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You know those little roses that come in glass tubes? You can buy them at gas stations for a buck or two and then use them however you see fit. And, as luck would have it, some folks like to put crack in them and smoke it. It should therefore come as no surprise to find people calling for a ban on these so-called "love roses."

…Reverend Michael Latham, the leader of the local NAACP Chapter, says these "love roses" are littering our streets and damaging our community.

Rev. Michael Latham: "Take it out. Don't sell it. And, understand it's being used to for smoking crack cocaine. I think Fort Wayne has a real serious crack problem."

Latham is calling for a boycott of at least three gas stations in Fort Wayne after calling the owners to complain. [Indianasnewscenter.com]

"love roses" on the evening news, for all the wrong reasons

Mark Souder/Congressman, 3rd District: "I support a boycott. That's voluntary consumer decision."

Did Mark Souder just use the term "voluntary consumer decision"? Lucky me, I'd have bet anyone anything that we'd never hear those words leave his lips given his career-long commitment to jailing certain consumers for the voluntary decisions they make. Souder then proceeds to celebrate his sudden affinity for consumer choice by proposing a new law banning small containers:

Co-Chair of the House Drug Policy Caucus, Souder thinks Latham's plan is a good one. The Congressman hopes to go one step further in the near future with a law banning hidden drug compartments, like these.

Mark Souder/Congressman, 3rd District: "I believe when something is used solely for illegal purposes, it should be illegal."

Even if "love roses" were literally never used for anything other than smoking crack, their prohibition would still accomplish nothing absent the simultaneous prohibition of other popular crack accessories such as soda cans, cigarettes, and radio antennas. But I also don't see why these pretty little roses couldn't sometimes be used just to brighten someone's day.

Remind me to send Mark Souder a dozen "love roses" for Valentine's Day.

Today, police laid out 16 pounds of the stuff they said they confiscated from a high-level dealer who supplied the suburbs…

Police put the value of the marijuana at $812,000. On Tuesday, as the probe continued, investigators seized 12 pounds of hallucinogenic mushrooms worth $614,000 and more than $439,000 in cash, police said. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Really?!? Let's do the math. $812,000 / 16 pounds / 16 ounces / 28.3 grams = $112.08 per gram. That's a hearty marijuana joint for $112. The same formula finds them valuing the mushrooms at a whopping, and oddly similar, $113 per gram.

Just look at High Times Magazine's Market Quotes for marijuana to see that the highest street prices come nowhere close to these wildly false numbers. A gram of the very best pot can fetch $25-30, usually less. It is literally as though they calculated the value of the seizure and added a zero at the end (actually that's currently my best guess as to what happened here).

This is what we get when reporters simply pass along claims from police regarding drugs. Law-enforcement's lack of expertise on certain drug-related matters, combined with their incentive to exaggerate their own achievements, creates an obvious imperative that the press seek to substantiate such claims before offering them to the public.

This announcement from The Philadelphia Inquirer that marijuana costs $100 per joint is just a perfect example of the media's ongoing failure to provide responsible coverage of the war on drugs.

[Thanks, Irina]