Opinionated, Marginally Informed Rant of the Week

Like most people, I was shocked and saddened by the recent revelations regarding Michael Phelps' apparent use of marijuana. I'm sure you share my deep disappointment that an icon of Phelps' magnitude so flagrantly disregarded his moral and legal obligations.

Yeah, I can't keep a straight face, either.

Mostly, I just think Phelps is a dope (oh, yeah, you'd better believe that was intentional) who should know better than to put himself in a situation where others can profit from his notoriety. Otherwise, he was doing something literally millions of people his age do. The reflexive hand-wringing that inevitably accompanies athlete/celebrity pot busts is the real (and sadly predictable) disappointment.

"But what about the children? Think of the impressionable children." Michael Phelps has no more obligation to my children than do you, in terms of teaching them responsibility for their actions and how to make good choices. And if you believe otherwise, keep your delinquent offspring clear of my daughters.

Despite the protestations of the news media (hypocrisy, thy name is ink-stained wretch) marijuana is a fact of life in modern America, especially (though not exclusively) among younger generations. Our choice is to moralize, criminalize, and generally overreact, or to develop systemic structures to regulate, tax, and manage its distribution and use. The default setting: hysteria. We spend an estimated $69 billion each year in America enforcing drug laws. We incarcerate three times as many people (more than 1.9 million each year) on drug charges today than we did in 1980 - and bear the commensurate societal costs. I'm no economist, and I'm sure as hell no public policy expert, but if we take those costs out of the system and replace them with tax revenue and a regulatory framework (read: jobs), well, that'd be economic stimulus I think we could all get behind.

And change we can all believe in.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Late addendum from Andrew Sullivan on the possibility of Phelps being charged with a crime, quoted in its entirety because I couldn't have said it better:

"America's drug war insanity deepens. What I love about the harrumphing is its total incoherence. The argument, so far as I can tell, is: a) marijuana destroys people, renders them incapable of productive and worthwhile lives; b) yes, the new president and the greatest Olympic swimmer of all time have smoked pot; c) but that means we have to punish them all the more! Because they disprove the lies required to sustain the Prohibition.

The more the myths of the anti-cannabis brigade are exposed, the more they have to be enforced. For my original pro-Phelps splutter, see here."