Farcical pot laws make Phelps a criminal.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Daniel Lawton For The Register-Guard

Somewhere around half of Americans have used marijuana. One of them is Michael Phelps. The 23-year-old swimmer and winner of 14 Olympic gold medals was recently photographed taking a bong hit at a South Carolina party, and as a result has been the subject of the sort of intensive tabloidism usually reserved for Paris Hilton or Angelina Jolie.

Every media outlet - from TMZ to CNN - has hammered Phelps for getting high. The British tabloid News of the World broke the story by publishing the picture of Phelps toking up beneath a giant headline that read "What a dope." The magazine went on to suggest that the revelation "could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history."

Phelps has been suspended from competition by USA Swimming for three months and dropped from his endorsement deal with Kellogg's - a company that pushes high-sugar cereal to children - due to his alleged pot smoking. He's been lambasted as "irresponsible," "foolish," and an "idiot" by the media. He's even potentially facing charges from Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott. In response, Phelps has apologized for his behavior, calling his actions "regrettable" and stating that he demonstrated bad judgment.

But should the Olympic swimmer really be forced to issue a mea culpa for getting high?

Despite the propaganda disseminated by the anti-pot agenda, there are hordes of successful athletes, actors, politicians, doctors, lawyers and other individuals who use marijuana responsibly and still manage to live tremendously productive lives. This crew includes recent Super Bowl MVP Santonio Holmes, who was pulled over with a glove box full of blunts in October, and President Obama, who wrote candidly in his memoir about his experiences with marijuana in his youth.

The reality is that America's war on pot is at best a crude farce, and at worst a deranged policy that survives only due to the stupefying inability of American legislators and citizens to separate lunacy from fact.

First nationally criminalized in 1937 by the Marijuana Tax Act, marijuana policy was initially driven by rumors that it caused insanity, murder and mayhem. Sensational testimonials - often in the yellow journalism of William Randolph Hearst - linked marijuana to inciting black men to rape white women and other racist mythology. Unfortunately, time has yet to erode many of the falsities associated with pot.

Recent anti-drug commercials show stoners so out of their minds that one drives his car into a girl on a bicycle, while another accidentally shoots his friend. This sort of absurd hyperbole is more laughable than laudable and is unlikely to make much impact on marijuana users.

Starting in DARE classes in middle school, cops, teachers and other officials preach the gospel that marijuana is a dangerous drug with severe consequences - that it will make you dumb, fat and lazy and limit your job prospects to Burger King. This misinformation is not only shamefully dishonest, but runs the risk of increasing hard drug use, because once kids find out that the dangers of pot are mostly a sham they tend to believe that the effects of harder drugs have also been exaggerated.

The primary effects of marijuana - temporary memory inhibition, impairment of psychomotor coordination and loss of concentration - are relatively innocuous when compared to the effects of alcohol and tobacco. In fact, there has never been a recorded death from marijuana intoxication, while alcohol directly kills 50,000 people a year - in addition to the monsoon of violence and domestic abuse incidents fueled by booze. Just this month in Eugene, we witnessed the horrific effects of alcohol firsthand, when 24-year-old Matthew Ellmers was accused of killing four people while driving drunk.

Meanwhile, enforcing marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers an estimated $10 billion annually and incarcerates more than 750,000 people a year for simply possessing the drug. By opting to use marijuana instead of alcohol, these individuals have made the safer choice when it comes to recreational substance abuse. Why should they be sentenced to prison for it?

If Phelps decides he wants a bong hit instead of a beer he may be breaking the law, but he's making a more responsible decision than getting drunk. If he can maintain his awe-inspiring prowess in the swimming pool with marijuana in the mix - well, then I guess a few more myths about the drug's effects have been busted.

America's war on marijuana isn't a war against a drug. It's a misguided crusade against those who use it, an untenable waste of taxpayer money, an indefensible restriction on individual liberty and a grotesque example of institutional hypocrisy. Let's hope the buzz over Phelps' "blunder" enlightens our policymakers to such facts.

Daniel Lawton ([e-mail]) has written about politics and public policy for Disaboom.com and Disability Now. He is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Oregon.