wanting what you can't have: case study

for the past two years, canadian taras grescoe traveled the globe with one goal: to try various substances governments have deemed unfit for their populations. best of all, he wrote a book about it for those of us without the bail money to do that ourselves: "the devil's picnic: a tour of everything the governments of the world don't want you to try."

the book sounds fascinating; he even risked caning in singapore to eat illicit crackers under the nose of police officers. in an article about his book, taras writes this interesting (granted, perhaps hackneyed) tidbit of pop psych:

Everywhere I went I saw confirmation of a lesson humanity should have learnt in 17th-century Constantinople (where the sultans tried, and failed, to ban coffee)... ban something, and it only becomes stronger, costlier and more coveted than ever before.

Labels: political