What If Phelps Didn’t Apologize?

I have the joy of living about 100 miles from where Michael Phelps performed his now infamous pot smoking stint captured on film. It turns out that it will probably have been the most expensive bowl ever smoked. They normally cost, what, a dollar? Phelps’ bowl will have cost him millions of dollars.

Via Avedon Carol comes an interesting take from Randy Balko. I pretty much agree with everything he says here. I don’t smoke pot, and whether or not it is legal doesn’t make a difference. Tobacco is legal and I don’t smoke it either. Seriously though, I don’t understand the moral outrage about pot. We hear so much about college binge drinking. It would be entirely possible for someone to sit down with a bottle of tequila and drink so much that they will lay down and die. This is beside the dangerous things that people do while drunk, but just the act of drinking that much can kill you. As far as I know, it’s not physically possible to smoke enough pot to kill you.

Put aside the medicinal uses for marijuana. Think through this situation. Imagine some young early 20s-ish punks are approaching you in the street and they look like they could be trouble. Would you prefer they were 1) drunk, 2) wired on cocaine, 3) hopped up on crystal meth or 4) high on pot? Of all those options, in which case do you think you’d have the least chance of them doing something unpredictable and possibly dangerous? Yeah, me too.