PHELPS IS NO VILLAIN – NOR A FROSTED FLAKES HERO

Buy Kellogg's cereal. Eat lots of it.

That's our reaction to calls by marijuana advocates to boycott the Kellogg
Co. because it chose to stop portraying Michael Phelps as a hero for kids
on boxes of Frosted Flakes.

Phelps, as the whole world must know by now, has admitted smoking weed
after a photo surfaced of him taking a hit from a bong. Smoking marijuana
is a common and piddly offense. Phelps acknowledged it and promptly
apologized. He gets points for forthrightness.

But the Kellogg Co. gets points for not renewing its contract with Phelps
after the image of him pulling on a water pipe got splashed on screens
around the world.

The problem with lionizing him on breakfast tables in front of 7-year-olds
was inadvertently underscored by the marijuana touts themselves. When the
story broke, they immediately seized on it as evidence that a dope smoker
can win a slew of Olympic gold medals. Such a wonderful drug. They somehow
neglected to mention the risks of today's high-potency marijuana – or a
new report from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center linking
dope-smoking to aggressive testicular cancer.

An occasional – or perhaps single – indulgence in marijuana was hardly
going to slow down an athlete as naturally gifted as Phelps. That doesn't
mean his career would have survived regular use, and regular use is the
threat of any potentially habitual drug.

As more evidence of the benignity of marijuana, its champions cite the
fact that Barack Obama and his two predecessors in the White House appear
to have been users in their distant youths. The reality is, people succeed
in athletics and public life despite youthful experimentation with
marijuana, not because of it.

There are arguments for decriminalizing marijuana or at least softening
existing sanctions. The "harm reduction" model of public health emphasizes
treatment and support to wean drug users off their habits.

Among serious people, though, harm reduction is an anti-drug strategy, not
a pretext for eliminating barriers to drug use. Harm reduction doesn't
demand that a marijuana smoker continue to enjoy multimillion-dollar
corporate sponsorships.

There's actually a different term for sheltering drug-users from
real-world consequences: enabling.

When you try to punish a private company for refusing to turn a publicized
marijuana user into an icon for children, you are not merely quibbling
over public drug policies. You're defending the drug itself.