Furious Media: Date-rape drug is an "urban myth"

Listening to Cosmo radio today, (yes, I'm just as bad as any other man in the grocery store, sneaking peaks through our female significant others' Cosmopolitan to find out what she's going to read about what makes us "really tick"), Diana Falzone was on with her show, Cosmolicious. She brought up a study that has been making it's round on the blogs, twitter, and media - a study from the UK that purports that the date-rape drug is just an urban myth. Her fury at these scientists was almost tangible to me, by myself in the car. She was up in arms about how these scientists from the United Kingdom would dare to say that the date-rape drug is just a myth.

My fury stems from the fact that she misread and misinterpreted the whole study.

Now, I'm disagreeing with Diana - those Doctors and Ph.D.'s should know better than just shoot off phrases like that. Their study is going out to the internet, for crying out loud, to be scrutinized by anyone and everyone.

But by no means is the studying meant to prove that inexistence of the date-rape drug. They're not saying date-rape drugs don't exist! They're saying that nowadays many women who go out drinking mistakenly assume and reason that if they blackout or lose control that it's because they were under the influence of someone spiking their drink. Maybe women should watch how much they drink, instead of worrying about protecting their drinks. Or drinking too much and then walking home alone. Or taking drugs and drinking.

The world is a scary place out there - but c'mon. Not every other guy in the bar has a bag of rohypnol in their pocket, just waiting for you to turn away for a millisecond so they can dump the contents into your drink.

The scientists producing the study even say that further research would be fruitful if they could understand why this exists as such a widespread mentality amongst women, when most of the time, blackouts or loss of control is due to other drugs or an over-consumption of alcohol.

Diana, who graduated with a BA in Psychology, might've wanted to read all that a little study a little more carefully.

Article in the Telegraph, a British media outlet: http://bit.ly/8XZ0fy

Kent University article about the study: http://bit.ly/4sDzqK