked as a nurse in ‘casualty’ now known as ER so my awareness of the prevalence in our small country towns would be higher than most), and amongst my peers watched other young women my age get raped while drunk, was raped myself after having my drink spiked, watched young men beat each other up, and both sexes drive under the influence with 5 in my class of 27 down here in Tas either losing their life or being permanently disabled through drunken road accidents. A quick look around will show you that my experience growing up in the 80s /early 90s was hardly unique. I know of 4 women I went to school with who have had children affected by mild forms of fetal alcohol syndrome.
Enjoying alcohol in moderation is entirely human, convivial and completely acceptable. But when I say I sincerely hope that new generations challenge the coolness and acceptablility of getting shit-faced and harming themselves and others, this is what I’m referring to. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, at least if I’ve understood what you were trying to say.
I think I’m definitely a binge drinker by this measure - amputees are more susceptible to alcohol because of less body mass and fewer blood vessels! I think Paul’s call for social and behavioural scientists to be involved in setting these definitions is very timely btw - if these measures are to have any meaning (and clearly as a number of commenters have said, it’s far more complex than “the average male” and “the average female”) then they need to have some relation to something which would actually educate people about their limits in terms of the negative social and personal effects of drinking. It seems to me those are often conflated with negative health effects.
Kim- From an epidemiological point of view you do not need to postulate an average person. Instead you have membership of the group drinking a certain amount per day who have, as a group, a measured health outcome. There is no problem with quoting this but to use a single measurement, any increase in risk of any disease, rather than to quote all the known results is, to say the least, a bit naughty.
Part of the issue is the tendency to sound-bite reduction in these things. They needed a number (3 good, 4 bad) so used the question with the lowest answer. A little more complexity would have been useful, especially as the number involved is quite silly.
As to the social effect, that is also sensible but given they hid from most of the epidemiology of dropping dead the subtleties of mere misery would have been too much.
I think its useful to include as binge drinking behaviour which over the long term is likely to have significant detrimental behaviour rather than just short term side effects. The concern is not just for teenagers - and from watching the 4 corners report I think there is reason to be concerned about the 20s and 30s age group as well.
I must socialise with a bunch of wowsers. I think it’d be pretty rare that we’d hit the 4 standard drink limit.
Dr S, I think what I’m trying to get at is the way that “health” recommendations or measures get translated so quickly into sort of pop sociology - ie “young women are getting pissed more than they used to and going wild!”. There seems to be a constant slippage in media and political debates between the medical and the social, and thus a medicalisation of social phenomena. I think we need to guard against that, and better constructed analytical measures and concepts are a key aspect to that vigilance.
Kim- I fully agree with your concern about medicalisation. This is medical science with the messy nuance whittled to allow the fashioning of a cultural bludgeon. There is nothing wrong with the initial epidemiology, it is in the synthesis.
I guess lowering the definitional bar for ” binge” drinking means that the government can impose higher Ruddy taxes on alcohol ” in our best interest”!
Higher Ruddy taxes on Alchopops means that our youth buy the serious stuff and mix their own at double the strength.
Kevin 07 would have made a better preacher than a Prime Minister!
Fran10outforrevenge!
Myriad - sorry, I hadn’t realised you were expressing merely a “hope”. Of course, that’s exactly what you said, but I was thinking you stating a position w/r/t the government’s recent noises and taxes and so forth; that maybe we can govern people into abandoning something which as far as we know has always been widespread. I don’t believe we can, or should even try to in this case - note this is not meant to be an argument against social policy per se.
Anyway, I understand your confusion - what I said didn’t really address what you said very well, I just picked something out that seemed to encapsulate something I disagree with and ran with it. I blame me.
Dr S, we’re agreed.
no probs FDB, I think we’re on a similar page. I don’t favour heavy-handed government intervention myself, and I think if they’re going to use price levers then the money should be reinvested in preventative health & excellent education programs, peer behaviour modelling programs and mentoring etc., and definitely behaviour modelling from iconic individuals such as sports stars. One only has to look at the nexus between appalling behaviour and alcohol in both codes of football (afl and rugby) in this country to realise there’s some work to be done there.
Bad news Kim…. Janet agrees with you -
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/the_nanny_state_has_spoken_on_binge_drinking_but_whos_listening/
4 drinks is a ridiculous limit. I’d regularly exceed that - I share a bottle of wine with my wife most nights…. which is a problem in that she usually only has a glass! Oh well… binge away.
It is hopefully a precursor to consistency in the way that alcohol is taxed - eg just tax on the amount of alcohol contained in the drink. I’d guess that they will raise taxes on the lower taxed ones rather than reduce the taxes on the higher taxed ones.
Actually, casting my mind back a few years, I can binge drink and still pass a breath test. 4 stubbies too, not standard drinks, in under an hour.
I never knew I was such a hard man.
[And no, i wasn’t driving. I was tested to see if I could drive my associate’s car home after he blew over.]
There’s Janet in defence of any industry that helps you end up in the hospital & makes big bucks for the less than “in your interest” corporations who suck billions out of this country, often feeding it back to America…here’s a drip of her wisdom:
Perhaps have a drink or two with a few social drinkers who take umbrage at this new Puritanism. Labelling us all as binge-drinkers will do nothing to address the real problem of alcohol abuse.
(Dear Janet: The Australian)
Maybe Janet needs to talk to her boss…the OPPORTUNISTIC one:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/article252923.ece
(Brit girls are binge-drinking, The Sun, 14th Aug 07)
Mixed messages or what? Screw the social good…anything for a buck, is that it Rupert?
The Sun is a tabloid daily newspaper published in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland with the highest circulation of any daily English-language newspaper in the world, standing at 3,126,866 copies daily in October 2007 and with a daily readership of 7,909,000 in H1 2007. It reaches 2.9 million readers in the ABC1 demographic and 5.0 million in the C2DE demographic, compared to the 1.5 and 0.1 million respectively of its upmarket stablemate The Times. It is published by News Group Newspapers of News International, itself a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
(wiki pedia)
That lot weren’t too worried about the so called “Nanny-State” when they were promoting homeland security & CCTV cameras & titan jails & a war against terrorism. Blo*dy hypocrites.
% Thanks for last, Nasking.
Isn’t a binge really gobbling something down non stop, like binge eating? Binge drinking is the same thing. How can binge drinking be stopped is a good question for the government to ponder on.
I love a martini, two at the most; three I’m under the table, four I’m under the host.
By five I’m capable.
Check Crikey 17 June 200. In Truth the first casualty of the booze wars, Geoff Munro, of the Community Alcohol Action Network, writes:
“Despite Albrechtsen et al, the NHMRC draft did not employ the term binge drinking because medical scientists do not agree on how many drinks constitute a “binge”, or the period of time in which they must be consumed to qualify as a binge.”
Munro also points out that in the NHMRC draft report released in October 2008
“The NHMRC has not said that 4 standard drinks constitutes a binge.
The NHMRC does not say more than two standard drinks constitutes risky drinking.”
Seems that Janet Albrechtsen just got a little tipsy on her three glasses or so of wine and decided that it would be a lark to write a story slamming the NHMRC and the Rudd Government. Why read the as yet draft report when the facts might get in the way of a headline grabbing story.
Meanwhile, Reba Mediocre provides further evidence that simply thinking and talking about drugs degrades the thought processes of our politicians. See also here.