Our Man’s press conference tonight was impressive. He did very well. Serious. Not here to fuck around.

I understand that this piece is not exactly timely. I began to write it some five days ago before my account was suspended for lack of funds. I’m still pretty pissed about the subject matter, so tonight I finished it. Here we go.

Yeah so, today Michael Phelps was suspended by USA Swimming from competing for three months and Kellogs Co. jerked his advertising contract. I would imagine these are but the first two dominos to fall given the archaiac and victorian sensibilities America still clings to so hypocritically and irrationally.

All this because he was photographed doing a bong rip. I shit you not.

The war on drugs is an even bigger joke, albeit without a punchline, than the war on terror. That’s a mouthfull. The war on terror has no punchline either.

Guess what America? Drugs won.

Mankind has sought to self medicate for thousands of years longer than the “War On Drugs” has even been a concept. America incarcerates more people per capita than any nation on earth. In large part, this phenomena is attributable to the jailing of non violent drug offenders. Ordinary people caught using or possessing marijuana. Soft drugs. We do this at a stratospheric expense, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

That would be you and me.

It goes without saying that if they aren’t criminals when they go in, they are by the time they get out. Unbelievably wrongheaded. Counterproductive. Counterintuitive.

You know what? I don’t give a mad fuck whether Michael Phelps smokes pot or not. He’s a smart and astonishingly accomplished young man. If he wants to smoke pot, who am I, or you, or anyone else to object, much less punish him for it? He won eight fucking Olympic Gold Medals.

None who read this or any who would judge him will ever come close to such accomplishment (s).

The salient question is, who really cares? I guarantee if you’re at all disturbed by his behavior, it’s the least of your problems.

I smoke pot. Regularly. I’m not ashamed to impart to you that most of my musings and diatribes are delivered to you here under the influence of El Bush De La Diablo. Well, that and Bombay Saphire (on sale last week at Ralph’s for $28.88, fucking A!).

It’s not unreasonable at all to assume that our past two presidents as well as the current, have availed themselves of the sinister shrub. Two out of three have admitted it. The middle one obviously had a brainwreck brought on by drugs far more serious than mere foliage. Either that or he’s retarded.

Maybe it was booze, more dangerous by the way, try to mitigate your children’s access. Talk to them about it. Don’t be so foolish as to expect they won’t be exposed to it before they’ve existed for at least eighteen years. They will have porn, pot and booze made available on a precious metal platter long before they graduate high school. Hope that’s all they have to contend with.

Don’t sweat the small stuff.

I was arrested once, for possession. Booked, fingerprinted and given an orange jumpsuit with plastic slippers. I was home home on vacation. In the passenger seat of a car going so fast we didn’t know we were being chased by the Reno Police. Sometime after 4 A.M. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill in Carson City, there were at least five cars waiting for us. I was searched illegally, never read my Miranda rights and ended up on the front page of the local paper the next day. “Visiting Record Company Personnel Net Drug Charges”. I had a thimble full of shake in the bottom of my back pack.

At that time, some twenty years ago, the drug laws in Nevada were among the most draconian in the country. A conviction meant prison automatically. I was fucked. I wasn’t driving, I’d done nothing wrong or illegall and I was looking at prison.

It was the worst day of my life.

I was lucky. My family, although not wealthy, was well connected. I expect a signed copy of Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s book for my birthday this month.

Drinks for my friends.

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