MARIJUANA'S DOUBLE STANDARD

Phelps, Armstrong Incidents Tell the Tale

For better or worse, our American Idiocracy has come to rely on
athletes as national pedagogues. Michael Jordan educated the country
about commitment and just doing it. A.C. Green lectured us about
sexual caution. Serena Williams and John McEnroe taught us what
sportsmanship is - and is not. And Charles Barkley outlined how
society should define role models.

So when a single week like this one sees both the Justice Department
back states' medical marijuana laws, and a Gallup poll show
record-level support for pot legalization, we can look to two
superjocks - Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps - for the key lesson
about our absurd drug policy.

This Tale of Two Supermen began in February when Phelps, the
gold-medal swimmer, was plastered all over national newspapers in a
photo that showed him hitting a marijuana bong. Though he was smoking
in private, the image ignited a public firestorm. USA Swimming
suspended Phelps, Kellogg pulled its endorsement deal and the
Associated Press sensationalized the incident as a national decision
about whether heroes should "be perfect or flawed."

The alleged imperfection was Phelps' decision to quietly consume a
substance that "poses a much less serious public health problem than
is currently posed by alcohol," as a redacted World Health
Organization report admits. That's a finding confirmed by almost every
objective science-based analysis, including a landmark University of
California study in 2006 showing "no association at all" between
marijuana use and cancer.

Alcohol, by contrast, causes roughly 1 in 30 of the world's cancer
cases, according to the International Journal of Cancer. And a new
report by Cancer Epidemiology journal shows that even beer, seemingly
the least potent drink, may increase the odds of developing tumors.

Which brings us to Armstrong. This month, the Tour de France champion
who beat cancer inked a contract to hawk Anheuser-Busch's alcohol.
That's right, less than a year after Phelps was crucified for merely
smoking weed in private, few noticed or protested the planet's most
famous cancer survivor becoming the public face of a possible carcinogen.

"Apparently, it's perfectly acceptable for a world-class athlete to
endorse a substance like alcohol that contributes to thousands of
deaths each year, as well as hundreds of thousands of violent crimes
and injuries," says Mason Tvert, a co-author of the new book
"Marijuana Is Safer." "Yet a world-class athlete like Michael Phelps
is ridiculed, punished and forced to apologize for marijuana, the use
of which contributes to zero deaths, and has never been linked to
violent or reckless behavior. Why the double standard?"

The data prove the answer isn't about health, and our culture proves
it isn't about widespread allegiance to "Just Say No" abstinence.
After all, whether through liquor commercials, wine magazines,
beer-named stadiums or cocktail-drenched office parties, our society
is constantly encouraging us to get our liquid high.

No, the double standard is about know-nothing statutes and attitudes
promoting the recreational use of alcohol and banning the similar use
of marijuana - all thanks to retrograde mythologies of post-Sixties
Americana. In our now-dominant backlash folklore, the patriots are the
straight-laced Joe and Jane Sixpacks - and the Armstrongs who
encourage their drinking. Meanwhile, the supposed evildoers are the
pot-smoking Cheeches, Chongs and Phelpses, whose marijuana use
allegedly underscores a dangerous hippie-ness.

Ergo, the moral of this Tale of Two Supermen: To end contradictions
in narcotics policy and permit safer recreational drug choices, we
have to first reject the outdated
Silent-Majority-versus-Counterculture iconography that defines so
much of our politics. We must, in other words, replace caricatures
with scientific facts and mature into something more than an Idiocracy.

We should all be able to imbibe - or inhale - to that.