Who's Feeling No Pain?

The latest trendy drugs are old-fashioned painkillers. They're chic, mellowing and way addictive

At last, America's most notorious hip-hopper and many of the parents who hate him have something in common. Pills. Specifically, prescription painkillers like Vicodin. Eminem, who sports a Vicodin tattoo on his left arm, is the pill's unofficial spokesperson. Last month, in his duet with Elton John at the Grammys, he rapped, "I'm on a thousand downers now/ I'm drowsy." It's easy to imagine that, as they glared at the TV, boomers around the country alleviated their annoyance at Eminem's notoriety by swallowing the very drug their nemesis was naming.

These days, cocaine is passe. Ecstasy is for kids. The...

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