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A case of the vapours

WHEN is a drug not a drug? The UK government’s Psychoactive Substances bill seeks to prohibit the sale of consumables that affect a person’s mental state. Previously, the minister in charge of the bill, Mike Penning, insisted “We will ensure that we insert what we want to insert, while at the same time having a blanket ban” (14 November, 2015).

Now we learn what he meant as, in addition to the government’s own lengthy list of exempted inebriants such as alcohol and nicotine, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has been tasked with finding a way to exclude alkyl nitrites.

Otherwise known as poppers, this recreational drug is a popular sex aid because of its muscle-relaxing effects, as well as its instant high. , the ACMD reported that although poppers increase blood flow to the brain, they don’t cross the blood-brain barrier.

The ACMD concludes that any psychoactivity is a peripheral effect, and poppers do not directly stimulate the central nervous system – even though users feel a high. The circle deftly squared, another popular drug falls outside the UK’s increasingly threadbare blanket ban on drugs.

“Daylight Saving Time is A Reminder to Change Clocks” – Andrew Doble receives some timely advice from Florida’s Village Daily Sun

Sticky situation

FURTHER to observations on the quantum superposition of USB cables (5 March), Sue McDonald comes unstuck over another case of strange geometries.

“I was trying to find the end of the sticky tape on its roll,” she writes. “Assuming the roll is a circle with an infinite number of sides, I’ve experienced infinity + 1, which is the number of sides of the sticky tape roll I have to investigate before finding the end of the tape.”

Feedback thinks this is a serious underestimate – we have to rotate a roll of sticky tape through at least 720 degrees before finding the end.

Getting the chop

SWISS army equipper Victorinox have been pricked by criticism after a customer “neutral” pocket knives and one “female” model – which was, predictably, pink. Feedback pauses here to spare a thought for all the women who have been toiling with unsuitably gendered knives until now.

Taken to task, the company quickly announced that the offending classification would be cut from their website.

Herb refurb

IAN WITHAM writes in with a money-saving tip. “Those herbal remedies that contain none of the advertised herbs will not be wasted,” (12 March) he says. “They can be relabelled and sold as homoeopathic remedies.”

Inaccurate conception

WHAT mires lie in wait for scientists who stray from their field of expertise. Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson got bogged down earlier this month when he : “If there were ever a species for whom sex hurt, it surely went extinct long ago.”

Biologists quickly directed the space scientist to the many examples of painful sex, from barbed penises to traumatic insemination. In the face of many angry ornithologists shouting about duck vaginas, Tyson dialled back on his first tweet and offered an olive branch to the life sciences with another aphorism: “.”

Oh dear. May Feedback offer one in reply: “It’s better for an astrophysicist to remain silent on the subject of biology and be thought a fool, than to open his mouth and remove all doubt.”

Getting airs

A PRESS flyer from Alan Dolan, Lanzarote-based respiratory guru to the stars, invites Feedback’s colleague to his next breathing retreat, “a powerful and intensive five days in which to relax”, by, err, breathing.

But no ordinary breathing of course, this is Conscious Breathing, “a powerful and safe way to infuse the body with oxygen”. By wresting control of respiration from your brainstem – which Feedback notes has been managing it competently and continuously since the day you were born – Alan says you will enjoy a bingo card of vaguely worded benefits, such as higher levels of consciousness, re-energised systems, and a detox for every level of your being.

“I’m sceptical,” admits our colleague, “but I think I need to be sent to Lanzarote to investigate.”

Field study

THE apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: “Your mention of Lucy de la Pasture (5 March) reminds me of the novelist Mrs Henry de la Pasture,” writes Griselda Mussett. “Her daughter Esmée was also a novelist, and chose the name Delafield to mark the distinction between them.”

Silicon implants

A DENTAL firm is offering Glyn Williams ““. Aside from this sounding very uncomfortable, Feedback thinks it would be a chore having to upgrade your mouth every two years.

Weed whacker

IN CONTRAST to the UK, drug law reform in the US is of a more permissive kind, fuelling a commodities market in cannabis, but so far, possession is still illegal in Ohio.

However, you could be forgiven for wondering if the state’s leading gardening supplies manufacturer, The Scott’s Miracle Gro Company, is planning to diversify its business portfolio. A recent for the company’s lawn seed ran with the tagline “Grass: it smells good. It feels good. It looks good. It is good.”