Passive snorting

[Guest trekker]

[h5] Exposure to Cocaine a Downer for Police [/h5]

 

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Worried about passive smoking? Pity the poor police detectives in Caracas who are getting sick from passive cocaine snorting.

 

Staff at the Technical and Judicial Police headquarters is reporting sick after inhaling particles from large quantities of the confiscated drug piled up in cramped offices.

 

Employees are missing work and complaining of breathing difficulties from exposure to the illicit white powder, seized in over 10,000 busts.

 

Cristina Zoghbi, head of the toxicology division, wants the courts to incinerate 1,300 pounds (600 kg) of cocaine stored in plastic bags on her office floor and in a bathroom.

 

Yeah. Right.

[Bilbo]

Actually, I can sympathize. There are those of us whose bodies cannot stand even a little of the stuff. I used to strenuously reject any client who wanted to "parti" as they used to call some drug. If I french kissed anyone who had been doing it, I got enough for an iffy tummy and a dizzy head. I remember once, a couple of decades ago, when I was driving home from such a 'date' and had to stop in the park and roll around on the grass by myself to feel that I could drive the rest of the way safely.

[Guest loverboy]

This reminds me of a story which appeared in the papers several years ago.

 

During World War II when the Japanese occupied the Philippines the U.S. was cut off from its principal supplier of hemp, which was at that time an important raw material. Some bright-eyed bureaucrats in Washington found out that there was a native North American plant that was a close relative of the hemp plant, and got the idea that it could be grown as a substitute for hemp. So the U.S. government went around persuading farmers in the midwest to plant marijuana and distributing seeds to them for free. (This is a well-known historical fact.) But the idea didn't work because the fibers from marijuana weren't a very good substitute for hemp.

 

But marijuana is basically a weed, it spreads easily, and is very difficult to stamp out (in more senses than one). So, ever since then, it has grown wild along roadsides and in other places in much of the corn belt. (Not the high grade hybrids prized today, but marijuana nonetheless.)

 

Periodically local bluenoses go on a campaign to eradicate the evil weed. A few years ago there was such a campaign in one Iowa county, where they mobilized the local Boy Scouts to go out on a summer day and uproot all the marijuana they could find, first having taught the dear things to recognize the evil weed by its characteristic leaves. And that the boys did, bringing their prizes back to a central dumping point, which eventually was piled high with marijuana plants. How to get rid of all the booty? Yep, you guessed it. They burned it.

[Guest Joey Ciccone]

That's a scream. I hope the Boy Scouts weren't standing downwind of the blaze, otherwise old ladies would've been helping THEM across the street.