Bath salts: "Since then, McAfee has reportedly been spending his time researching MDPV, a stimulant that can produce similar effects to methamphetamine. It is illegal in the United States." 0.o
> a stimulant that can produce similar effects to methamphetamine
That can describe many substances, both legal and illegal: street meth, Adderall, Vyvanse, Desoxyn, MDMA - the list goes on. Even caffeine could be said to produce 'similar effects' - both are stimulants and diuretics that have comparable in vivo half-life times (depending on the means of ingestion).
> It is illegal in the United States.
Well, that doesn't mean much. Methamphetamine is illegal, except when it isn't (prescribed). And the US drug scheduling (which determines the degrees of legality) is so nonsensical that it may as well be randomly generated for all it tells us about the relative dangers and harms of a substance.
My point is that this is a rather irresponsible journalistic statement. If they want to portray MDVP as a dangerous substance, that's a pretty terrible comparison that fails to get the point across to anybody who knows a thing or two about psychoactive substances.
Which is arguably a single digit percentage of ars readers.
My background in journalism has taught me to favor the former.
I don't think it's a coincidence that most modern journalism isn't worth reading, IMHO.
> Or you do, but it's just decades old from a time when the goal was to inform and not just get page views?
It's not decades old - I just like to think we did a good job of writing informative pieces instead of sensationalist nonsense.
At least, we made a very, very dedicated effort to follow journalistic ethics - I'll let others be the judge on how well we succeeded. :-)