Dan

Calabrese

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February 6, 2009

Darn Right, Arrest Michael Phelps; He Broke the Law

I guess it’s actual news when a sheriff, finding himself in possession of evidence of a crime, decides to charge someone. People are astounded that, in South Carolina, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott intends to do his job and look into charging a certain 23-year-old idiot who allowed himself to be photographed using a bong to smoke marijuana at a party.

The idiot is, of course, Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps, and this incident is being presented to us as yet another example of America’s irrational attitude toward the evil weed. Libertarians are having a field day. He smokes pot and he won eight gold medals! How bad can it be for you? Millions of people do it every day! Alcohol is more harmful and it’s legal!

Irrelevant. Michael Phelps should be arrested and charged with a crime. He broke the law.

Let’s leave aside for a moment the debate over whether marijuana should be illegal. I for one am glad that it is, but I certainly understand that many disagree. Fine. Let’s have that argument another day.

Phelps needs to be arrested and charged not because marijuana should be illegal, but because it is illegal, and when he made the choice to use it, he extended a big middle finger toward the very notion that we are a nation of laws. He didn’t care. He felt like getting high. Screw society’s laws and standards. You should get arrested for that. It’s the whole point of having laws.

Marijuana advocates claim that supposedly unjust marijuana laws turn people into criminals. No. People decide to become criminals when they make the choice to do something they know is illegal. That’s what being a criminal is, Slappy.

You may disagree with the law – and no one will stop you from doing that – but laws in a civil society don’t only apply to those who agree with them. They apply to everyone. Pot advocates can attempt to use statistics showing widespread use of marijuana as evidence that the public does not widely support these laws, and in some areas they have had success getting the laws changed by doing so. I don’t want them to succeed in these attempts, but if they do, and the law is changed, I have to respect that. I can’t go around demanding that the police arrest people because I think it should be illegal.

By the same token, you can’t expect the police not to arrest you for doing something that is illegal because you and a lot of other people don’t think it should be. Don’t like the law? Work to get it changed. Maybe you’ll succeed. But until you do, you have to follow it.

It is not the most remarked upon point about drug users, but it deserves some attention, that by buying, selling, growing and smoking marijuana and other drugs, they make the declaration that society’s laws do not matter to them. They may not like the fact that billions are spent enforcing drug laws, but they are, and dopes like them are part of the reason. If it really bothers you that money is spent enforcing drug laws, or that people are going to jail for smoking pot, you could try advocating that people not smoke it. Because then they wouldn’t go to jail.

But that is not really the priority of the pot people, nor is their oh-so-high-minded (get it?) notion of “liberty.” All they want to do is party. Period. Anything else they tell you is complete rot. What’s more, they insist on doing so in a manner that reeks of mental and moral weakness. You want to relax? You want to mellow out, dude? Do you not think God gave you the ability to do that with the natural features you already have in your body? Or is that too complicated for your mushy brain to figure out? So you flip the bird to society and its laws and toke up, all in the service of the grand cause that is your own need to act like an utter fool.

Smoking marijuana is a stupid thing to do. It is also an illegal thing to do. About these two facts: You can’t change the first and you haven’t yet changed the second.

So now we know that Michael Phelps is a stupid criminal, who believed like many haze-minded partiers that he was exempt from the law, but as an added bonus was enough of a doofus to let himself be photographed committing a crime.

Arrest and charge him, Sheriff Lott. It’s what you were elected to do.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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