On Jan. 1, Colorado began permitting the legal sale of marijuana. Even before that, the nation's news media had swung into action, arguing just about everything - marijuana is dangerous or not dangerous, a gateway drug or just a lot of smoke. Nothing I saw mentioned why I, for one, will not smoke marijuana. I'm afraid it would lead me back to cigarettes. Once I was addicted to cigarettes. (I suppose I still am.) Now the latest surgeon general's report shows that cigarette smoking is even worse for us than we once thought. To all the usual diseases - lung cancer and heart disease - can be added diabetes, colorectal and liver cancers and, irony of ironies, erectile dysfunction. The Marlboro Man needs some help. [continues 470 words]
Will pot legalization introduce more people to cigarettes? On Jan. 1, Colorado began permitting the legal sale of marijuana. Even before that, the nation's news media had swung into action, arguing just about everything - marijuana is dangerous or not dangerous, a gateway drug or just a lot of smoke. Nothing I saw mentioned why I, for one, will not smoke marijuana: I'm afraid it would lead me back to cigarettes. Once I was addicted to cigarettes. (I suppose I still am.) I tried to quit numerous times - hypnotism, acupuncture, hypnotism again, will power and shame and mortal shame - but for the longest time, nothing worked. I felt enslaved - sucking this poison into my body, soiling my lungs - and enraged at an industry that encouraged me as a youth to smoke and, despite all the health findings, continued to give me that encouraging wink: Smoke. Go ahead. Such sweet pleasure! [continues 502 words]
On Jan. 1, Colorado began permitting the legal sale of marijuana. Even before that, the nation's news media had swung into action, arguing just about everything - marijuana is dangerous or not dangerous, a gateway drug or just a lot of smoke. Nothing I saw mentioned why I will not smoke marijuana. I'm afraid it would lead me back to cigarettes. Once I was addicted to cigarettes. (I suppose I still am.) I tried to quit numerous times - hypnotism, acupuncture, hypnotism again, willpower and shame and mortal shame - but nothing worked. I felt enslaved - sucking this poison into my body, soiling my lungs - and enraged at an industry that encouraged me as a youth to smoke and, despite all the health findings, continued to give me that wink: Smoke. Such sweet pleasure! [continues 552 words]
On Jan. 1, Colorado began permitting the legal sale of marijuana. Even before that, the nation's news media had swung into action, arguing just about everything - marijuana is dangerous or not dangerous, a gateway drug or just a lot of smoke. Nothing I saw mentioned why I, for one, will not smoke marijuana. I'm afraid it would lead me back to cigarettes. Once I was addicted to cigarettes. (I suppose I still am.) I tried to quit numerous times - hypnotism, acupuncture, hypnotism again, willpower and shame and mortal shame - but, for the longest time, nothing worked. [continues 626 words]
On Jan. 1, Colorado began permitting the legal sale of marijuana. Even before that, the nation's news media had swung into action, arguing just about everything - marijuana is dangerous or not dangerous, a gateway drug or just a lot of smoke. Nothing I saw mentioned why I, for one, will not smoke marijuana. I'm afraid it would lead me back to cigarettes. Once I was addicted to cigarettes. (I suppose I still am.) I tried to quit numerous times - hypnotism, acupuncture, hypnotism again, willpower and shame and mortal shame - but for the longest time, nothing worked. I felt enslaved - sucking this poison into my body, soiling my lungs - and enraged at an industry that encouraged me as a youth to smoke and, despite all the health findings, continued to give me that encouraging wink: Smoke. Go ahead. Such sweet pleasure! [continues 582 words]
"Traffic," the new film by Steven Soderbergh, is on almost everyone's list of the top 10 films of 2000 and has already won the New York Film Critics Circle Award. It did so, mind you, before it even opened here - not to mention anywhere else. That is just one of the oddities of this film. The other is this: It's stupid. This is a movie about the drug trade between the United States and Mexico. The plot is based on the assumption that you have not read a newspaper in the last 20 years and would, for example, find it surprising that some members of the Mexican military are corrupt. For authenticity, certain U.S. senators appear at a Washington cocktail party, but after that one scene, nothing again makes sense. [continues 639 words]
I hope that when Hollywood gets around to making "The Robert Downey Story," Downey gets to play himself. He is one of the few screen actors around who has the talent, not to mention the experience, to convince the American people that a drug addict is a sick person and not a criminal. But in the movie, as in life itself, Downey will be a jailbird. At least, that's the way it now looks. Having been busted on drug charges last week, he was jailed overnight and is due back in court Dec. 27 for a hearing. The actor was allegedly found in a conked out state, and police discovered cocaine and methamphetamines in his hotel room. He has been down this road before. [continues 657 words]
I hope that when Hollywood gets around to making "The Robert Downey Story," Downey gets to play himself. He is one of the few screen actors around who has the talent, not to mention the experience, to convince the American people that a drug addict is a sick person and not a criminal. But in the movie, as in life itself, Downey will be a jailbird. At least, that's the way it now looks. Having been busted on drug charges last week, he was jailed overnight and is due back in court Dec. 27 for a hearing. The actor was allegedly found in a conked out state, and police discovered cocaine and methamphetamines in his hotel room. He has been down this road before. [continues 572 words]
I hope that when Hollywood gets around to making The Robert Downey Story, Mr. Downey gets to play himself. He is one of the few screen actors around who has the talent, not to mention the experience, to convince the American people that a drug addict is a sick person and not a criminal. But in the movie, as in life itself, Mr. Downey will be a jailbird. At least, that is the way it now looks. Having been busted on drug charges the other day, he was jailed overnight and is due back in court Dec. 27 for a hearing. The actor allegedly was found in a conked-out state, and police discovered cocaine and methamphetamines in his hotel room. He has been down this road before. [continues 673 words]
I HOPE that when Hollywood gets around to making "The Robert Downey Jr. Story," Downey gets to play himself. He is one of the few screen actors around who has the talent, not to mention the experience, to convince the American people that a drug addict is a sick person and not a criminal. But in the movie, as in life itself, Downey will be a jailbird. At least, that's the way it now looks. Having been busted on drug charges last week, he was jailed overnight and is due back in court Dec. 27 for a hearing. The actor was allegedly found in a conked out state, and police discovered cocaine and methamphetamines in his hotel room. [continues 116 words]
I hope that when Hollywood gets around to making "The Robert Downey Story," Downey gets to play himself. He is one of the few screen actors around who has the talent, not to mention the experience, to convince the American people that a drug addict is a sick person and not a criminal. But in the movie, as in life itself, Downey will be a jailbird. At least, that's the way it now looks. Having been busted on drug charges last week, he was jailed overnight and is due back in court Dec. 27 for a hearing. The actor was allegedly found in a conked-out state, and police discovered cocaine and methamphetamine in his hotel room. He has been down this road before. [continues 656 words]
I hope that when Hollywood gets around to making "The Robert Downey Story," Downey gets to play himself. He is one of the few screen actors around who has the talent, not to mention the experience, to convince the American people that a drug addict is a sick person and not a criminal. But in the movie, as in life itself, Downey will be a jailbird. At least, that's the way it now looks. Having been busted on drug charges last week, he was jailed overnight and is due back in court Dec. 27 for a hearing. The actor was allegedly found in a conked out state, and police discovered cocaine and methamphetamines in his hotel room. He has been down this road before. [continues 660 words]
I hope that when Hollywood gets around to making "The Robert Downey Jr. Story," Downey gets to play himself. He is one of the few screen actors around who has the talent, not to mention the experience, to convince the American people that a drug addict is a sick person and not a criminal. But in the movie, as in life itself, Downey will be a jailbird. At least that's the way it now looks. Having been busted on drug charges last week, he was jailed overnight and is due back in court Dec. 27 for a hearing. The actor was allegedly found in a conked-out state, and police discovered cocaine and methamphetamines in his hotel room. He has been down this road before. [continues 657 words]
I met Seth Mnookin in Los Angeles, lunch at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. He was covering the McCain campaign and so was I - and so were the others at our table. Somehow the conversation turned to addictions - cigarettes, mostly. It was then that Mnookin mentioned he had been a heroin addict. Oh, and coke, crack, pot, mescaline, LSD, speed and prescription painkillers, too. But it was heroin that nearly killed him. He's clean now, back to writing (which he does very well) and working for Brill's Content, a magazine about the media. Last August, he wrote his own story for Salon.com, an online magazine. Read it. It's worth your time. [continues 704 words]
I ran into Jesse Jackson here the other night and was tempted to ask him -- really -- if he had lost his mind. What had he been doing in Decatur, Ill., championing the case of six students who had been kicked out of high school after a brawl? But before I could pose my question, Jackson uttered the two words that ought to make any American stop and think: Zero tolerance. Maybe it's the rest of us, not Jackson, who are out of our minds. [continues 719 words]
Every once in a while, I have one of those 93I wish I wrote that94 moments. That's precisely what happened when I read a Time magazine essay by John F. Stacks about whether Texas Gov. George.W. Bush should be compelled (how?) to reveal whether he ever used illegal drugs, particularly cocaine. Until I read Stacks, I would have said 93No!94 and followed it with an impressively erudite disquisition on the need for even public figures to have some private space. Now, though, I want to know. [continues 707 words]
THE issue is not so much what George W. Bush did in the past, but whether he is a hypocrite in the present. He is tough as nails on drugs, having supported state legislation mandating jail for anyone caught with less than a gram of cocaine. Would a bystander have heard him murmur, "There but for the grace of God go I?" It would be nice to know. I think Bush is a Fifth Amendment cokehead. If he had not used the stuff, he would certainly say so. After all, it's not as if he is such a reticent fellow. He has told us much about his past -- his drinking, his carousing, his lost youth, his meandering career path and how he gave up booze and found God. [continues 140 words]
Every once in a while, I have one of those "I-wish-I-wrote-that" moments. That's precisely what happened when I read a Time magazine essay by John F. Stacks about whether or not George W. Bush should be compelled (how?) to reveal whether he ever used illegal drugs, particularly cocaine. Until I read Stacks, I would have said "No!" and followed it with an impressively erudite disquisition on the need for even public figures to have some private space. Now, though, I want to know. [continues 706 words]
When it comes to movie stars, I subscribe to the Ronald Reagan Rule. Reagan used to tell his aide Michael Deaver that if you liked someone on the screen, chances are you would like them in person, too. That's one reason why I think the imprisonment of Robert Downey Jr. is an outrage. From what I've seen on the screen, I think he's a nice guy. As it happens, the record supports me (and Reagan) on this one. If Downey ever committed a violent crime, it hasn't been mentioned in the press. If he ever held up anyone, mugged an old man or even sold drugs, it has never been reported. What he did is violate his probation after pleading guilty three years ago to drug possession and having a concealed weapon in his car. He can't stay clean -- and for that he's going to jail. The judge gave him three years. [continues 636 words]
Jail for Downey makes no sense WHEN it comes to movie stars, I subscribe to the Ronald Reagan Rule. Reagan used to tell his aide Michael Deaver that if you liked someone on the screen, chances are you would like him in person, too. That's one reason why I think the imprisonment of Robert Downey Jr. is an outrage. From what I've seen on the screen, I think he's a nice guy. As it happens, the record supports me (and Reagan) on this one. If Downey ever committed a violent crime, it's never been mentioned in the press. If he ever held up anyone, mugged an old man or, even, sold drugs, it has never been reported. What he did is violate his probation after pleading guilty three years ago to drug possession and having a concealed weapon in his car. He can't stay clean -- and for that he's going to jail. The judge gave him three years. [continues 642 words]
