So if 14-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps — the pride of Baltimore, of Maryland and yeah, of the entire nation — had done a beer commercial instead of having his picture taken smoking marijuana from a bong, those upset with him would have been OK with that?
Puh-leese.
For those of you who haven’t been following the news for the past week, last November Phelps was at a University of South Carolina house party when someone handed him a bong filled with marijuana — the evil dreaded weed, the killer and corrupter of our youth, an extremely controlled dangerous substance, if we’re to believe our lawmakers in Congress.
Phelps took a hit. A buddy of his took a picture of him taking that hit and hocked it. Editors at the British tabloid News of the World got a hold of it and dimed Mikey out, putting the photo out there for all to see.
Reaction has been mixed. Companies that Phelps does endorsements for condemned the weed smoking but stood behind their guy. Some observers have questioned Phelps’ judgment. The Olympian himself has given the obligatory apologies and made all the proper mea culpas.
I wonder what Mikey’s bong, if it could talk, would say about all this? My guess is it would be something like this: “I may be just a stupid, silly bong, but am I detecting the stench of hypocrisy here?”
Smart bong.
I’m not going to go on some pro-marijuana rant inspired by my membership in the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. I’m not a pothead, but lawmakers who continually criminalize marijuana use are going to have to make some darned good arguments that it’s more harmful than alcohol and tobacco. So far, they haven’t. But they continue to vote like it is.
When was the last time you heard one of those lawmakers take a record company to task for giving contracts to musicians and artists who make reference to marijuana use in their music? When was the last time you heard one of them publicly condemn radio stations that play such music?
Yeah, I thought not.
Now let’s cut to the chase: Phelps apparently likes to get high. Here’s the bad news, especially for our legislators in Congress: So do most of the rest of us. Want to see our courts backlogged for decades or maybe bankrupted completely? Let all the marijuana smokers in this country engage in a bit of civil disobedience and show up on courthouse steps smoking joints, daring prosecutors to arrest and prosecute them.
Pot may not even be America’s substance of choice for getting high. I suspect it’s beer. We’ve all seen how beer’s promoted during broadcasts of sports events. It’s the stuff we can’t do without. Drinking it is what makes us cool, makes us hip. The message of your basic beer commercial: You can’t live without the stuff, and without imbibing huge quantities of it.
Here’s the problem: Those commercials aren’t on late-night TV, where the little kiddies can’t see it. (Not if their parents are doing their jobs, anyway.) They’re on during the day — when National Football League and Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association games are played — for impressionable young viewers to watch. And the message they get is that drinking alcohol — lots of it — and hence getting high are really cool.
The NFL, NBA and MLB all have strict policies about players using drugs. Not one of those organizations has adopted this policy: There will be no alcohol, especially beer, commercials broadcast during our games.
It’s way past time to end America’s alcohol-marijuana hypocrisy. In a society as hedonistic as this one, it’s a little silly to moralize about which of these drugs should be legal and which one gets criminalized. If making marijuana legal or illegal were left up to the people who should make the decision — which is to say state legislators — the weed probably would have become legal in many states a long time ago.
Congress could act sensibly and responsibly by decriminalizing marijuana as early as next week. Then alcohol and marijuana would both be legal, with one distinct difference: At least we know we won’t see commercials promoting marijuana use during next year’s Super Bowl.
Gregory Kane is a columnist who has been writing about Baltimore and Maryland for more than 15 years. Look for his columns in the editorial section every Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at [email protected].
