The only results anyone is going to see from wearing these tights is their marketers laughing all the way to the bank. Not only is caffeine not a weight loss agent (if it were, I would be carrying far fewer kilos by now); not only is the transdermal absorption claim dubious; but, if so, I don’t think the metabolic effects would be localized to the thighs.

True this is a widespread and growing problem, but there is another far more common internet contribution to drug abuse. As a physician used to the considerations that go into prescribing a controlled substance for a patient, it took me a long while to wrap my head around the new reality — quite simply, the lack of a prescription is no longer a barrier to obtaining virtually any controlled substance, as you might suspect from the spam mail that fills your inboxes. It has reached the point where the only substance abusers coming into our emergency room for detox who need to buy their drugs on the street are the ones unresourceful enough not to have an internet connection and a credit card to order by mail.

Although this piece in The Boston Herald, this city’s conservative tabloid daily, has a bemused, if not derisive tone about the Brookline decision, this is the thing that small towns throughout the country need to start doing. In a curious sidelight, the local media has reported that Barney Frank, our congressional representative and no progressive slouch, had responded by saying (to paraphrase the reportage) that this is not an issue that should be decided by public opinion. Of course that is exactly how we are supposed to be governed. Frank was being taken sloppily out of context; he was responding to the impotence of the Congress to act, frustrated that public opinion alone does not seem to be making a difference in countering the reign of terror from the Oval Office. In fact, he himself called long ago for an impeachment investigation.

Related: Same theme of growing rage against the war and repudiation of our dysadministration. Massive volatile antiwar protests against Iraq-bound war supplies shipments escalate at the Port of Olympia, Washington State, as described in this coverage from The Olympian of an underreported event. As I have commented before, we need to highlight these upwellings wherever they occur, to hasten our arrival at the popular sentiment tipping point.