A Box patron sent in the following in response to our query: "I happened to be at the Box night of raid. Very shocking to say the least. Didn't know what was going on as cops checked liquor bottles behind the bar with flashlights and went through every nook and cranny of the place. Still people were drinking and dancing like nothing was going on. Cuba made a quick exit as we were all hanging out at his table." Yeah, maybe it was a sound complaint, but maybe it was also not a sound complaint.

So! The Box was raided Thursday night, according to reports from Page Six and Eater, and while the cops searched the hoi polloi for drugs, famous people like Cameron Diaz and Jay-Z (and, uh, inveterate New York nightlife enjoyer Cuba Gooding Jr.) were allowed to sneak out of the club:

"The Police Department has fired a veteran counterterrorism detective who failed a drug test, finding that his claim that his wife had served him marijuana-spiked meatballs was not credible, Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said yesterday." Dude totes should have said pesto. Duh! [AP]

Rod Townsend (aka our commenter Momo), sometimes receives telephone calls from The Past, a mysterious entity that remembers where things used to be in New York before Starbucks and Whole Foods came to town.

Congratulations to this year's crop of hard-partying gays! The latest GHB-related death last weekend on Fire Island quickly follows on the heels of an "unprecedented number" of drug overdoses at the annual Pines Party on the last weekend in July, that big circuit party at which shirtless guys try to do just enough but not too much drugs (and, apparently, fail). Not noted in the report that follows from the president of the Fire Island medical offices—an unprecedented number of arrests of drug dealers at the party this year as well.

Guess what? Scientists at Oregon State University have "figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city's sewer plant." The researchers looked at ten unnamed American cities to see who snorts and smokes what. The findings?

According to an article in The Stranger, "Smoking pot is a guy thing. Guys are the ones who deal, buy, and smoke. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that adult males were 50 percent more likely to have smoked marijuana in the last month than females." Could be! Or maybe it's just that women lie more about their stonerosity because it's so much less acceptable for women to look lazy.

For a few seconds, the questions stopped and the doubts quieted. As Alex Balk's 756,000th post went live on Gawker last night, there were no thoughts of controversy or chemicals.

Eavesdropping on the gays is the surest way to find out what products and people are hot and what are not. Rod Townsend records the gays in and around their natural environment of Fire Island and reports back. All dialogue 100% verbatim.

Hey potheads! Wake up already! Got some scary news for your indolent, dope-smoking asses! A report commissioned by the government of the United Kingdom shows that "a single joint of cannabis raises the risk of schizophrenia by more than 40 per cent." There's a silver lining, though, for teenage dorks: The study suggests that the risks are higher for those who start smoking up during the formative teenage years rather than later in life. So you know that annoying athlete friend you had in high school who was always telling you that drugs were bad and only started smoking herself during college when she suddenly decided to be cool? She was right. And now you're crazy. Life can be so unfair sometimes.

"As cable networks pump out more original programming, a surprising number of drug users and problem drinkers are wobbling into the summer lineup.... Some watchdog groups say they are uncomfortable with the spread of drugs and alcohol on cable. 'To continue to just portray the drama of active addiction is just destructive. What we need is some stories that tell us about the positive side, and that's what recovery is,' says Robert Lindsey, president of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, an education and advocacy group." That's the positive side? We thought it was the whole "feeling great," "having fun," and "forgetting about your problems" thing. Maybe we've been doing it wrong. [WSJ]

DJ Samantha Ronson was accused of planting drugs in Lindsay Lohan's car, thereby setting her up for a sting by the paparazzi. (Please, like she would do her girl Lindsay like that!) Ronson's pissed, and suing paparazzi agency Sunset Photo, photo agency owner Jill Ishkanian (whose agency is currently under investigation by the FBI for hacking into US Weekly's computer system), and our highly trafficked friend Perez Hilton. Here's the info; more details as they come in.

We hear that drug delivery folk are having a rough time this week, what with the blowback from the utterly dumb and relatively unfrightening terror attempts in the U.K. A friend's dealer, from Premier, was all freaked out about dogs and backpack inspections, and said that all the delivery folk he knew were temporarily not using the subways and were working on foot. (What, don't they have car services or like Vespas or something? Oh, guess not, that's why they call them "runners.") Are your drugs arriving late or not at all? Let us know!

Uh, yeah, says "Access Hollywood."

Mitch Kapor, chairman of Linden Labs, on the potential of virtual worlds: "It reminded me of a drug experience in the days when we didn't know a dangerous recreational drugs could be." [CNET]

Stevie "Toro" Francis was the main informant on that silly JFK terror plot, says The Smoking Gun. Who's that? Why, he's the man who helped you go skiing on Craigslist! So then he got turned, and the FBI kept sending him to Guyana or something to entrap terrorists? It sounds like the plot of Joan Didion's "Democracy" mixed with a Steve Gaghan screenplay. Anyway, when dude got busted with $2 million bucks worth of coke a few years back, the price of your nosecandy surely went up. And that's the real terror yo!

Crystal meth is the Hurricane Katrina of illegal drugs. [Copyranter]

Times reporter Melena Ryzik has spent the last five months interviewing young New Yorkers about how, in spite of the fact that drugs are widely known to be bad, "cocaine is a prominent part of a night out." Using evidence gleaned from Craigslist, blogs, and quotes from cokeheads, Melena does a good job of showing that coke is so hot right now, but the question remains: why is this the case? Don't get me wrong: I am not trying to be all D.A.R.E. on you, because there are some substances I support wholeheartedly. But I've never really gotten the appeal of a drug that limpens dicks, promotes nasty-tasting postnasal drip, and turns ordinary sick hangovers into scenes from some cliché drug movie. I decided to get to the bottom of the mystery of what the appeal of blow is, besides getting to say all those incredibly cool-sounding euphemisms like "skiing" and "Bolivian Marching Powder." So I asked a wide array of—okay, I asked some professional blog-types—what they see in cocaine.

Rod Townsend (aka our commenter Momo), sometimes receives telephone calls from The Past, a mysterious entity that remembers where things used to be in New York before Starbucks and Whole Foods came to town.

Rod Townsend (aka our commenter Momo), sometimes receives telephone calls from The Past, a mysterious entity that remembers where things used to be in New York before Starbucks and Whole Foods came to town.