--- In SkateFans@yahoogroups.com, Suzanne Lainson <slainson@...> wrote:

> Based on the photo that the showed of her in the article, she didn't
> look like she had been personally using meth. All the photos I have
> seen of meth users look like they had been living on the streets and
> she looked healthy.
>
> So maybe she wasn't a user herself.

It takes awhile before a meth user develops that "living on the streets" look,
although it happens faster with meth than with other drugs. Jodie Sweeten, the
actress who played the middle daughter on "Full House" was once addicted to meth
and she was using for quite some time before her husband knew about it. I hope
Nicole wasn't using meth, but you can't really tell from the photo.

> At any rate, running a drug operation is definitely a bigger story
> than a DIU or even suffering from addiction, which appeared to be the
> heart of Bowman's story.

I've been doing some research on meth rings for a story I'm writing. The fact
that Nicole is facing 10 years in prison and is in jail with $200,000 bond
indicates serious involvement, as opposed to a situation like you'd see on
"Cops" where she gets pulled over and they find a small amount of drugs in her
car or something along those lines.

> Also, celebrity stories circulate so much faster now that that may be
> another reason why she's getting more coverage than Bowman did.

Yeah, Bowman competed before the skating boom and before the Internet as we know
it existed. Also, the powers-that-be in the skating world covered up a lot of
the trouble he got himself into in order to preserve the image of our fine
sport. I do remember the posters on the old Prodigy skating board discussing one
of Christopher's arrests, somewhere around 1993 or 1994-ish. But even at that
point, he was no longer competing or performing and the only people who would
have read that particular Internet discussion were fans like ourselves.