It is hard for those who believe in liberty to find anything wrong with adults choosing to do what they want so long as they are not violating the liberty of others. Michael Phelps was recently “caught” smoking marijuana. I expected nothing less than a complete backlash against the star athlete after I had heard about that. I am happy to hear that a good number of his major sponsors have stood by him including Visa, Speedo, and Omega.

However, Kellogs decided to drop Phelps. This is understandable considering their demographic. I am sure a majority of parents in America were appalled by his behavior. The irony is that smoking pot is an American pastime. It isn’t “officially” recognized as such and no one is going to compare it to baseball but, at least 42% of Americans have tried marijuana at some point in their lives.

What is even more absurd is the ban for three months from USA Swimming. The official line from USA Swimming was, “This is not a situation where any anti-doping rule was violated, but we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people”. No rules were violated but, a harsh punishment will be levied anyway because he disappointed “so many people”–way to give into vague peer pressure!

I am against the war on drugs and the destruction that it has caused. There is nothing more dangerous about smoking marijuana than there is smoking tobacco–cigarettes might even be worse. The government’s justification for this ridiculous war on drugs has no substance yet, they have been throwing taxpayer money into this sinkhole for decades.

The American populous has become so conditioned to believe that anything deemed “illegal” is bad. I don’t personally smoke marijuana but, I happen to know people who do. There is nothing wrong with them and they certainly are not wasting their lives away in a state of stupor. There are much worse synthetic drugs promoted by Big Pharma than naturally growing marijuana plants. Yet, we feel safer with those drugs because the FDA or the government has not deemed them “bad”.

Karen DeCoster does a great job of explaining the absurdity of all this at the LewRockwell Blog.

By Tommy Leung

Tags: kellogs drop phelps, marijuana, michael phelps, olympic swimmer phelps, phelps, pot, war on drugs

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