Happy Birthday, Viagra!

As this Cincinnati Enquirer report notes, 'twas five years ago when Viagra, the first federally approved, purely recreational drug, hit the streets. It was in its way the perfect symbol of the Clinton years, aka The Decade of the Penis.

If Viagra hasn't quite ushered in the next stage of the sexual revolution dreamed of by Herbert Marcuse and Al Goldstein, it's left everyone who uses it (and their partners) a little bit better off. The one possible exception, of course, is Liddy Dole, wife to erectile-dysfunction pitchman and Britney Spears voyeur Bob; who doubts that one reason she was so desperate to run for Senate was to get away from a 900 year-old Pepsi-swilling, Viagra-gulping house husband?

The Viagra precedent, though, also raises this fundamental question regarding drugs: Why won't the government allow the sale of other, equally recreational drugs? Not all of us have trouble in the boudoir and, quite frankly, airplane glue and codeine-based cough syrup are no substitutes for currently illegal substances.