{"id":226,"date":"2009-08-09T18:23:33","date_gmt":"2009-08-09T23:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/?p=226"},"modified":"2012-05-15T21:04:05","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T02:04:05","slug":"billy-mays-corpse-gets-trampled-by-cocaine-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/09\/billy-mays-corpse-gets-trampled-by-cocaine-hype\/","title":{"rendered":"Billy Mays&#8217; Corpse Gets Trampled by Cocaine Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.suburra.com\/images%20-%20PD%20blog\/Billy%20Mays%20Cocaine%20Hype%20809%20WEB.jpg\" alt=\"Billy Mays Cocaine Hype\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Billy Mays is not alone. This scapegoating of cocaine goes on all the time. One review of 935 cocaine related deaths in New York City found that less than 12% were even <em>possibly<\/em> related to the pharmacological effects of cocaine. (Morgan, p. 140)<\/p>\n<p>Billy Mays&#8217; family was &#8220;extremely disappointed&#8221; with the autopsy report of the Hillsborough County medical examiner&#8217;s office (Florida). The family&#8217;s statement said that the report contained, &#8220;speculative conclusions that are frankly unnecessary and tend to obscure the conclusion that Billy suffered from chronic, untreated hypertension, which only demonstrates how important it is to regularly monitor one&#8217;s health.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To see how cocaine was similarly blamed for Ike Turner&#8217;s death go to <a href=\"http:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/18\/cocaine-did-not-kill-ike-turner\/\">&#8220;Cocaine Did Not Kill Ike Turner,&#8221;<\/a> and for a post on the actual deadliness of cocaine go to <a href=\"http:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/31\/drug-war-myth-726001-cocaine-is-deadlier-than-aspirin\/\">&#8220;Drug War Myth #726,001: Cocaine Is Deadlier Than Aspirin.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Addendum<\/strong> (October 18, 2009) &#8211; An independent medical examiner&#8217;s review of the autopsy results made public on October 15, 2009 found they, &#8220;do not support the conclusion that cocaine was a contributory cause of Billy`s death.&#8221; (Mays)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1. Robert Arthur, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.suburra.com\">You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos<\/a><\/em> (2008).<br \/>\n2. Deborah Mays, &#8220;Independent Evaluation Finds that Billy Mays&#8217; Death Was not Attributable to Cocaine Usage,&#8221; Reuters, 15 Oct. 2009. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/pressRelease\/idUS128068+15-Oct-2009+BW20091015\">LINK<\/a><br \/>\n3. John Morgan &#038; Lynn Zimmer, <em>Crack in America<\/em> (1997).<br \/>\n4. Mitch Stacy, &#8220;Billy Mays&#8217; Family: Never Saw Signs of Cocaine Use,&#8221; <em>San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>, 8 Aug. 2009. <a href=\"http:\/\/imgs.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?f=\/n\/a\/2009\/08\/07\/entertainment\/e134049D39.DTL\">LINK<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Billy Mays is not alone. This scapegoating of cocaine goes on all the time. One review of 935 cocaine related deaths in New York City found that less than 12% were even possibly related to the pharmacological effects of cocaine. (Morgan, p. 140) Billy Mays&#8217; family was &#8220;extremely disappointed&#8221; with the autopsy report of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,82,20],"tags":[30,349,563,31,403,389,404,394,392,393],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cocaine","category-drugs","category-media-bias","tag-billy-mays","tag-cartoon","tag-cocaine","tag-cocaine-deaths","tag-comic","tag-fatalities","tag-illustration","tag-junk-science","tag-overdose","tag-overdoses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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