By Drew Grant 2/22 3:54pm

Drugs

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National Institute of Drug Abuse Breaks Silence on Controversial Question: ‘What is Saliva?’

My favorite part about the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) is the one day a year when it holds a “Drug Facts Chat Day,” when every high schooler who has access to a computer lab can write into the government and get the answers to questions like “Do glue get you high?” and “Where do teenagers get drugs?” and “What happens if you are drunk and high at the same time like 2 chainz?”

Every year, I wait for Drug Facts Day like it’s Christmas. It’s not just because it’s super-funny that our next generation does not know how to spell, like, at all, but because I sometimes learn stuff myself! Like the part about black hairs on your tongue from doing too many drugs? Who knew that was a thing? Read More

By Patrick Clark 10/15/12 1:09pm

L.A. Story

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Deutsche Bank Exec Beaten By LAPD Allegedly Copped to Previous Bath Salts Use

Remember Brian Mulligan? He’s the Deutsche Bank executive who filed a $50 million claim with the city of Los Angeles after suffering a broken shoulder blade and 15 nasal fractures in a run-in with LAPD in May.

The details of the case have been hard to figure from the start. Mr. Mulligan said cops kidnapped him to a cheap hotel and threatened to kill him if he left the premises, then beat him badly when they found he’d escaped. The police said Mr. Mulligan admitted to using marijuana and bath salts, then assumed a karate stance and charged officers.

Well, the details are still hard to figure, but The Los Angeles Times has a story that lends some credibility to the LAPD’s claims. According to The Times, Mr. Mulligan walked into a police department headquarters in Glendale, Calif., and asked for help dealing with his substance use: Read More

By Patrick Clark 8/28/12 9:21am

L.A. Story

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Details Trickle Out in LAPD Beating of Deutsche Banker Brian Mulligan

When we last left the story of Brian Mulligan, Los Angeles-based vice chairman of Deutsche Bank’s media business, we were struggling to entangle conflicting accounts. The LAPD leaked a report to a local press in which Mr. Mulligan told cops he was high on bath salts and marijuana, and hadn’t slept in four days—then assumed a karate stance and charged at officers. Mr. Mulligan’s lawyers, meanwhile, said LAPD deposited Mr. Mulligan at a run-down motel and threatened to kill the banker if he left—then beat him to the tune of a broken shoulder blade and 15 nasal fractures. Read More

By Drew Grant 8/02/12 4:17pm

designer drugs

Bath salts: do not ingest (Divawhispers)

Bath Salts Officially a Drug Problem in New York, Claims DEA and Man Who Destroyed Upstate Headshop With a Bat

Are you tired about hearing about the new synthetic drug bath salts yet? We’re glad to have clarified that the brand of white crystallized substituted cathinones–paging Walter White!–were not actually bath salts.  (For awhile we were plagued with images of getting arrested at Bath & Body Works while on a perfectly innocent shopping sojourn.)

At the same time, it seems like the press is reaching with this one, especially since the drug seemed to be contained within bored teenagers in flyover states and INSANE PEOPLE. (See: Spin‘s “expose” on the topic, and the aftermath.)

That being said, we can’t pretend like the epidemic of bath salts– a designer drug that produces a cocaine/amphetamine/LSD-like high, or as one person who was offered it recently related to The Observer, “makes you feel like an animal”–is just going to disappear off the news cycle because we want it to. (Our magical thinking made Khat trend stories go away, right?)

In fact, the bath salt chickens have finally come home to roost in New York, turning vague rumors of people who pee on art and cannibals in Florida into a NYC reality. Read More