{"id":15830,"date":"2009-02-04T13:06:56","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T18:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalpardon.org\/blog\/national-pardon-centre\/marijuana-the-worlds-silliest-taboo"},"modified":"2009-02-04T13:06:56","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T18:06:56","slug":"marijuana-the-worlds-silliest-taboo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.nationalpardon.org\/?p=15830","title":{"rendered":"Marijuana: The World’s Silliest Taboo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When\u00c2\u00a0this picture\u00c2\u00a0of Michael Phelps smoking a bong surfaced, the world once again went loony, insisting that Phelps make amends for something that everyone does anyway. What nonsense.<\/p>\n

The fact that an olympic champion of Phelps’ stature has smoked weed is a clear indicator that marijuana is relatively harmless, great fun on accasion and obviously the grand champion of substances that should be decriminalized. Is there any other conclusion to draw from this?<\/p>\n

I am quite certain that no photos exist of Phelps sticking a needle full of herione in his harm. I am also quite certain he has never smoked crystal meth. And I am equally certain he has\u00c2\u00a0smoked weed\u00c2\u00a0on more than just this one “regrettable” occasion.\u00c2\u00a0Which is really the core of the problem. Not all drugs are\u00c2\u00a0equal and continuing the global farce that is marijuana prohibition is dumb.<\/p>\n

Another part of the problem is that the United States of America (I was tempted to write “of hypocrisy” but it just seemed childish) is so far entrenched in the war on drugs that they cannot get out of it even if they wanted to. An industry that big doesn’t get demolished easily and there are a lot of people intersted in maintaining the status quo as far as marijuana legislation goes.<\/p>\n

My guess is that it will take the supreme court to rule that marijuana legislation is a violation of basic rights before the federal laws will be changed. And by then the feds will just be playing catch up to the various States, that realized long, long ago in a time far, far away that the criminlization<\/a> of marijuana is just plain stupid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When\u00c2\u00a0this picture\u00c2\u00a0of Michael Phelps smoking a bong surfaced, the world once again went loony, insisting that Phelps make amends for something that everyone does anyway. What nonsense. The fact that an olympic champion of Phelps’ stature has smoked weed is a clear indicator that marijuana is relatively harmless, great fun on accasion and obviously the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-15830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-records","category-pardon","tag-marijuana"],"yoast_head":"\nMarijuana: The World's Silliest Taboo - staging.nationalpardon.org<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The fact that an olympic champion of Phelps' stature has smoked weed is a clear indicator that marijuana is relatively harmless.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Marijuana: The World's Silliest Taboo - 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