COP GONE. STRANGELOVE WINS.

I have no idea what has propelled Vancouver's Chief of Police, Jamie Graham, to announce that he will retire from his current post at the end of his contract in about a month's time. And, in fairness, I cannot or will not yet cast judgement on his tenure these past 5 years.

But I do know this. The current mayor, S.S., aka Dr. Strangelove, was at war with Chief Graham. Whatever they may tell the press and public, the truth is they barely tolerated each other's presence in the same room.

S.S. is on record saying that he doesn't think the police need more money or more officers - a notion completely and utterly out of synch with both the police and the taxpaying public. Dr. Strangelove's current council recently turned down exactly such a request from the Department.

Behind closed doors, His Lunacy, will tell anyone that listens that he has no patience for Enforcement, which is supposed to be one of the famous Four Pillars, that he doesn't want the police interfering in what he considers a medical issue, and frankly, he wishes that the police would just be quiet about addictions and other civic issues.

Maybe Jamie Graham should run for Mayor.

THE NUMBERS LIE

Next to armaments, which are NEVER discussed in the media, and oil and illegal drugs, the largest and most profitable business in the world is pharmaceuticals. Pills. Prescription drugs.

Why this enormous and often corrupt industry needs and gets the tacit and willing support of organizations that claim to be news gatherers is beyond me. Shall we be simple and just call it MONEY?

The headline today continues the Public Lie: ONE IN SIX North American adults suffer from clinical depression.

This is simply not true.

The so-called gay community managed for a while to convince the public that one in ten persons was homosexual. This is not true.

And so it goes. "Special interests" like the Pill Pushers, who after all have a patina of science and legitimacy on their sides, can corral the public airwaves and spew out this offending nonsense at will. The purpose is simple: SELL MORE PILLS.

No doubt there are many Canadians who are blue, and many Canadians who are miserable, and even many Canadians who might accurately be diagnosed as "clinically depressed." But for every one of those poor souls, there are dozens of sad men and women who are almost casually diagnosed by their doctors as clinically depressed, given their soma tablets and sent into pharmoblivion.

I'm sorry, but is GlaxoSmithKline or Merck or Pfizer paying for this latest onslaught of advertorial hogwash?

What is depressing is the laziness in the current State of Journalism.

Please use all your remaining common sense and reasoning when reading The Daily Droppings. All is not what it seems.