January is LSD Myth Month!

"The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on the truth."

-Edith Sitwell

LSD Myth Month!

LSD month! Woohoo! The rumors about this particular drug are endless, so that's why we're starting here.

LSD is the one drug that seems to evoke more legends, myths and folk tales than any other. It might even be safe to say that most of the "common" information average people know about this drug is inaccurate. Many of these little gems were collected over the years by asking the college students in my classes just what they had heard about LSD. Many said they heard these things from friends and siblings. Others said this misinformation came to them from the newspaper, teachers, and even textbooks. This is by no means an exhaustive listing of LSD misinformation, certainly there is much more, or there will be.

LSD is a hallucinogenic drug. Its primary action is to create visual, auditory and tactile distortions for the user. It is a Schedule I drug which means it currently has no recognized medical uses. There is some limited research being conducted on the efficacy of using hallucinogens to treat post-traumatic stress and other anxiety and fear disorders. There is also research that explores the use of LSD and similar chemicals to treat migraine headaches. Conclusive results have not yet been published.

LSD is inexpensive, costing less that $10 a hit, or trip. It is generally manufactured as a liquid and then put onto blotter paper that the user then sucks on or eats. In the past, LSD was put onto sugar cubes - an image that still sometimes shows up in the movies.

There are a few themes that occur throughout the vast misinformation about LSD. "Accidentally" ingesting LSD seems high on our list of fears, as does the belief that LSD users are interested in recruiting newbies into their ranks.

"Tripping forever" is also a common theme in many of the myths and general misinformation surrounding hallucinogens. I've heard this from students for years. They told me that they had actually seen the eternal tripper interviewed on 60 Minutes or 20/20.  As luck would have it, I eventually saw the eternal tripper on a news show with my own eyes. He is an unfortunate soul who appears to have triggered some schizophrenic or otherwise psychotic condition through his use of hallucinogens. He is not tripping forever, he has a mental illness.

Hopefully, after reading through all of these LSD horror stories, you will have a better idea of what this drug is really about, and what it is not about as well.

Why Do Drug Rumors Persist?

The easy answer is because we need them.  These stories are a type of folklore that provide us with warnings and lessons.  As an oral history of societal dangers they tell us whom we should and should not trust and they provide a moral compass.  They also provide us with humor and a way of connecting to other people.  They give us a way of sharing deeply held fears in a brief and often entertaining way.

There is a particularly persistent group of rumors and legends surrounding the field of drugs and alcohol.  Because contemporary legends and rumors reflect everyday life, it is only natural that a large subset would be related to drugs.  People love telling these stories even though they are generally full of misinformation.  They speak to some basic, primal fears and concerns that we all have as parents, consumers and citizens.  Represented in drug-related contemporary legend is both our mistrust of the large corporations that produce our alcohol and other legal drugs, as well as our fears of the dark and sometimes crazy side of illegal drug use.

Demonizing illegal drugs is not a new phenomenon.  As a society, this is a technique we have used for centuries.  It may have started with the Temperance Movement's "Demon Rum" in the 18th century and moved on to Harry Anslinger's "Evil Weed" of the 1940's, Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" of the 1980's, and current challenges to your children in school to DARE to stay drug free.  In order to emphasize the potential dangers inherent in drugs and alcohol we have exaggerated their effects and consequences to the point of lying.  But considering how "evil" the weed is, lying has been seen as acceptable if it works to keep kids away from drugs.

As a result of these well-intentioned but inaccurate drug prevention efforts, we now have a veritable library of misinformation, exaggerations and untruths about drugs.  In fact, in getting materials organized to write this blog it was often difficult to find accurate, scientifically grounded information with which to affirm or refute the stores.

At the very least, these legends and rumors can be tremendously entertaining.  Sitting around with friends and sharing all the stories you've heard about LSD can make for an interesting afternoon.  At their worst, these legends and rumors support the agendas of questionable groups.

An agenda is the collection of beliefs and goals held by a person or group.  When it comes to drug education, drug policy and what sort of drug-related research is funded, it's important to be aware of the agenda of the teacher, policy writer, research funder or current government administration. The information they produce will sometimes reflect their agenda instead of the truth.

To promote their agenda, agencies and institutions will place like-thinkers in policy making positions, or only fund research that will ultimately support their beliefs or goals.  Sometimes research or information that doesn't fit their agenda will be ignored or suppressed, even if it is accurate.  Sometimes the information will be oversimplified into slogans or sayings (Just Say NO!) or couched in scare tactics (Speed Kills!), both of which will feed the rumor mill of misinformation. All of this has lead to more and more misinformation about drugs being reported everywhere from mainstream media to conversations with your neighbor over the back fence.

Dr. Heath's Monkeys

Let's take a close look at what is perhaps the most well known piece of drug misinformation out there and examine where it came from, and why and how it supported a particular national agenda.

Have you ever heard that smoking marijuana kills brain cells?  Sure, everyone has heard that, and most people believe it because they heard it in mainstream media, read it in textbooks, heard it from teachers, counselors, or even while in rehab. from professionals in the field. Problem is, marijuana does not kill brain cells. How this piece of misinformation got started is a fascinating glimpse into our country's often questionable drug policies.

Over the past century there have been a number of anti-marijuana crusaders who have been highly invested in "proving" that marijuana was dangerous, an evil weed that threatened not just our health, but the very fabric of American society. Their work is legendary and can be enjoyed in films such as Reefer Madness.

Harry Anslinger was Assistant Commissioner in the U.S. Bureau of Prohibition before he was named First Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, (McWilliams, 1990). He was this country's first Drug Czar and has been called "The Father of the Drug War," serving in this position until 1962. He is best remembered for his racism and extreme anti-marijuana position, which he supported with exaggerations and misinformation. His articles describe how even one-time use of marijuana can lead to insanity and death. He was instrumental in getting the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act passed, which essentially made marijuana illegal. Perhaps most interesting, Anslinger is notably absent from government historical records, even though he served in his position as Drug Czar for over 30 years, (Inciarda, 1992).

The drug misinformation campaign that Harry Anslinger started in the 1930's and 1940's, Richard Nixon continued into the 1970's. Nixon was a brilliant, paranoid man who was determined to prove, once and for all, that marijuana killed brain cells so that he could enact more legislation against this drug.

To that end, the federal government funded research to be conducted by Dr. Robert Heath, (Heath 1976). Dr. Heath was expected to prove that marijuana was every bit as dangerous as the federal government hoped it would be. He got down to the business of supplying his pot-smoking monkeys with endless weed, then autopsied their brains.  When the smoke cleared, to no one's surprise, Dr. Heath concluded that his monkeys showed signs of brain damage that were caused by smoking marijuana.

When the funders of this research, the federal government, heard these results, they were elated and started the media machine. Most major media outlets printed the news that marijuana smoking caused brain damage, and soon it was common knowledge. This single piece of research was the foundation upon which decisions about marijuana scheduling and medical marijuana research were made for decades to follow. Only problem is, it wasn't true.

Colleagues of Dr. Heath's reviewed his work, his laboratory methods and his results. A number of them tried to replicate those results yet none were ever able to show that marijuana killed brain cells. When other scientists are unable to replicate the results of a previous study, something is amiss, and the original study is generally suspect. All subsequent studies have repudiated all of Dr. Heaths findings. No accepted evidence exists to support the idea that marijuana smoking kills brain cells.

While the scientific community quietly discredited Dr. Heath's work, the media machine could not be stopped and continued to report that marijuana smoking killed brain cells. Today that piece of misinformation continues to land in drug prevention curriculums, textbooks and college lectures worldwide, and still doesn't seem ready to die. The misinformation is what the public remembers.

This couldn't happen today, right? We have far more checks and balances in place to protect the integrity of our research and government spending. Unfortunately, researchers, eager for prestigious grants and publication opportunities can still fall victim to political pressure.  

It Happened in Florida...

You know that using Ecstasy will kill you, right? Where did you hear that? Best guess is you heard it about 10 years ago, something on the news maybe, or a piece in the newspaper.  Want to know where that information came from?

This piece of misinformation about raves and Ecstasy was born in Florida at the end of 1999. During the previous summer, authorities across Florida had begun an enforcement initiative aimed at raiding raves and dance parties. This was followed by an attempt to count the actual number of deaths that had been caused by club drugs.  So far, so good.

In a shocking piece of drug war publicity, James McDonough, the "Drug Czar" for the state of Florida and former U.S. Army Colonel and Assistant to Barry McCaffery, the Director of the Office of the National Drug Control Policy, announced that club drugs had been responsible for 254 deaths statewide. This number far surpassed club drug deaths anywhere else in the world. The number was so shocking that it spurred an independent investigation by the Orlando Sentinel into the sources and collection methods to reach this number. Not surprisingly, the Sentinel found the number of deaths to be nowhere near accurate.

It seems that numbers were collected from autopsies that named any one of 20 drugs as present in the body at the time of death. Larry Bedore, the Director of Operations for the State Medical Examiner's Commission, had significant concerns about the collection of these data. One hundred fifty pages of memos and other correspondence show that Bedore and the Medical Examiner's Office tried to limit the number of drugs being counted as club drugs. After all, some of the drugs on the list had accepted medical uses and might be present in a body at the time of death while being completely unrelated to the actual cause of death. He also advised that deaths of the very old and very young that appeared on the list were clearly not club drug deaths. He said, "I spent weeks trying to educate them about what they were really looking for. I talked until I was blue in the face."

Office of Drug Control Chief of Staff Steve Lauer responded to the inaccurate results of the investigation by saying that he didn't know that certain drugs on the list were used in hospitals. When he was asked why he included the deaths of very old and very young people on a list of supposed club drug deaths, he claimed he simply, "forgot" not to include these.

The public take-away from this irresponsible data collection and reporting is that Ecstasy use will kill you, even though no accepted evidence exists to support this claim.

And It Continues

How does misinformation of this magnitude spread and persist?

1.  Often, as has been the case with the misinformation about marijuana killing brain cells, the lie has been repeated so often and for so long that it is just accepted as truth.

2.  There is inadequate fact-checking by people spreading the rumor or misinformation. Teachers today heard it from their own teachers, who they believed to be accurate and reliable sources of information, so it doesn't occur to them to fact-check the information. 

3.  It's printed right in the textbook; something we assume was fact-checked by someone else. 

4.  The media doesn't exactly jump on printing corrections.  In the case of Dr. Heath's brain damaged monkeys there was probably a correction printed, but not on the front page or under a big headline.  Just a little, "Oh, by the way..." piece tucked away on a back page somewhere.

Historically, the field of drugs and drug education has been more about politics than science. Research has been skewed to support various agendas, not necessarily what was true. Dr. Heath and the State of Florida's data, while done decades apart, are classic examples of politics over science. They "proved" what they were expected to prove. Never mind that their research methods were faulty or that their results were inaccurate, or that subsequent studies have repudiated their findings.

My 11-year-old son came home last week and guess what he learned in health class?  Yup, that marijuana kills brain cells.

Considering the history of the field of substance abuse, questioning authority is a very good thing. It forces everyone to take a more critical look at the information being shared. With that in mind, I hope this blog helps you to quickly find the proof you need to refute the rumors you hear.

How to Know What's True

"Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth."

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Features common to contemporary legends, myths, rumors and Internet hoaxes

The Roman Historian, Tacitus, said, "Rumor is not always wrong."  He's right.  Rumor often contains anywhere from a grain of truth to the entire truth.  You, the recipient must remember that as interesting or disturbing as this rumor might be, the content is secondary to the presence or absence of verification.  How do you verify the accuracy of the information you've just received?

This post focuses on how to become a more critical thinker; how to know if what your friend's friend just told you is true or not.  There are a few telltale signs that the story you just heard, or the email you just received, could be a legend, rumor or hoax.

• You are one of 50 people that this was sent to.  Or the email has come from someone you don't even know.

• The letter uses an urgent, fear-inducing tone with CAPITOL LETTERS or lots of punctuation!!!!!! to create a sense of urgency.

• There are no verifiable sources.  Instead, there is a reference to an unnamed authority figure.  Ex: "My best friend's mom." "A friend of a friend." "This happened to someone I work with."

• References that are provided sound good but they are uncheckable and can't be verified.  "A prominent researcher."  "A local university." "As seen on Oprah!"

• Reference is made to a medical, research or government institution that doesn't exist. (You can easily Google these to check.)

• There is technical or biological jargon that sounds scholarly and real - or is it?

• They insist that it's true, honest, or real.  "This is not a scam!"  "This really happened!"   "This is not a hoax!"

• There is a plea for you to forward the message to everyone you know and sometimes there is a threat that something bad will happen if you don't.

Most legends and rumors will contain recurring themes of the things we most fear, like losing our children or becoming victims of ruthless criminals.  Often these fears are those for which there are no easy remedies.

Legends and rumors always have a moral message; that something, someone, some business or some group is bad, that people are evil, and that you should never let your guard down or let your children out of your sight.  Legends and rumors speak to our general mistrust of:

• Large corporations like food and beverage companies.  It's often suggested that we shouldn't count on them to be all that careful about what goes into whatever they're preparing because, to them, profit, or the bottom line, is more important than consumer safety.

• Foreigners, including their pets, food and any other products of foreign countries.  These are often seen as suspicious.  Often the country mentioned is one with which we have had a recent military conflict.

• Other populations of people who we have decided, either consciously or subconsciously, are "bad" people, such as men, teenagers or drug users.

• Technology.  Who among us hasn't cursed the ghost in the machine?
  

This might be a hoax, what should I do?

Start by applying the six elements of basic journalism and common sense: Who, What, Where, When, How and Why.  Almost all legends, rumors, myths and hoaxes lack one or more of these elements and won't stand the test.

Who:  Most contemporary legends rely on "a friend" or "a local expert" or "a spokesperson" as the authority.  Ask yourself:  Who is the friend?  How do they know about this?  Is there an eyewitness?

What:  Some legends and rumors have an element of unbelievability to them.  Ask yourself:  Is this how people would really behave or react in this situation?  Does this make sense? Remember that one individual's personal story is not scientific evidence.

Where:  Some legends are told as something that happened, "Right here in this town."  Ask yourself:  Exactly where did this happen?  Are there dates?  Did local media cover it?

When:  Some stories sound very much like something you heard ten years ago.  No way these things could be happening this often to this many people for so many years without your reading about it in a more legitimate place.  Ask yourself:  Did other media cover this story?  Is there a written record of it anywhere that I can see for verification?

How:  Does the rumor defy the laws of physics or stretch your sensibilities?  Depending on the content of the rumor, knowing how factory assembly lines function, or knowing a little basic biology will easily invalidate the story.  Ask yourself:  Does this sound unbelievable?  Is this really how a particular machine, or bodily system, works?  Is it technically possible?  Is it prohibitively expensive?  Does it require exceptional skills of some type, like lock picking or tightrope walking?

Why:  There is always a motive behind the deliberate spread of misinformation. This is called an agenda.  Ask yourself:  Who benefits if this is true? Who is hurt if this is true?

Search Engines

It's always a good idea to go to your favorite search engine and do a little research of your own before possibly passing along misinformation.  However, it is also important to remember that search engines can be out-of-date and may connect to a high number of rogue or inactive sites. Search results are also not listed in order of accuracy, but in order by who gets the most hits, the computer's idea of "match relevance," and who paid the most to have their website pop up in the first 10 listed.

It is estimated that there are 3,800 new websites and 600,000 now pages added to the Internet every day.  None of this information is peer reviewed or fact checked or in any way approved for publication.  No organization currently rates or approves websites for accuracy.  The Internet is totally self-regulated, pure free speech, including all the opinion, rumor spreading and misinformation that accompanies that freedom.  Know this going in so you can remain critical of the content you're reading.

With that in mind, here's how to use your computer's search engines to verify information you just received.  Go the start page of your preferred search engine.  Start by typing the name of the organization or expert that is named (if there is one named) in the rumor you're trying to verify.  Initially scan your search results by looking at the web addresses, not the colorful names and titles.  Websites with .gov or .edu in their address are probably better places to start than commercial websites.  A commercial website may simply reinforce the rumor as true, or offer to sell you a product that will protect you from the harm mentioned in the rumor.  Oh, what a tangled web!

If the rumor mentions a specific health condition or product scare, search Internet sites of reputable health organizations or foundations that you've heard of that are devoted to this condition.  Or find the website for the product manufacturer.  For example, if you want to know if drinking red wine is good for the health of your heart, go to The American Heart Association's website before you go to Cheap Charlie's Wine Emporium.

You can also go straight to one of the excellent websites that catalog these hoaxes.  There are many wonderful Internet sites that are devoted to researching these stories so that you don't have to.   All good to know.

Is It an Urban Legend, Rumor or Hoax?

"There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made."  -Richard Feynman

Legends

Sometimes it is a thin line that separates a true legend from a rumor.  An urban legend is a story that may have started with a grain of truth, but then is retold, with embellishments, so often that it has become bigger than life, more fiction than fact.  They are generally a narrative account set in the recent past, with characters, a plot and elements of caution, horror or morality.  Urban legends, or contemporary legends as they are sometimes called, start as rumors before developing a life of their own.

Studying how these stories get retold and changed, and why they spread so fast, far and often, has become its own field of anthropology.  These legends refuse to die, reappearing in emails, on message boards, around the lunch table and even in the news.  Because of how they morph, it is often impossible to trace the legend back to where it started, and consequently, no way to verify the facts.

The content of urban legends is all over the map, yet several common elements do show up again and again.  As most urban legends prey on our fears and insecurities they will contain some combination of horror, embarrassment, warning and even humor.  They often have some unexpected twist that is outlandish but just plausible enough to be accepted as truth.

Rumors

Rumors are different from legends in that they are about a specific person, product, company or organization.  These often start as misheard news stories, misunderstood information about a product or an event, or a journalistic error.  They can even be a deliberate attempt to discredit a person or company.

Hoaxes

The difference between a legend and a hoax is that one is a story and the other is a promise that you'll get something if you follow the directions.  A hoax will promise you a case of Coca Cola every week for a month, or maybe just an entertaining video clip that will appear after you forward that email on to a zillion of your closest friends.  Maybe, if you have enough friends to forward this to, you'll even receive an answer to your most intimate wish or prayer.  Hoaxes are similar to urban legends or rumors in that they enjoy heavy electronic circulation and are also not true.

Chain Letters

There are emails that ask you to forward them on to everyone in your address book.  There is often a general yet catchy subject line like, "Danger!"  You get drawn in by this hook and open the letter only to learn about all the terrible things that will happen to you if you break the chain, a chain that has apparently been unbroken for years or decades.  Those unfortunate few who did break the chain, well, you don't even want to know what horrors befell them for this transgression.

Now, with information shared so quickly through electronic media, there seem to be more of these legends, rumors and hoaxes around than ever before, many in chain letter form with the plea to send it on.  A day seldom goes by that we don't receive a warning from a friend about another friend's experience with unmarked police cars, a dying child's last wish, product safety or the promise of receiving something for free.  And naturally, a request that you forward this information along to everyone you know.

Spam

Spam is bulk or unsolicited email.  So numerous are these unwelcome letters that they have been known to slow mail servers down to a crawl and even cause them to crash.  These are business solicitations promising low-priced pharmaceuticals, a great deal on a mortgage loan, or cheap Rolex watches.  Just click through to their website and see for yourself.

Ever wondered how you got on this person's mailing list in the first place?  If you've done business online it's possible that your email address was sold.  There are also programs that generate random email addresses; a certain percentage of these are "live" and might get a response.

Finally it's been said that spammers take email addresses from the headers of forwarded hoaxes and chain letters.  There really are people who forward chain letters to everyone in their address book, and by doing that they are passing along hundreds of "live" email addresses - just what spammers are looking for.  It's even been suggested that spammers may start some of these rumor and hoax chain letters specifically for the purpose of harvesting live email addresses.

E-mail Tracking Programs

One common lie that runs through many Internet hoaxes is the claim of "email tracking programs" that will keep track of your forwards.  You know, you'll receive $5 for every person you forward this to, $2 for every person they forward this to, and so on.  This technology doesn't exist with the sophistication necessary to do what that spammed letter said it will do. You can test this one yourself.  Instead of forwarding that email and annoying 20 friends in order to get a check from Bill Gates, just ask the person who sent you the letter if they received a check from Mr. Gates.  They haven't, and neither will you.

Who spread this stuff?

There are many answers to this question.  Generally, rumors and hoaxes are spread by intelligent, caring people motivated by a genuine interest in protecting others.  They have misheard or misremembered something, or simply don't know the information contained in the email they just forwarded to you is not accurate.  Often our family, friends and co-workers send us this misinformation.  These are people who we know to be reliable.  If they said it happened to a friend of their friend you don't doubt them.

Additionally, the culture of drug use is one perpetuated through oral tradition.  Most of us learn a little about drugs and alcohol in school, but the richness of the culture, the subtleties and nuances, are all passed orally in stories told by your friend's brother or your college roommate.  This method makes for some great stories, but as anyone who has played the "telephone game" knows, this method of information transfer is fertile breeding ground for misinformation.

Some legends and rumors started as simple jokes that someone personalized to make more interesting.  Everyone who heard the embellished story repeated it as fact, or news.  "Did you hear what happened to Bob on vacation last month?"

Many rumors about drugs have been perpetuated by ill-informed, anti-drug educators.  In this case, misinformation is presented to serve as a warning or to scare kids away from drug use. Some know that what they're saying is inaccurate, others actually believe it to be true.

Some scary rumors about commercial products may have been started by competitors who wanted to turn people away from a popular product or company to hopefully increase their own sales.  There are a few documented and prosecuted cases of this happening in the not-so-distant past.  All that is required is a story with enough elements of truth to seem real.  We've heard about product tampering so it's a small step to naming the company and the product that is being tempered with, even if it's not true.

On a smaller scale, some of these hoaxes and chain letters have been started as a way of harassing another person.  For example, suppose that Jane is in the middle of a malicious divorce.  In order to make her soon-to-be-ex-husband's life a little more miserable she sends out a letter to everyone she knows that says, "Send jokes to little Johnny Piper at [--insert ex-husband's email address here--] as he's trying to get into the Book of World Records.  Forward this to everyone you know!!"

The Cost

Let's assume that everyone gets one hoax email at work each day and spends one minute reading it and deleting it.  Based on an hourly wage of $15, multiplied by 1/60th of an hour and 50 million people, the cost to US business would be $12.5 million - for that single email.

Now let's guesstimate that 5% of the people that have read this hoax are going to pass it along to everyone in their address book.  Again, being conservative, of the 50 million people who got the letter, 2.5 million will forward it to another 10 people and many of them will forward it on to another ten people and so on.  With this type of geometric progression the letter will never die.

Now multiply this by the actual number of hoax or chain email you get, which is probably much higher than one per day.  All of this has to be processed through our mail servers, which can be significantly slowed down by high volumes of mail and can even grind to a halt.  

It's been estimated that from 40% - 60% of all mail traveling over the Internet is unsolicited bulk email (Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems, 2003)  Another source estimates that there are 10.4 million spam emails sent every minute worldwide. (Business Week Online, 2003)

But the real cost, especially with misinformation about drugs and alcohol, is to our health and the health of our children.  Because of the widespread nature of drug rumors and their incredible persistence, a large percentage of what we think we know about drugs and alcohol, legal beverages and illegal drug activity simply isn't correct. The urban legend gets such widespread acceptance that people stop questioning it.

Consider that right now, in this time where an amazing amount of accurate information is available to us, literally at our fingertips, we are also overwhelmed with what seems to be the same amount of misinformation.  Maybe more.  The key, then, is knowing how to discern one from the other.  How to sift fact from fiction.

Why This Blog?

Every day it seemed like the stories and questions coming through my in-box were more outrageous than the day before.  A big part of my job is educating people about substance abuse and drugs in general.  I really enjoy doing this because I like the history, science. just about everything connected to drug culture.  I also like getting a question I can't answer because it means I get to spend a day searching and reading through the research to find the answer. That's a good day to me.

Then the questions started getting weird.  Really weird.  People were no longer asking me if smoking pot would kill their brain cells (it won't), or if using LSD would corrupt their chromosomes and cause them to have deformed babies (it won't).  Now they were asking if the federal government really required a spinal tap to check for any history of LSD use before they could become a federal employee (they don't).  Or if young children were really tripping on the playground, the victims of LSD-laced tattoos and lollipops (no, again).  And speaking of young children, were they really being kidnapped, killed and eviscerated, then used to smuggle drugs?

Then there were the friends and colleagues who would read an alarming drug-related account and forward it to me with subject lines like, "Have you seen this?" "Is this true?"  With the advent of email, and the ease with which we can now share information and misinformation across town and across states without the hassle of a photocopier and envelope, and with friends and colleagues who knew about my interest in these types of rumors and misinformation, my inbox quickly became a treasure trove of drug-related legends, myths, and hoaxes.

This blog is a collection of some of the most popular and outrageous drug-related legends, myths, rumors, misinformation, Internet hoaxes and outright lies.  Chances are good that you've heard some of these, hopefully there will be a few new ones to shock or entertain you. I've even included some that are strange enough to sound like legends, but they're actually true!

As you read through my explanations for each rumor you'll see that sometimes others have already explained them or proven them true of false, most often David Emery at www. urbanlegends.about.com or Barbara Mikkelson at www.snopes.com.  If my explanation is short it is because they've already done the work so I don't have to.  If that's the case, try one of their websites to read a more detailed explanation.

In other cases I have found documentation or scientific research to prove or disprove a rumor.  I'll site the research so that you can look it up for yourself and read the whole story.  Or just in case you need the original research to win an argument or a bet.

In some cases there was no avenue to determine the accuracy of a rumor, at least none that I was about to follow without a staff and budget (I have neither) so I've relied on testing things out myself, or common sense.

And finally, if there are some rumors that you've heard that I haven't included here, please leave your information as a comment.  This is a work in progress, I have over a hundred I'd like to add, with more always trickling in, so keep checking back, and enjoy!