(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing Friday: "junk food" resembles drugs like junk [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-03-10 Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well. But it tastes so good, especially when someone offers you a taste. It was this topic or the LaChoy Dragon. The shallow stereotype that criminals are innately bad people neglects an important economic truth: people respond to incentives. Often, criminals are simply responding to economic incentives to steal, sell drugs, etc., just as other people respond to economic incentives to pay taxes, go to work, etc. One of the Freakanomics authors’ most important points about crime is that crime can be a rational behavior. For people who live in impoverished neighborhoods with few job opportunities, crime can be the best way to lead a productive, happy life. Thus, people often turn to crime because of their ambition, intelligence, and optimism, not because of their innate “badness,” as conventional wisdom would have it. Indeed, close analysis of criminal practices like the drug trade reveals the sale of crack cocaine to be structurally identical to the sale of McDonald's hamburgers. As the authors show, criminals "manage" drug gangs in the same way that managers run fast food franchises. www.litcharts.com/... (2021) In 1979, a controversy was brewing at McDonald’s. The concern was over a small plastic utensil that had a spoon on one end and the company's name and those famous arches on the other. Millions of the spoons were in the company’s restaurants all over America, and most people were using them for their intended purpose—to stir coffee. But others had discovered an alternative use: The spoons were purportedly also ideal for snorting cocaine. The contrast in the family-friendly brand being misappropriated for illegal narcotics consumption began in the 1970s, when drug users and dealers frequenting McDonald’s noticed that their coffee spoons could hold enough powder for a potent sniff and, at 5 inches long, were small enough to tuck away for future use. (PCP enthusiasts had the same idea.) Drug culture even gave it a shorthand—it was dubbed the “McSpoon.” Remarkably, the adoption of the McDonalds stirrers as a helpful cocaine device was not limited to the product’s user base. Far from it. According to Barbara Mikkelson at snopes.com (which has confirmed the story), “The practice of using these implements in such fashion became so widespread that at least in some cities, a dose of cocaine was dubbed a ‘McSpoon’ because it came packaged in the tiny coffee stirrers from McDonald’s restaurants. ... In 1992 an undercover detective in Columbus, Ohio, said McSpoons were commonly sold ten to a bundle in that town and twelve to a bundle in Detroit” (emphasis added). Eventually, the supply of spoons dried up. The utensils made a brief reappearance in the news in 2005 when artists Tobias Wong and Ju$t Another Rich Kid, a.k.a. Ken Courtney, debuted Coke Spoon 02, a gold-plated version meant as a commentary on how society can appropriate innocuous items. www.mentalfloss.com/... (2017) A night shift manager at a Bronx McDonald’s was dishing up more than ​burgers and ​fries — he was busted for ​offering a side of cocaine in his Happy Meals.​ Authorities caught Frank Guerrero, 26, red-handed during a three-month undercover investigation dubbed “Operation Off the Menu,” according to the city’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/10/2040609/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-Friday-junk-food-resembles-drugs-like-junk Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/