We’re All in the Pool With Michael Phelps

by Jim Washburn

Is marijuana a performance-enhancing drug? If not, then why should it be any business or concern of US Swimming-the organization that just banned Michel Phelps from competing for three months--whether he snorkeled on a bong or not?

If marijuana is such horrid stuff that anyone who smokes it needs to be banned from practicing his vocation, then wouldn't reason dictate that the substance must impose a heavy penalty of its own upon the user? What I mean is, if you get a guy who smokes weed and put him in a fairly competitive situation-let's say in a swimming pool competing against the absolutely finest swimmers that this planet of 6,759,214,936 persons can produce-then wouldn't it naturally proceed that marijuana's negative effect would be apparent in his ass getting kicked by every one of his non-weeded-up opponents?

When that isn't the result; when instead said weedhead prevailed against all comers to win more Olympic gold than anyone in history; and when writers, musicians and artists on weed have produced works that have illuminated the lives of hundreds of millions of people; and when at least three one-time weedheads have risen to what's arguably the most important job in the world-the presidency of the United States (Several founding fathers were also up to their wigs in hemp, I bet, because the Declaration of Independence is at least as bitchen as Rubber Soul); and when several of those United States have recognized that some medicinal albeit non-performance-enhancing benefit might be derived from said plant: then shouldn't officials perhaps shut the fuck up about how awful the stuff is, or at the very least stop clogging our prisons with those who consume or vend the stuff?

That latter bit costs us billions a year, more if you count new prison construction and the lost income and work product of those incarcerated. All over a plant that instead should be a profit center for our country?

Chances are that we won't get our television and lawn furniture manufacturing dominance back from China. One thing that we do still lead the world in is quality marijuana cultivation. Between Hawaii and California (sorry, Oregon, keep trying), we grow the best in the world. USA Number One! Yet, rather than capitalize on our skunky bounty, we criminalize it.

Early in the Bush administration, they ignored more pressing law enforcement matters-such as the "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" memo--to instead go after hemp additives in food. Even though you would literally drown in hemp oil before you'd begin to get a buzz from it, the Bush Justice Department took a zero-tolerance policy toward any hemp additives in food. These geniuses were bringing the full weight of the Federal Government to bear against your hemp granola, in a tenure otherwise historic for the number of people sickened or killed due to the Feds' lax oversight of the food industry. The administration was finally forced to back down by Canada, which unlike the US, allows commercial low-THC hemp production, and which sued under a NAFTA infringement of trade clause to keep the US market open.

So you can still have your hemp cake, but other countries are eating the profits, thanks to our arcane laws.

Back in 1966, Lenny Bruce told a Berkeley audience that pot would be legal within a decade, "because in this audience probably every other one of you knows a law student who smokes pot, who will become a senator, who will legalize it to protect himself."

Lenny had a great ear for hypocrisy, but he underestimated its tenacity. A decade came and went, then several more, yet pot has remained illegal because politicians have always known one thing and said entirely the other as regards the sweet leaf.   

I like the stuff plenty, but I've never been a Johnny Hempseed, believing it to be some Jah-given panacea for the world's woes. I also didn't formerly believe that the humble weed's suppression was, as some believed, the result of a dark corporate plot.

But, you know what? Research the history of marijuana prohibition, and you'll find there was a plot, wholly dark and corporate. Here's the Classics Illustrated version: DuPont (the same folks who suppressed the health effects of leaded gasoline for decades) held the patent on a chemical process used for making paper from wood pulp (which has proved to be another eco-horror). Hemp, which was used for superior sailcloth and other fun stuff, had been a competitive source of paper pulp, but it had fallen by the wayside because hulling it was labor intensive and costly compared to treating wood pulp.

But then a guy patented a hemp dehulling device (say that five times stoned) that made it a viable competitor again. DuPont backed folks in government and the press-respectively and notably narcotics officer Harry Anslinger and publisher William Randolph Hearst--who demonized the drug. The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed after Congress was bombarded with anecdotal racist accounts of Mexicans getting uppity while high, of white women mating with black men while high, of black men ax-murdering white women while high, generally in that order.    

As exaggeration goes, that was hundreds of tokes over the line. That's not to say smoking marijuana doesn't have its downsides. For example, I do sometimes wonder what the 1970s were like, and what I was doing during them. If I committed axe-murder or miscegenation during that hazy time, I apologize.

My favorite ever pot line was in Jackie Brown, when the bonged-up Bridget Fonda is asked, "Doesn't that rob you of your ambition?" and she responds, "Not if your ambition's getting high and watching TV."

There is that, but there was also Louis Armstrong making historically magnificent music for decades while on a daily regimen of marijuana and Swiss Kriss laxative; there was Army Specialist Peter Lemon, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for single-handedly fighting off two waves of Viet Cong attackers, and for-thrice wounded himself--dragging a wounded comrade to safety; Lemon later revealed he accomplished his feats high on weed; there is your brother Larry, who made those really good taquitos once when you were all toasted.

There are also people who abuse pot, cough syrup or whatever they can get and become a drag on society. But as conservative Orange County judge James Gray has pointed out for years, if you're that sort of screw up, you're going to wind up before his bench anyway, to be properly incarcerated or helped.

We've been fighting the "drug war" for well over half a century now, and there is no winning it. Try this for proof: Talk to anyone who's been in prison. They will tell you they can get any drug they want in there: heroin, meth, you name it. By that model, the government could put each one of us behind concrete walls, steel bars and razor wire, shave our heads and monitor us 24-7, and the "drug war" would still slog on unabated. 

Isn't it high time to thoroughly decriminalize pot? Obama may be president now, but Federal agents continue to raid marijuana dispensaries in California-as they did under Clinton and Bush--trumping states' rights to deny sick people their relief. Even though the country's in a gigantic financial and environmental mess, billions are being spent on eradication, police work, courts and prisons to fight a plant that Canada and other sane democracies are growing at a profit.

I suspect Obama is the least hypocritical president of my lifetime, but I don't expect him to address our drug laws anytime soon. He's got bigger problems and progress on those is already being slowed by enemies decrying his "radical, hidden agenda" regarding abortion counseling and other hot-button social issues. Remember how Clinton had barely stepped into office before he got blindsided by Republicans making a huge issue over allowing gays in the military? No one needs that sort of sideshow now.

But because the problems facing the nation are so big, Obama will have to address the drug laws eventually. With the straits we're in, we need to squeeze every last ounce of bullshit out of the system. We can't afford to keep tossing billions into senseless wars, drug or otherwise.

Some hempathizers will tell you that with the plant's long fibers and its seeds' oil, you could build and fuel an automobile, or build and heat a house, plus make some killer brownies. Even if that's far-fetched, you can certainly build houses or help people stay in the ones they have with the billions of dollars we'd save by decriminalizing the stuff. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.  

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