In a UC/Irvine and Georgia Institute of Technology study, it was found that intense exercize causes anandamide, a chemical similar to the intoxicating agent in marijuana. This may be the source of “runner’s high” that people like Jim Fixx liked to promote as the “healthy high.” As anandamide is a cannabinoid like THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, this means that the high may not be significantly more or less healthy than that of marijuana–with the exception that you get some exercize instead of smoke inhalation getting said high.

But if someone produces anandamide artificially and begins selling it, will people start testing for it the way they do other chemicals? Will running shoes be classed “paraphernalia” when overweight stoners buy them to disguise the fact they get theirs artificially?

Of course, the one thing that won’t happen is that the White House Office of Drug Control Policy decide that cannabinoids aren’t that harmful and regulation of them differently from alcohol is pointless.

I await their condemnation of runners as paranoid, unintelligent slackers who lie and cheat to have their way.