Nevada Loves the Vicodin Part 2

In my post on the interactive map of US prescription opiate use trends provided by the Las Vegas Sun I initially missed the association with a three-part series on “The New Addiction”. This explains why the Sun came up with the map in the first place which I should have thought about a bit more. Bad DM!
At any rate there’s all kinds of interesting stuff in here such as a reader poll with only 53% of respondents (as of 7/22/08) saying it is “difficult” to persuade a doctor to provide a prescription for narcotics:

Jennifer Hilton says that after she had a tooth filled, her dentist handed her a prescription for Vicodin even though she was not complaining about pain. She bristled at the unsolicited prescription because she’s a program coordinator for an inpatient drug addiction program for adolescent girls that’s run by Westcare, a Las Vegas nonprofit that specializes in substance abuse treatment.

and a suggestion that the rising trend is all the fault of the American Pain Society in cahoots with BigPharma.

Sizzle Rhetoric Chapping My Ass

Chris Mooney has a post up at The Intersection in which he lauds an LA audience for “getting” Sizzle, for laughing “at all the right moments”, and rues the fact that many ScienceBloggers “either didn’t like Sizzle or didn’t appear to get it”.