................................. To leave Commie, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html ................................. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/23/technology/circuits/23DIAR.html In Search of Marijuana For me, back-to-school means squeaky-new sneakers, fresh marble notebooks and a sigh of relief. But for Web search engines, it means tracking a predictable rise in online searches for marijuana. At Lycos, for example, marijuana is consistently among the top 50 most-searched terms. But the numbers always dip in the summer. Aaron Schatz, who tracks the top searches in the weekly Lycos 50 column (50.lycos.com), speculates that this is because most such searches are initiated by college students. He may be right: Mari- juana use is indeed rising steeply among college students, according to a report released last fall by the Harvard School of Public Health. Over all, marijuana ranked 20th on the engine's list of top search terms in 2000, up from No. 32 in 1999; last week it ranked 30th. It is the subject, Mr. Schatz said, of more than three times as many queries than the most searched-for legal drug - Viagra.
