NEWS: Finally, Toddlers Get Access To Date Rape Drugs And Lead

POLITICS: Finally, Toddlers Get Access To Date Rape Drugs And Lead

It is a great time to be a kid. When I was young, my parents didn't buy me date rape drugs as a present for Christmas, which means I couldn't fall into a coma and wake up with no memory of what happened. Life sucked like that. We did have lead, but it was mostly in paint, not in toys, backpacks and dishes. Now lead is blowing up big time and it's everywhere.



Yesterday we learned that a popular toy named Aqua Dots contains little beads that, if ingested, turn into "hydroxy butyrate," a date rape drug.

It's called teaching kids how to party young.



The toy is also very popular in Australia, where it is called "Bindeez," because they are weird. It was named toy of the year at some Australian toy function. But they also like the boomerang, so whatever.

Aqua Dots is a very hot toy for Christmas. I think China's plan is to kill us with shoddy products, so obviously we should bomb them.

Exactly when does this end? Are the Chinese going to spray cyanide on lollipops?



The recalled products include:

Great, I've been rubbing "Big Red" on my balls daily for about a year. Lead is especially harmful to young children and can cause brain damage. Brains are sort of important. Putting lead paint on the surface of toys that kids love to shove in their mouth and up their anuses is a pretty bad idea. Last year Mattel recalled 21 million Chinese toys.



Now Consumer Reports is recommending people immediately stop using a variety of products.

Some of the items Consumer Reports listed have not even been included in recalls.

Huh, I wonder if any caps didn't end up in a kid's mouth?



Consumer Reports used lead testing kits that people can buy for home use. After a positive result, they did more testing in a lab. It's obviously great to have a private business telling us which products we should avoid, but wouldn't it be even better if our government stopped these products before they reached little Timmy and he sucked on them for 2 years, turning him into a moron? If only we had an agency called the Consumer Product Safety Commission, none of this would happen, right? Well, not in our "Business get to do whatever it wants" world.

Mmm, smell that? It's the Ron Paul no government world. Ask that baby how it feels about no regulation after it wakes up from its coma. The CPSC has chosen a brilliant path of allowing businesses to impose "voluntary" standards and not to take legal action against companies that refuse to recall dangerous products. They work for you!



Bush's choices to lead the CPSC have been, as expected, business folk. Current director Nord was a corporate lawyer for Kodak and previous director Stratton created a foundation, which advocates limited government and supports free-market economic principles. Yay! Ron Paul 08!



Not surprisingly, the CPSC is now blatantly disregarding governmental regulations. But, hey, what agency under Bush isn't?

And make no mistake about it, this is something we can lay at the feet of our terrible president. Under Clinton, the chairman of the CPSC only traveled at the expense of the agency or a media organization that wanted the chairman there to announce a recall.



The great thing about CPSC is that under Bush the agency seems to have taken a new role: Actually helping businesses to harm people.

The guys who worked under Clinton were a bit shocked.

But don't worry, George Bush is going to protect us.

Maybe you shouldn't put the people who spent their careers working for corporations in charge of agencies who fight for consumers against corporations, you fucking asshole.

If you don't eat the lead, the terrorists win. Ron Paul '08!

Nepotism!

Both Joe Biden and Barack Obama have been speaking out about how the GD NAFTA trade agreement has put our citizens in peril... our youngest citizens whom we must count on to pay for us in our dotterage etc.

I guess it is back to carving our own toys for our young, as even the most crunchy hippy store bought wooden toys might be covered with a poisonous shellack.

And without meaning to sound /paranoid/racist/usa-centric, why is it I strongly suspect this is not an accident, and that e.g. the Chinese sure aren't giving these brain melting toys to THEIR OWN CHILDREN???

*sigh* I don't even know what to say. this kinda shit is just plain ol rediculous!!!

I have said it before and I will say it again:

CHINA IS NOT OUR FRIEND.

At least not until we merge into one country and start living in space ships while shooting guns and wondering where the grenades are...........

americans control china, to get cheaper everything and the blame goes on china
thats so easy

good article reaper

btw, gbh which you and the associated press are identifying as a 'date rape' drug is taken recreationally, on purpose, and not with the intent of raping someone. the cases of drugging someone with gbh, roofies, or long island ice teas are absolutely henious, but they are few and far between.

most of the emergency room admissions in san francisco related to GBH are male, and the patients say they took the drug to get high, and didn't like the effect and were afraid they were dying (or they were brought in by friends who thought they were dying).

the reason this is important is that in some states, possession of gbh carries very significant penalties, because prosecutors and cops want the mere possession to be evidence of intent to rape, which is absolutely absurd and unsupportable with evidence.

but when press guys, even internet skin sites, call it a date rape drug, they spread the misinformation and panic. and panic leads to bad laws.

the press has to be careful how and what they say, becuase it doesn't take much to provoke lawmakers in the US into incarcerating more Americans. it's their favorite past time. (we like locking up our own even more than the Chinese do)

The grenades are made in China... by the lowest bidder.

Have we forgotten that China hates the U.S. , and the rest of Asia is kicking our economic asses with technology that we gave away or failed to develop, so that may not be so far from the truth.

growth and business at any expense, its the neo-con republican way, fuck the consequences

Nice firefly reference.

oh you Americans with your heads stuck up in your own shit perspective, do us all a favour and go eat another toy.

Boo hoo.

Wow, Obama actually has an opinion about an issue. That's fresh and invigorating.

*gasp*...

*sigh*...

Every day it's something: some new moral horror, heretofore unrevealed perils to our minds and bodies, or yet another blatant betrayal of trust by those we've foolishly empowered to manage our societies... After a while you just throw up your hands in disgust and walk away. Nothing any of us can do about it anyway, they're all crooks, and the world's going to hell in a handbasket. Unless it dramatically affects your own immediate personal life ("It isn't my kid who's been poisoned"), you just become numb to it all. What ever...

Thank heaven for blogs and online discussion boards like these, where we can announce our moral indignation to those who will listen, vent our outrage and commiserate ineffectually with our fellow citizens in abject powerlessness. As if our critique excuses our complacency.

You can't fight the bastards. Only thing to do is just drop out of the whole rat race, pack up and head for the boonies, drop out and try and live off the land. But that's too much bother, and besides, we forfeited our survival skills when we sold our souls to the corporate materialist dream of modern technological comforts and affluence, so forget that idea...

Fuck it. Who cares anyway...

I love how two of the most intelligent responses have been from people in Ecuador and Japan.

If we didn't think Globalization was such a good thing and reward corporations who now carry nearly 100% foreign produced goods (Walmart) with our continued patronage we might not have these problems. Walmart forces its suppliers to provide the absolute lowest cost on items, or they will find them somewhere else. This in turn has an effect on all other products in the same category because they will lose sales to the walmart brand because it is cheaper and Americans will almost always buy the cheaper product.
We protect our corporations and give them tax breaks while they pay us shit, actively work against unionization, buy our politicians, and generally rape us. I seriously doubt China as a country is purposefully attempting to kill us. Its more like our own unbridled capitalist ambitions are.

Ooops! I guess that's why I ended up buck naked on Santa Monica Boulivard with a currious pain in my ass. I thought those Aqua Dots where candy. That's the last time I take candy from strangers.

Ahh, corporations: always thinking of the children. And by "children," I mean "blossoming profit margins." But GBH is fun, right? I mean, it's a very popular toy...

I guess that explains Stewie Griffin's Sexy partys.

While this is mostly correct the drug is GHB for Gamma HydroxyButyrate not GBH what the press also neglects to mention is that it isn't some awful destructive street drug but rather a pharmaceutical drug that has passed through the FDA and now goes by the name of Xyrem (sodium oxybate). While overdose can cause "coma" and the like it isn't a coma in the traditional sense as people don't stay in the "coma" but wake up after a few days they are just unresponsive while sleeping.

Bahahahaha!!!

But on the other hand, WTF am I supposed to buy my kids for Christmas? Seriously, get out there and try and find toys that are NOT from China.

While each of these toy recalls is upsetting and the topic of toy safety deserves to be discussed, why is parental responsibility NEVER considered in any of this? I have two girls under age 3, and there is no way in hell my child could consume several dozen of anything without my or my wife's knowledge. I'm sure the age recommendation on this toy was well over 20 months (which another paper reported the child's age as). Who of us didn't play with far more dangerous toys as kids? What toy ISN'T dangerous or even deadly when you swallow several dozen of them? You have to watch your kids -- it's a fact. Take the poison out of this toy and swallowing a ton of them is still dangerous...

Uh oh... while I was writing this my child swallowed 9 Bratz-doll heads and now she's sick! I'm calling a lawyer...

AH! I forgot about boomerangs!

Date Rape Dots were clearly not ready to be sold. I think once they make the batch more powerful and capable of putting full-grown adults into comas, they'll resume production.