GREEN BUTTER

I didn't inhale, but I did get stoned-entirely by accident. I have
witnesses. It was spring in the late '90s, and our neighbors invited us for
dinner. I slathered melted butter all over my corn, lest it seem too much
like a vegetable.

Halfway through dessert, I felt weird. I developed a keen understanding of
what people really mean when they say things like "that was great steak." I
knew they were really saying this: "Wayne, we're onto you. Nobody likes
you. You're an illusion, man, and we will reform you."

Growing increasingly paranoid, I turned to my brilliant, gorgeous wife and
whispered my knowledge of the conspiracy. I said we should leave soon. She
was a bit puzzled at first, and then appeared enlightened.

"Did you butter your corn?" she asked.

"Uh huh," I said.

"You used this butter, with the green tinge?" she asked, holding up the
dregs of the butter, which was only slightly green.

"Uh huh," I replied.

"That's ganja butter," she said, giggling about my plight. "I thought Sarah
made that perfectly clear, but maybe you were outside. The clean butter's
in that dish. This butter's cooked with pot. There's no conspiracy, honey,
you're stoned."

Even worse, I'd taken my dessert from the wrong brownie tray. Before long,
I was reading people's minds.

For whatever reason, pot doesn't bring me joy. My worldview regarding cheap
thrills, therefore, goes like this: beer good, pot bad. As a journalistic
professional, I consider High Times a has-been rag. Modern Drunkard, by
contrast, is an up-and-comer. High Times celebrates druggies; Modern
Drunkard celebrates drunks.

Both publications enshrine the unique liberties and excesses we enjoy in
the USA, where we live by the words of heroic Revolutionary War General
John Stark, who said: "Live free or die."

Though I loathe ingesting pot and thrive on beer, I have some respect for
functional potheads. The vast majority of potheads I know are productive
members of society, and several have made fortunes from their drug-inspired
books and creations. Some of Boulder's top civic and business leaders are
potheads and will remain as such until they die of old age.

Though I believe pot unnecessary in a world that offers beer, I also
believe the revered words of the late philosopher Martin Niemoller. He
said: "When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out because
I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Catholics I did not
speak out because I was not a Catholic. When they came for the Jews, I did
not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was
no one left to speak for me."

Get it, drunkards? If we don't speak out for the potheads right now, in
their time of great need, there will be nobody left to speak for us when
they come for our drink.

At the University of Colorado, potheads have suddenly become a convenient
scapegoat for administrators-the people who've turned the school into a
joke with their inconceivable hiring and firing practices, date-rape
football parties, million-dollar slush funds and half-million-dollar booze
budgets.

Every year potheads and their friends gather at 4:20 p.m., on April 20, for
a pot party at CU's Farrand Field. Cops, typically outnumbered by thousands
of potheads, stand peacefully by and no one gets hurt. Unlike a booze
party, people don't puke and fights don't break out.

This year, however, city and CU officials warn of an unprecedented
crackdown on the freedom-promoting event. Undoubtedly, they'll shut it down
just as they did the annual Mall Crawl that once made Halloween special.
Maybe they'll foment a riot, as they did by interrupting an innocent
University Hill block party last fall.

Now that Hunter Thompson's dead, journalists need a new spokesman of
inebriation in an increasingly prohibitionist world. I turned to the
articulate Frank Rich, editor and publisher of Modern Drunkard. He didn't
disappoint.

"If they crack down on potheads, they'll drive off all the students," Rich
said. "That's why people enroll at CU, because it's known as a good place
to smoke pot. Isn't that what Boulder's all about?"

Modern Drunkard was featured this month in Time magazine, because it's
growing by leaps and bounds. It is the hippest coffee table accoutrement of
the new millennium, mainly because Frank's a genius.

"There are a lot of drunks out there, Wayne," Rich told me, when I asked
about his success. "We have road blocks in this country and they aren't
there to catch terrorists and rapists, but to snag some guy who had a few
beers after work. The good news for Modern Drunkard is that a lot of our
subscribers are cops. We also have a lot of doctors and lawyers. Our
subscriber base consists of people in high-stress careers. These people are
concerned about growing threats to drinking, and we're defending them."

Rich observes that crackdowns on drunks and potheads seem to emanate from
politically and socially liberal environments, like Boulder.

"They want cradle-to-grave government control over our lives," Rich said.
"Just compare Boulder, which is controlled by the left, to Colorado
Springs, which leans to the right. Boulder has a much more intense war
against drunks than you find in Colorado Springs. It won't be long before
the government in Boulder outlaws happy hour. Then they'll tell bar owners
they can serve only three drinks a day to any given customer. I assure you
it's coming."

So go to the pot party, whether you toke or not, take a stand and make a
difference. Just be careful what you eat!