You’re either with Michael Phelps, or you’re with the terrorists
By Thoreau
David Sirota has it right: Why did people freak out over Michael Phelps smoking a joint but not utter a peep when everyone’s hero and icon of healthy living Lance Armstrong signed a deal to promote something associated with domestic violence and car accidents? We should take up a collection to get Phelps an endorsement deal with the Marijuana Policy Project. We can have a bake sale, maybe sell some brownies.
I want to ask every prohibitionist out there a very simple question: Would the world be a better place if men with guns knocked down Michael Phelps’ door, confiscated his assets, and dragged him off to a cage? Would your children grow up smarter and healthier? Would the world of athletics be improved? Would anything at all be one iota better if some men with guns dragged him to a cage and locked him up? And if the world did somehow improve on some measure, is it worth enriching terrorists and drug cartels? Are you willing to inflate the Taliban’s profit margin so you don’t have to suffer the inconvenience of hearing somebody giggle over cartoons and cheetohs?
If you can look at the violence in Afghanistan and northern Mexico and STILL support prohibition, still support dragging harmless people to cages while inflating the profit margins of cartels and terrorists, then you are objectively pro-terrorist.
Comment by Kolohe —
October 25, 2009 @ 3:07 am
I agree with what’s he’s saying, but I think he’s cherry picking his data as bad as the other side does – although maybe that was his point and I missed it.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
October 25, 2009 @ 12:42 pm
You know, you don’t have to be hatin’ on the beer to support legalization.
Beer is good. Wine is good.
Comment by All Your Summer Songs —
October 25, 2009 @ 7:56 pm
Why not sanction Phelps & Armstrong for being douchy?
Comment by Picador —
October 26, 2009 @ 8:44 am
FYI, in their ongoing efforts to render their publication more and more irrelevant, Salon has decided in recent weeks to make it impossible to link directly to stories there.
Comment by dutchmarbel —
October 26, 2009 @ 9:37 am
There is a ‘global’ dopinglist for sporters, revised regularly, and unfortunately cannabis is on it.
Here (pdf) is the reaction of the Netherland on the draft of the 2010 Prohibited List International Standard: we think that cannabis should be off the list.
But as long as cannabis is on it, Dutch sporters aren’t allowed to use it either – even in a country where the usage is openly tolerated.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
October 26, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
Marijuana is not a performance-enhancing drug…unless you play the bass.
Nobody likes overly-busy bass.
Comment by John Emerson —
October 26, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
Marijuana and all other performance-enhancing substances must be banned from the Olympics. I’m surprised to see your apologetics for cheating.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
October 26, 2009 @ 6:33 pm
Olympic bass guitar works a lot like gymnastics.
There’s the slap, the pick, the finger, acoustic, and then the all-around.
Comment by dhex —
October 26, 2009 @ 7:50 pm
to steal some of bryan caplan’s language, prohibitionists have a low-cost belief. meaning that it costs them little, personally – and if they work for a government agency it perversely enriches them, regardless of their actual beliefs. any unfortunate side effects can be summed up to human evil and frailty rather than cause-and-effect.
think of it along the lines of creationism, a belief which unless you’re a biologist or anthropologist is unlikely to impose any personal costs on you. in fact, it is likely to give you emotional benefits and reinforce your belief system.
more currently, anti-vaccination beliefs could be grouped in here as well, though the costs of those beliefs are far more likely to be immediate (and will likely grow more common, unfortunately) to both the holders and those who live around them. but especially ten or twenty years ago, being against vaccinations (due to autism fears, or nwo fears, or an unfortunate addiction to the “natural” memeplex) was also a low-cost belief, due to widespread vaccinations among others.
Comment by dutchmarbel —
October 26, 2009 @ 7:51 pm
Two quotes from the rather technical letter I linked to:
Comment by chris y —
October 27, 2009 @ 6:17 am
There ought to be two Olympics. One should be totally clean, matching the powers of unassisted human beings on equal terms. The other should be open only to athletes over 21 who have signed a disclaimer that they understand they are likely to die soon, and should permit any chemicals, surgical interventions, prosthetic aids, etc. they damn well please. This one would be for the people who just want to go for it and don’t fucking care.
I’d watch neither.
Comment by dhex —
October 27, 2009 @ 10:30 am
the robo-lympics might actually be worth watching, unlike the horrendously nationalistic load of sanctimony we currently get.
especially if it has one of those “thousands will enter, one will leave” 80s movie fights at the end.
Comment by KWK —
October 27, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
Three words: All Drug Olympics
Comment by de stijl —
October 27, 2009 @ 2:23 pm
What you call drugolympics, I call Tuesday.
Comment by ajay —
October 28, 2009 @ 7:07 am
The good thing about the anything-goes olympics is that it would probably produce lots of valuable spinoff technologies. Take motor racing. If you wanted that to be a true test of driving skill alone, you’d put all the drivers in identical cars. And maybe the best driver in that race would have more reason to think he was “best” overall in some way than the best F1 driver does. But if you have lots of money going into F1 car design, some of it might spin off into the rest of the world – like tyre design, traction control and carbon-fibre use have. Similarly, if you had lots of money going into human enhancement for athletes, some of the technology might find medical applications…
Comment by MassHole —
October 28, 2009 @ 2:29 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroc
Comment by dhex —
October 28, 2009 @ 3:27 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-generation_Chevrolet_Camaro