Phelps did something very common, not evil
Posted: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 5:37 PM
Let’s start with the obvious: When it comes to common sense in social situations, Michael Phelps is not the freshest clam in the chowder. When you’ve spend the last six years of your life soaking in chlorine every day, that’s probably not that surprising.
But Phelps is a regular Einstein compared to Sheriff Leon Lott of Richland County, S.C. That’s the lame-brained lawman who has declared that he is going to try to prosecute the 14-time gold-medalist swimmer for smoking pot. Lott’s evidence is a picture that appeared in a British newspaper of Phelps sucking on a bong.
“Our narcotics division is reviewing the information that we have, and they’re investigating what charges, if any, will be filed,” said Lott’s spokesman, Lt. Chris Cowan. (Apparently, the way to get ahead in the Richland County Sheriff’s Department is to have an alliterative name.)
I’m going to assume that Phelps wasn’t inhaling pipe tobacco in that bong. Just the same, Phelps didn’t say he smoked weed in the apology he issued. And last I checked, there’s no way to send a picture of smoke to a lab for chemical analysis. So I’m going to assume that the tough-on-drugs sheriff is playing to the grandstands. Must be an election coming up.
Just the same, it’s a pathetic statement and a poor use of public funds. They’re actually investigating someone who passed through town on a visit based on a picture in a newspaper?
Phelps was at a house party at the University of South Carolina. My guess is that if Lott decided to raid the university, he’ll spend the rest of the year burning the weed he’ll find and the next five years prosecuting half the student body – not to mention the faculty.
But if Lott really wants to get tough on those evil drug users, why doesn’t he start with his own department. I can just about guarantee that somebody in his department takes a toke now and then. And in the unlikely event that nobody does, he can surely find a deputy or two who’s using chemical aids to help get faster results from those weightlifting sessions.
I’m not demeaning cops here. I’m just telling the truth. You can’t find a profession that doesn’t have its share of people who have smoked dope. Heck, Barack Obama is the third straight president who has admitted to experimenting with drugs. Sarah Palin admitted to smoking weed when she was young. So did Newt Gingrich, Bill Bradley, Al Gore (Yeah, I know, no surprise there.), N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Pierce Bronson, William F. Buckley, Bing Crosby, Errol Flynn, Louis Armstrong, Bob Hope, Margaret Mead, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Super Bowl MVP Santonio Holmes and Queen Victoria – and that’s just the short list. Check it out, complete with references, here.
The criminalization of marijuana has saddled hundreds of thousands of Americans with criminal records and put far too many otherwise innocent people in jail at enormous public expense. All for using a substance that was declared illegal through the efforts of a racist puritan named Harry Anslinger.
Yes, Phelps was dumb, but it’s time we stopped acting shocked at learning that productive members of society smoke pot. It’s time we stopped talking about how dumb Phelps is and now dumb the laws are.
The HuffPost (I know, a hotbed of liberalism, but also of pretty good writing.) has several excellent columns on the subject. I’d start with this one by John V. Santore, pointing out the hypocrisy of marijuana laws that are enforced disproportionately against minorities. A sample:
A study released [in April, 2008] reported that between 1998 and 2007 [in New York City], the police arrested 374,900 people whose most serious crime was the lowest-level misdemeanor marijuana offense.
That is more than eight times the number of arrests on those same charges between 1988 and 1997, when 45,300 people were picked up for having a small amount of pot...
...Nearly everyone involved in this wave of marijuana arrests is male: 90 percent were men, although national studies show that men and women use pot in roughly equal rates. And 83 percent of those charged in these cases were black or Latino, according to the study. Blacks accounted for 52 percent of the arrests, twice their share of the city's population. Whites, who are about 35 percent of the population, were only 15 percent of those charged -- even though federal surveys show that whites are more likely than blacks or Latinos to use pot.
Instead of laughing when these things happen, we fake outrage and lecture the malefactors about their behavior. The folks lecturing the loudest are frequently people who’ve smoked the stuff themselves.
We’re afraid to say what we’re really thinking for the same reason no one wants to admit to being an atheist and a lot of people are still afraid of owning up to being gay. You can lose your job or give up hopes of ever getting that promotion – all for doing something that polls say 40 percent of Americans have admitted doing. You may as well arrest people for participating in March Madness office pools.
Phelps has done little but train for at least six years. For a year before the Olympics he didn’t take a single day off, not Christmas, not New Year’s, not his birthday, not his mother’s birthday. Very few of us can even conceive of the level of work and dedication he put into winning those eight gold medals. Taking a bong hit at a campus house party is dumb. Is this guy so disconnected he’s never heard of cell phone cameras or Facebook? But it doesn’t diminish him or his records in any way. What he did may be illegal, but there are probably 100 million Americans who have done the same thing.
I’m encouraged that his sponsors are sticking by him and have said it’s no big deal. It may be a sign that we’ve finally had it with the senseless criminalization of people for no good reason at all. More and more states are passing referendums authorizing the use of medical marijuana and the decriminalization of possession of small amounts for personal use.
Phelps’ sin isn’t doing something extraordinarily evil, but something utterly common and banal. He took a bong hit at a college party? Wow! What are you going to tell us next, that a member of the genus Ursa defecated in a stand of trees?
