With the inevitable recession-inspired legalization of marijuana in mind, Print magazine asked some design shops to propose packaging ideas for legal weed. And they agreed, because they love drugs! Click through for a good one, and a bad one.

The New York Times counts four different legislators trying to attack the epidemic of 'Viva Viagra!' ads from different angles: they violate decency standards, they promote dangerous overuse of risky drugs, they're a poor use of the tax code. Which is fucking true, come on:

The Way We Live Now: Taxed and Spent. But high! Marijuana taxes will save California from descending into Mad Max-dom. Residents celebrated by forsaking ugly shoes. Wall Street couldn't be happier!

Downtown artist Dash Snow died of a heroin overdose last week. The formation of his legacy is well underway. Was he an authentic artist with a tortured soul, or a selfish jerk who left his daughter fatherless?

The chef in this picture could be mixing some flour. But he could also be using the bowl to store his supply of coke. According to Jason Sheehan, a former chef and food writer, the odds that your next restaurant meal "will be prepared by someone on drugs" is "very high," since "cooks and coke go together like salt and pepper." It's not something they can help, mind you. Chefs are hard-wired to be coke fiends, Sheehan says, since "being a cook or a chef means being in the pleasure business," and is "the sort of person who has a yen for experimentation and excess." So if you're looking for ways to curry favor at your favorite restaurant, bringing a key of coke with you might not be such a bad idea. [TDB]

Turns out that a couple of state workers in Albany hid in some back room smoking weed and selling weed and watching DVDs and passing out on the couch instead of working. And?

Well here's an iPhone app that'll come in handy for most Gawker readers—Apple has approved something called "Cannabis," and it's awesome!

Drug addictions and rehab trips have - as much drugs themselves - been trendy forever. But what about weed addictions? The Times' Sunday Styles' 'bout to get all High Times on us and investigate. Bongs out, bowls packed? Blaze away!

Maniac publisher Felix Dennis sold Maxim for $250 million to Steven Rattner's Quadrangle Group in 2007; now, Rattner's firm is about to lose control of the magazine. Related: Dennis "once exclaimed at a meeting, 'I need to stop smoking crack.'"

Richard Gasquet is a professional tennis player who was suspended in May after testing positive for cocaine. But now he's been reinstated, thanks to one of the most thrilling Positive Drug Test Excuses of the 2009 season!

Dash Snow is already being branded an "icon." The downtown sperm-and-whatever-else artist died Monday night of a heroin overdose at the age of 27. And you can already spot the outlines of a Basquiat-esque art world canonization starting to form.

Multiple sources tell us that Dash Snow—photographer, semen artist, graffiti writer, and embodiment of the downtown NYC scene—has apparently died of a heroin overdose, two years shy of his 30th birthday.

While you were all just hanging out last weekend swimming in a pool and smoking weed, Michael Phelps was being quietly reintroduced as a pitchman for Subway.

Manic, floating disembodied eyeball in dark alley teaches kids about drugs. As always!

You should stop smoking, doctors say. Here, we have medications to help you stop, doctors say. But oh—these medications could make you kill yourself. What the hell is science good for?

Disturbing news for people who go through life with excruciating pain and rely on painkillers to get them through the day: A federal advisory panel voted yesterday to recommend a ban on Percocet and Vicodin, due to the drugs' potentially harmful effects on the liver. The recommendation doesn't mean it will become the law of the land; the FDA still has to vote on it. And the ban wouldn't have an impact on other popular painkillers like OxyContin, so Rush Limbaugh won't have to worry about taking up another cause. For the moment, at least. [NYT]

The FDA is poised to ban the popular painkillers Vicodin and Percocet forever!

California won't let the gays marry but it does let people micro-blog (medical) drug deals. Meet former Northwestern J-school student Dann Halem, who is building an online business selling weed on Twitter. How is this possible you ask?

New pieces about the final days of Michael Jackson are flooding the news, along with tributes, memorials, debates on the nature of the conversation about him, etc. If there's one article you have to read on it, however, it's this:

"Worldwide, (cocaine) prices range from $2 a gram in Panama to over $300 in New Zealand, according to the UN's World Drug Report." The UN further reports that Mexico got that sticky-icky and that candyflipping in Bulgaria is fun. [Economist]