Lean, aka DXM, a popular narcotic drink in Southern rap culture made by combining Arizona Watermelon juice or Sprite with Robitussin DM cough syrup and Skittles or Jolly Ranchers.
Photo Credit: The Brenner Brief

NewsBusters, Press Perpetuates 'Iced Tea' Myth in Coverage of Zimmerman Verdict and Trayvon Martin Demonstrations

PJTV's Bill Whittle explained the drink's relevance in a must-see video (1) posted on Friday:

... And then there's the issue of the candy and the iced tea.

Now we were told that Trayvon -- again, an innocent child, simply went to the store to buy some candy and some iced tea. But it wasn't just any candy, and it wasn't iced tea. It was Skittles candy, and a drink called Arizona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail.

... The prosecution continued to keep up this deception by referring to this drink as "iced tea," and some have speculated that they did so to avoid the racial sterotype of black people and iced tea. But there's a much better explanation.

Because if you take Arizona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail, a bag of Skittles, and add simple cough syrup, you get a cheap, codeine-based drink called "lean."

Now there's an entire online subculture devoted to the use of "lean," which Trayvon was familiar with.

We have screen grabs of him trying to score some codeine online, and instead being told he could make some "fire-ass lean" using cough syrup, skittles, and Arizona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail. Seems a bit of a coincidence to me that the only two items he picked up out of the entire 7-11 were two-thirds of the ingredients needed to make "lean."

Now additionally, we have a report from his autopsy that revealed a form of liver damage in this otherwise healthy young man just a few days short of 18 that are consistent with the kind of trauma that excessive "lean" usage does to an otherwise healthy liver.

And most importantly, the online subculture refers to a number of psychological symptoms associated with the use of "lean," the two most prominent being extreme physical aggression and paranoia.

We could do this for hours.

We could, but we don't have to.

The fact that the prosecution engaged in deception over the drink Martin purchased doesn't excuse the press from perpetuating that deception. Yet it has, which is why Whittle's final question is so deeply troubling:

... if all of this political power and journalistic malfeasance can be depoloyed to sell a tortured lie as in the case of this little story, then what political power and journalistic malfeasance do you think might be deployed in making us buy a much larger one?

The world is better off without this piece of shit loser-thug. If this country were filled with mostly intelligent, rational beings then today there wouldn't be a city without at least one street renamed "George Zimmerman Boulevard."

Notes

(1):

YouTube, AFTERBURNER w/ BILL WHITTLE: The Lynching