Het Nederlandse paddoverbod gaat op 1 december in. Zowel de teelt als de verkoop van verse paddo’s wordt taboe, voor de gedroogde variant van de hallucinerende paddestoelen was dat al het geval. Minister Klink (Volksgezondheid, CDA) heeft 186 paddestoelen op lijst 2 van de Opiumwet geplaatst en daarmee verboden verklaard. Ook in het wild voorkomende paddestoelen, zoals de vliegenzwam, staan nu op de lijst.

De Vereniging Landelijk Overleg Smartshops (VLOS) had gehoopt dat de rechter het verbod vandaag zou opschorten. Ze vindt dat minister Klink (Volksgezondheid) onvoldoende heeft aangetoond dat het gebruik van verse paddo’s schadelijk is voor de gezondheid. Ook vreest de VLOS dat er een slecht controleerbare, illegale handel op gang komt. Of alternatieven, zoals champignons met ingespoten LSD, gebruikt gaan worden.

De aanleiding van het verbod ligt in een aantal incidenten in Amsterdam waar toeristen door een cocktail van drank en meerdere drugs in de problemen raakten. Een depressief Frans meisje sprong in 2007 na het gebruik van drugs van een brug en overleed. Of de Française ook paddestoelen heeft gegeten, is niet onderzocht. Toch was het overlijden van de zeventienjarige de aanleiding voor het paddoverbod. De smartshops reageerden verbijsterd toen het kabinet de wens van de Kamer honoreerde.

Klink hield vast aan het verbod omdat de effecten van de drug door hun onvoorspelbaarheid gevaar zouden kunnen opleveren. Maar Freek Polak, psychiater en bestuurslid van de Stichting Drugsbeleid, vindt dat geen argument. In een opiniestuk in NRC Handelsblad van 3 april 2007 wees hij op een lijst van twintig roesmiddelen, gerangschikt naar gevaar, in het medische tijdschrift The Lancet. Alcohol is nummer 5, tabak staat 9de op de lijst, terwijl paddo’s niet eens werden genoemd. En ook het Coördinatiepunt Assessment en Monitoring nieuwe drugs van het Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu zag in 2000 geen noodzaak (pdf-rapport) voor een totaalverbod.

Polak wijt het verbod vooral aan onwetendheid bij de wetgevers, waar hij ook het VVD-Kamerlid Fred Teeven (die kennelijk is vergeten dat zijn vroegere voorman Pim Fortuyn duidelijk kon uitleggen waarom hij voorstander was van drugslegalisering) toe rekent. Die zei: “Het zijn gewoon harddrugs. Mensen denken dat ze kunnen vliegen. Dus moeten we dat spul niet meer verkopen.” Maar, werpt Polak tegen, als Teeven zo redeneert, hoe kan hij dan níet een verbod op alcohol en op sigaretten eisen?

Hans van den Hurk, eigenaar van de keten van smartshops Conscious Dreams, weet best waarom er meer incidenten met paddo’s zijn. Omdat er vorig jaar veel meer toeristen naar Amsterdam kwamen. Drie-dagen-toeristen, noemt hij ze. Vliegen even in, gooien zich vol met drank, en gebruiken dan „als toetje” paddestoelen. Kijk, en dan gaat het mis. „Je moet paddo’s nergens mee combineren.” Dus als er een dronken toerist in de winkel staat, krijgt hij niets mee. Stoned? Ook niet. „We vragen ook altijd of mensen geen medicijnen gebruiken.” Blijft de categorie labiele mensen over. De erge gevallen – „verward, trillen” – pikt zijn personeel er wel uit. „Maar je kan het niet bij iedereen zien.”

Het Europese Drugsmonitoring Centrum in Lissabon heeft laten zien dat er geen relatie bestaat tussen de mate van repressie in verschillende landen en de niveaus van gebruik, misbruik en verslaving. In Engeland en de Verenigde Staten is de repressie aanzienlijk harder dan in Nederland. Toch scoren die twee landen hoger dan Nederland wat betreft problematisch drugsgebruik. Het belangrijkste argument voor een (hard)drugsverbod is de veronderstelling dat alleen zo de volksgezondheid te beschermen is. Als er iets onderzocht behoort te worden, dan is het of deze basishypothese waarop drugsprohibitie berust, juist is of niet.

Taxpayers have shelled out at least $200 million since 2004 for medications that have never been reviewed by the government for safety and effectiveness but are still covered under Medicaid, an Associated Press analysis of federal data has found. Millions of private patients are taking such drugs, as well. Dozens of deaths have been linked to them.

Medicaid, already hurting from shrinking state budgets, has been ponying up quite a bit for drugs that were never approved by FDA.

That’s the finding of an investigation by the Associated Press, which found that Medicaid paid nearly $198 million from 2004 to 2007 for more than 100 unapproved drugs.

The remedies were mostly for common ailments like colds and pain, and they date all the way back to before Congress decided in 1962 that the FDA had to review all new drugs.

So, why, after so many years, is this still an issue? As the AP explains it, the FDA hasn’t compiled a master list of these medicines. Some companies have argued that their drugs were grandfathered into compliance. And Medicaid officials say the program is allowed to pay for unapproved drugs until the FDA has specifically ordered them off the market.

Sometimes, the medications do not help patients. In other cases, the FDA says, they have made people sicker, maybe even killed them. For instance, the FDA banned injectable versions of a gout drug called colchicine after receiving 23 reports of deaths, the AP notes.

“I think this is something we ought to look at very hard, and we ought to fix it,” Medicaid chief Herb Kuhn told the AP. “It raises a whole set of questions, not only in terms of safety, but in the efficiency of the program — to make sure we are getting the right set of services for beneficiaries.”

The print edition of PC Magazine will be discontinued from January 2009 as the magazine publishers have decided to go 100% digital. That means you will still be able buy a copy of PC Magazine like before but the mode of delivery will change – the monthly issue will land in your email inbox instead of the mailbox.

Now here’s a more interesting offer: you can grab a one-year subscription of PC Magazine (Digital Edition) for free using this link. Type in your email and they’ll send you the download link as soon as a new issue of PC Magazine becomes available. Here’s a sample issue of PC Magazine digital format. You can either read it in your browser or download and read it offline.

This offer is part of the Read Green initiative where they’re giving away one-year subscriptions of several digital magazines for free to make people realize the benefits of this environment-friendly magazine format. The only catch is that you can subscribe to one magazine per email address. Digital-magazine store Zinio is currently offering free subscriptions to select publications as part of its “Read Green Initiative.” There are several magazines to choose from in many categories. The sign up process is very simple: just select your magazine and provide an email address, then sign up for a Zinio account with that same address.

Once you’re logged in to Zinio, your library should have your new magazine available to read. You can read it in your Flash-enabled browser or download the magazine to read offline using the free Zinio Reader (Win/Mac). I recommend downloading the reader so as not to tax the browser’s resources; The image quality is better as well.

Most online image editors are designed to give people a quick way to crop or resize an image when uploading an image to their blog or Facebook profile. Unfortunately, that means they usually don't have much in the way of features for users looking for more powerful tools. Pixlr is different; the service is fast, free, runs entirely in Flash, and has features like color correction, adjusting brightness & contrast, sharpening images, layering filters and inserting text, that I haven't seen outside of a desktop image editor.

You'll recognize the interface as standard among desktop image editing tools; you have your vertical toolbar on the left, and a navigator window and layer window on the right. The fact that Pixlr supports layering is a pleasant surprise, and you can add, trash, merge, and manage layers easily. If you want to add a layer and change its opacity, it's as simple to do in Pixlr as it is in Adobe Photoshop. The same is true for resizing, cropping, or adding filters to images; the way the menus at the top of the screen are laid out are designed to be familiar to Photoshop and GIMP users.

Pixlr allows you to upload images directly from your system or from a URL, so if the images you'd like to edit are already on the Web, you can grab them, work with them, and save them when you're done. The service allows you to save images as either JPG or PNG images. Unfortunately, you can't save images to the Web or publish them directly to other services, but you can download them when you're finished.

Pixlr is feature-rich, but it's not designed for advanced photo editors who need tons of features only found in professional photo editing packages. The service is targeted at people who need to edit and re-post their images online, although features significantly more features than is really necessary for that. Pixlr is available in a dozen languages and is free to use--no sign-up or account is required.

One of the more visible changes of the Windows Vista operating system was the Windows Vista Sidebar which made it possible to put so called gadgets on the Windows Desktop. Gadgets are small applications that can display all kinds of information such as RSS news feeds, contacts or system information.

Many Windows Vista users like the Windows Sidebar, others feel that it is to restricted to one part of the screen. Microsoft has already announced that they will change that behavior in Windows 7 so that users can place gadgets wherever they want on the desktop.

It was only a matter of time until someone would port the Windows Vista Sidebar to Windows XP. Joshoon managed to port the real Windows Sidebar to Windows XP by making use of Alky For Applications. You might remember Alky from the time when Windows Vista came out. That was at the same time when Microsoft announced Vista only applications and Alky was supposed to make them compatible with Windows XP (like the games Shadowrun or Halo 2).

Already available gadgets can be added by right-clicking the sidebar and selecting a gadget from the list of installed gadgets. Each gadget can be added by right-clicking it and selecting Add from the context menu.

Even more interesting than this is the ability to download gadgets from the Windows Vista Gallery site over at Microsoft. It requires some manual work but it’s easily done and works perfectly fine. The gadget needs to be downloaded first. It comes with the .gadget extension but it can easily be unpacked. Use the Gadget Extractor (requires .NET 2.0 Redistibution Package be installed) from the Sidebar Pack. This program moves the gadget after extraction automatically to the Shared Gadgets directory. Then you can find it in the Gadget Gallery for adding to the sidebar.

One interesting feature is the ability to detach a gadget from the sidebar so that it can be moved freely around on the desktop. The Sidebar requires roughly 20 Megabytes of computer memory when displaying the default three gadgets.