America is near the top of the list:
The Pacific island of Palau reports the highest rate: nearly a quarter of people aged 15 to 64 smoked pot in the past year. Italians and Americans also like to get high, with rates of 14.6% and 14.1% respectively. In Uruguay, where plans to legalise cannabis are being mooted, the rate is 5.6%. While consumption is stable or falling in much of the developed world, it is rising in parts of Asia and Africa.
More info on drug use of all types here.
I recently suggested that "most of the polling outfits show Obama with a solid electoral college lead, while the race is still nationally very tight." Nate Cohn doesn't buy it:
FiveThirtyEight actually gives Romney a better chance of winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, in part because many prolific state pollsters have Democratic-leaning house effects. There is a high evidentiary burden for demonstrating that any candidate holds a structural advantage in the Electoral College. The Electoral College almost always follows the popular vote, and even when the popular vote winner fails to secure the necessary electoral votes, it isn’t necessarily apparent in advance. Heading into Election Night 2000, the fear was Gore winning the Electoral College and Bush winning the popular vote. The exact opposite happened only a few hours later. In an extremely close national election, deviations of only a few percentage points in the closest few states can complicate even the best gamed electoral scenarios.
Cohn doubles-down in a later post.
The RNC hits Obama on his first assertion of executive privilege over documents related to Fast and Furious (the unprecedented vote to cite Holder for contempt of Congress is scheduled for tomorrow):
Along the same lines, last week Jon Stewart skewered the "differentiate your party's assertion of executive privilege from the previous administration's!" game. Alicia Mundy has more on the well-trodden hypocrisy line on executive privilege.
Previous Ad War Updates:
June 26, June 25, June 22, June 21, June 20, June 19, June 18, June 15, June 14, June 13, June 12, June 11, June 8, June 6, June 5, June 4, June 1, May 31, May 30, May 29, May 24, May 23, May 22, May 21, May 18, May 17, May 16, May 15, May 14, May 10, May 9, May 8, May 7, May 3, May 2, May 1, Apr 30, Apr 27, Apr 26, Apr 25, Apr 24, Apr 23, Apr 18, Apr 17, Apr 16, Apr 13, Apr 11, Apr 10, Apr 9, Apr 5, Apr 4, Apr 3, Apr 2, Mar 30, Mar 27, Mar 26, Mar 23, Mar 22, Mar 21, Mar 20, Mar 19, Mar 16, Mar 15, Mar 14, Mar 13, Mar 12, Mar 9, Mar 8, Mar 7, Mar 6, Mar 5, Mar 2, Mar 1, Feb 29, Feb 28, Feb 27, Feb 23, Feb 22, Feb 21, Feb 17, Feb 16, Feb 15, Feb 14, Feb 13, Feb 9, Feb 8, Feb 7, Feb 6, Feb 3, Feb 2, Feb 1, Jan 30, Jan 29, Jan 27, Jan 26, Jan 25, Jan 24, Jan 22, Jan 20, Jan 19, Jan 18, Jan 17, Jan 16 and Jan 12.
If that's what SCOTUS decides, Jonathan Cohn will continue to support the law:
[A] ruling that invalidated the mandate only would not be catastrophic: Fewer people would end up with insurance and the program, as a whole, would be less efficient. But the core elements of the system would remain in place, people with pre-existing medical conditions would finally have access to comprehensive coverage, the deficit would actually end up slightly lower, and people making less than four times the poverty line (about $90,000 a year for a family of four) would pay the same as they would if the mandate were still in place.
Are the old and the uneducated:
Children may be stereotyped as rotting their brains with too much TV, but actually the time spent in front of the tube generally rose steadily with age. … Additionally, the less educated you are, the more TV you watched on the average day last year. Americans with college degrees spent 1.76 hours watching television on the average weekday, whereas high school dropouts spent an average of 3.78 hours per weekday.
(Chart from Derek Thompson)
Brian Fung highlights new research suggesting "there's little basis to assume a causal relationship between age and hormone decline":
The study subjects were tested for blood testosterone at the beginning and at the end of a five-year study period. The passage of time evidently had very little effect on the sample population in the aggregate; on average, testosterone levels declined about one percent per year. But when the researchers examined test subjects in groups, they found greater declines among those who, at either end of the study, had been obese, depressed, or had quit smoking. What this suggests is that the aging process may have only a marginal role to play in the testosterone decline observed in older men.
But testosterone does decline as you get older, for whatever reason. HIV and its medications have wiped out my own testosterone production. I'm now on implants – which sure beats the fortnightly jab in the hip.
A soothing tour of the globe:
Nate Silver's advice for gauging the impact of the SCOTUS decision in the near future:
[T]o the extent there are political implications from the court’s ruling, they are likely to stem from the headlines and not the fine print. If the court strikes the individual mandate while leaving the rest of the bill intact, for instance, Republicans will still have a strong talking point – the Supreme Court has ruled Mr. Obama’s most ambitious policy unconstitutional – even though this might represent a decent policy outcome for Mr. Obama as compared to a more sweeping ruling.
Related Dish coverage here.
A reader writes:
My friend died of AIDS on April 25 this year. Unlike
themselves were attacking his organs over time. He was only nine. He is survived by his older sister and many friends who are also living with HIV.
The long term survival of all my young friends living with HIV is very much in question today, because they are poor. A decade ago life saving ARV’s were finally produced for the poor, and today they are still taking the same drugs. There are only two levels of treatment available for them. I hate to think what will happen when the kids on second level treatment start failing, and the time will come. They are dying because their medications are toxic and time limited. A new ARV option would be a major gift for them.
Now that people in the developed world have Complera, will there be another great campaign to provide similar treatment in generic form for the poor?
More on the life and death of our reader’s friend here. Previous posts in the AIDS thread here, here, here, here and here.
(Photo by Andy Gray)
Steve Weinstein investigates:
It’s hard to believe that a mere 10 years ago, up to 2,000 men [in NYC] were dancing into Sunday morning at the Roxy; in the ’80s, 3,000 members were packing the Saint for 18-hour marathons. Today, the city’s only dedicated gay dance club, XL, has an official capacity of 750, which along with a few smaller dancefloors in bars like the Ritz and Splash, is the only game in town. Meanwhile, Manhunt, the granddaddy of hookup sites, boasts 200,000 active users in the city. With more than 400,000 local log-ins a week, New York makes up 10 percent of Manhunt’s user base.
The Internet has done to gay bars what it did to the music industry. Add the mobile apps like Grindr and Scruff and we're close to unraveling the entire infrastructure of gay life that once brought people, however uncomfortably at times, together. There's nothing to be done, of course, except expand those physical spaces where gay men can hang outside of bars: gyms, sports leagues, resort towns, sports bars, diners, restaurants, coffee shops, and so on. And that is not the end of gay culture as such; just the end of what we knew as gay culture, and its isolation from the mainstream.
We asked for this. And there are times when we should take yes for an answer. Reinventing gay life is in some ways more liberating than clinging to its more moribund past habits.
The Dish 