Great post!!! You should run for office, Dave. You make a LOT more sense than the other cowards we have in office...
mpwinsma
· 10 months ago
I pretty much agree with all of what you said and I'll carry it one step further. I am a stockholder of Kellogg's with stock currently valued at $35,000 down from much higher. I am also 73 years old. That having been said, I don't know anyone who hasn't at least tried pot, or been in close with others who have, and that's my old folks experiences. I can't imagine less uptight young people NOT have similar experiences.
So, who is it that looks down on Michael Phelps? Lots of hypocrites who have not led the life of Mother Theresa, who have either cheated on their taxes, or stole some property that they did not own (even if it was "only" a pen from work). Or maybe a politician who says he or she has never done anything wrong (but is lying about that very fact).
C'mon people, get over yourselves. No one's perfect, most of us far from perfect.
Klark
· 10 months ago
No one is perfect. True. But what he did was illegal. I understand you want the law changed... but the law is the law.
(I've never smoked pot)
dave
· 10 months ago
Okay then I assume it's okay with you if we send the FBI to arrest Bush and Cheney. The law is the law.
Fleebler
· 10 months ago
wait, what? i am not a fan of either man, but what laws (specifically) did they break? do you have any evidence to substantiate the notion that they are criminals who ought to be arrested?
Tim Burden
· 10 months ago
Yeah...dude...that made no sense. You want to reward them for doing the wrong thing? Why not put up ads explaining why we're NOT buying them?
Jeremy Chone
· 10 months ago
"I don't know why people can't see that."
I think that people see that, but people that can do something about it are the powerful ones. This is the dilemma of our society.
Mikey
· 10 months ago
You can get over it now....Your guy won and he released the killers.
I am headed to the store when I leave the office just to buy a some Corn Flakes. Some one needs to take a stand
nrek
· 10 months ago
Great post.
Marco
· 10 months ago
Phelps, like it or not, is the "shining beacon of the Olympic pursuit of high athletic standards". Kellogg's wants what he represents, not who he *is*. They dropped his image, not the man.
kf6nvr
· 10 months ago
Well, if they're going to drop folks for reasons like that and if the reason is so they aren't supporting activity they think is bad for kids (or others) to idolize, then they should at least be consistent: drop anyone caught smoking tobacco, too (or even drinking a beer). I doubt they do that. And they certainly aren't doing what you said in p4, which is what they should do -- he certainly can get more kids to do good things than bad things.
ted
· 10 months ago
OK, how about this:
I believe that the former administration did illegal activites that should be persued to the extent the law allows. I also believe that Michael Phelps should be persued to the extent the law allows as well. We don't want to have two legal systems. One for the people we like and one for the people we don't like, or one for laws we like and one for laws we don't like. That's not how people, laws, and legal systems work.
dave
· 10 months ago
That's pretty fair.
MissM
· 10 months ago
The local police in South Carolina are pursuing prosecution. Info here http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/other_s... I definitely agree with Dave about the dichotomy between the convictions of war crimes vs. drugs.
Chuck
· 10 months ago
Dave,
I never smoked pot, but agree with you that there is an injustice in how the law is applied. However I agree with Kellogg's choice to take Michael off the box. He was being paid to promote Kellogg's because of his success and his image. If he had been known as a pot smoker before he never would have gotten the endorsement in the first place. He has paid a steep price but I don't think it is unjust. I think it is appropriate.
Now while I don't want people buying pot at the local 7-11, I agree that the mandatory sentences for drug possession were misguided at best and has resulted in some serious injustices.
boo
· 10 months ago
I'm sorry, but this makes no sense. I read the post a few times to make sure I understood. You're rewarding Kellog's for being jerks in the hopes that they'll see the error of their ways? No way. Kellog's products are off my buy list for the foreseeable future. Money is the only language they understand.
dave
· 10 months ago
Can you imagine if Kellog's became known as the favorite food of dopers? Come on -- use your god-given imagination.
optionshiftk
· 10 months ago
It's goes to show that these companies that sponsor Phelps are vicious and care only about profit and ego. Granted, Phelps did make a dumb move, but he should not be ostracized about it. It's not like pot affected his athletic abilities, in fact it would have made theme worse...the bigger concern in all o this is steroids...which luckily he did not take. I think the song "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35" would be appropriate.
T
· 10 months ago
Hey GENERAL MILLS Michael Phelps, a proud American Icon with eight gold metals, is AVAILABLE!!! BOYCOTT Kellogg's!
cshotton
· 10 months ago
This is apples and oranges. Michael Phelps got photographed taking a bong hit. Much less complicated than trying to determine if there is a case for war crimes against the past administration. And arresting an individual for a lapse in judgement related to his cereal endorsement contract doesn't open the door for foreign governments to arrest US citizens (or members of a past or present administration) for "war crimes."
I don't think you fully acknowledge the impact of what you are asking for. If you open this can of worms, you are opening up the possibility that any government employee is fair game for "war crimes" charges the minute they step onto foreign soil.
And honestly, it *is* past. This is just like the cries to prosecute Nixon for Watergate. It's a vindictiveness by the opposition that serves no useful or constructive purpose other than to divide, polarize, diminish, and demean the country for what is essentially personal gratification. Gerald Ford's singular stroke of genius during his time in office was to pardon Nixon. Obama should do the same with the past administration. Think about the message(s) that come from Obama pardoning Bush and Cheney for possible war crimes. He's essentially saying they did it, but it's past and not good for the country. Everyone's interests are served. No one is served by exposing past administration officials to a war crimes trial at The Hague, are they?
danlyke
· 10 months ago
Well said, Dave.
I find it amusing that a company named after a medical quack who advocated mutilation to prevent masturbation thinks that a pot smoker gives them a bad image.
Hannalulu
· 10 months ago
How does buying their products send them a message? People who support the company in dropping Michael Phelps can continue to buy as many Kellogg's products as they'd like; that's a great way of showing the company that they support that decision. And if you don't support the decision the company made, you don't buy the products. It's really pretty simple.
dave
· 10 months ago
All these linear thinkers. If I were an artist I'd make a badge with Tony The Tiger toking from a bong sayin Kellogg's makes GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT munchies. Put Bob Marley on a corn flakes box. Give them what they are trying to avoid by firing Phelps and show em it;s good for business to sell to pot smokers. That;s how you get the attention of business. It may make you feel good to be indignant but it doesn't further the cause. Take ownership of Kellog's because they dared to make an issue of a young man blowing a little weed with his pals.
amyloo
· 10 months ago
I don't know if Hil is busy, but she's great at stuff like that. Queen of whimsy.
"It's like we have two legal systems, one for the powerful and one for the rest of us."
No, it isn't "like" we have two legal systems, we do have two legal systems. The Washington insiders, including members of the press, want it to stay that way. Read Glenn Greenwald on Salon.com. The situation is thoroughly disgusting. I want to live in a society governed by law, not by men. Any other issue is secondary.
dave
· 10 months ago
Of course I read Glenn Greenwald. Do I look like an idiot? :-)
Suzanne Mosley
· 10 months ago
Exactly. And, it's not like he needs all of his brain cells to swim anyway. He's not a spokesperson for Brain Surgeons R Us.
Scott
· 10 months ago
The way I understand it, Kellogg's decided not to renew their contract with Phelps when it expires the end of February. They didn't "dump" him in the usual sense.
Michael Phelps has gone buck wild since the Olympics. The pot smoking is just the most recent episode. There's nothing wrong with him doing shots out a stripper's belly button, but I can't imagine any company that sells products aimed at families would want him as a sponsor.
Sean Percival
· 10 months ago
Love it, going to get high and re-read this now.
Mona N.
· 10 months ago
Best. Phelps-Kellog post. Ever.
Though I agree with Kellog's decision. It's a kid friendly brand. The outrage from parents would be horrific!
As a parent of a stepchild who has gone through the hell--and financial expense--of trying to reduce a drug sentence when his child was caught smoking pot by the authorities, I lack the sense of humor about Phelps' situation. I wholeheartedly support Kellogg's decision. I say this knowing well that Kellogg is somewhat hypocritical when it markets sugar-laden desserts as nutritious breakfast food (do they really have children's interests in mind?) and believing personally that pot should be legalized--which is a legitimate issue as opposed to boycotting cereal.
Phelps will do just fine without Kellogg, but I don't support the glorification and commodification of an Olympic swimmer to lure children to buy crappy food. Nor do I wish my child to get the message that says: hey: doing illegal stuff is cool and you can do anything and achieve success while smoking pot.
There are already enough contradictory messages out there for our children, we don't need another.
ickledot
· 10 months ago
I agree. Kellogg's could have boxed much cleverer on his one. Trouble is, I don't particularly like any of their products. And anyway, it's cold. Eat porridge.
Hil
· 10 months ago
It's very tempting! Thanks Amy.
achernow
· 10 months ago
Heh. I don't think they should have dropped him. I mean, come on, he's 23. That's what most kids that age are doing...or at least the ones I hung out with anyway. I haven't myself, but only because I'm very sensitive to any kind of smoke. And frankly, I don't care if friends smoke pot. I'd only be worried if they were using harder drugs.
Oh..and I had a friend who complemented Mr. Phelps on his choice of bongs.
malatmals
· 10 months ago
Here's my attempt at a mashed up new box cover for a new cereal, Marley Flakes.
Kellogg's has bigger things to worry about. Their product is counter-trend. aka, part of our national obesity problem. So Phelps indulged in recreational pot...what would be worse for him is if he ate gobs of corn flakes.
Joshua_Whalen
· 10 months ago
You know, it's extra-absurd to still have these silly laws on the books in our current situation.
Hemp was a staple crop of virtually every civilization on earth until DuPont developed Nylon back in the 20's and began lobbying for it to be outlawed, because hemp fiber was the only natural fiber that competed effectively with their new product, and had superior resistance to UV degradation as well. With help from the oil industry, a massive propaganda campaign led to the marijuana tax act and the establishment of the DEA under DuPont's son-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger.
A single hemp crop can produce, from the same plant: ethanol, methanol, fiber (for rope or cloth, both bio-degradable), paper, oil (for cooking and bio-diesel), and medicine. Not to mention recreational uses. For all but it's drug value, it can be grown in the worst of soils, and for all but it's drug and food uses, would be an excellent way to detoxify brown fields, a major environmental headache.
The drug application is a (ahem!) smokescreen. The real reason it's unlawful is that it competes with too many of the oil-chemical industry's products, and is in most cases superior.
Heck, we're all geeks on this bus! This good technology, going to waste (no pun intended) while we're drowning in the waste of the oil-chemical economy. Why aren't we all making more of a stink about this (myself included in said criticism), when we have the loudest voice on the planet right about now. We can out-shout the print media, and within a year to two years, I predict, we'll be stronger than tv, too.
We've all grown up a lot since then, of course, but this was something of a national pass time in those days, and I think it's worth noting that a majority of today's leaders and innovators indulged quite a bit in the days. We've all been conspicuously silent on this for way too long. It's not about getting high like when we were kids, it's about doing what makes sense: taking advantage of one of our most valuable resources to solve our most pressing problems.
Thanks, Dave, for bringing this up.
Phil Windley
· 10 months ago
Sorry Dave, not buying this one.
mike halwa
· 10 months ago
Alcohol is legal but pot is illegal? What a joke. Alcohol causes far more problems in society and is not only legal but glamorized. Time to stop the hypocrisy people. If Barry Bonds and A-Rod can take steroids and be overpaid superstars that openly lie about it then Michael Phelps can certainly smoke some pot.
Bill
· 10 months ago
No way boycott Kellogg’s let them know you are doing it. Tell them to stop supporting the propaganda and lies of prohibition.
Yule Heibel
· 10 months ago
I was glad I could use my Massachusetts absentee ballot to vote in favor of decriminalizing minor possession of marijuana in that state. OTOH, I'm also a Canadian citizen and live in British Columbia's capital city, Victoria, where I can inhale first hand the effects of living in 'marijuana export central.'
We have pretty relaxed laws about pot smoking here. One of our recently-elected city councilors, Philippe Lucas, is "the founder and director of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, a Canadian non-profit therapeutic cannabis research and distribution center; and founder of Canadians for Safe Access, the nation's largest medicinal cannabis patients rights organization."
It's, like, no big deal that a marijuana advocate is a city councilor.
Nearly 7 years after my return to BC, I find I'm a bit at odds with this. When I live in the US, I'm in favor of liberalizing drugs laws; strangely enough, though, when I live in Canada (BC in particular), I get a little conservative around these issues.
At the end of the day, I think I'm against the zealots - the people who get all religious about the issue, whether it's pro or con marijuana use. Being over-zealous about usage (of anything, really) gets you off the rails as easily as anything. For example, my daughter's gr.12 Biology teacher is rabidly anti-nicotine. The other day he told his class in all seriousness that if they're ever offered the choice between nicotine or heroin, they should choose the heroin. That's just whacked, if you ask me.
Bottom line: it's not a good idea to get so bent out of shape about cigarettes that you give grade 12 pupils the "advice" to "choose" heroin because you think nicotine is so evil, and (this is to Americans), by the same token, don't get so crazy about being anti-pot that you're willing practically to bankrupt state economies to keep jails going or to eviscerate an entire generation of youth in some crazy quest to extirpate pot smokers.
To the legalization advocates, I'd say take a look at this Tyee article (from Vancouver), "A cost-benefit analysis of BC gang warfare" (http://tinyurl.com/dyzbqf) - growing marijuana is a booming piece of the economy (at least of our economy here in BC). Some might say, "make it all legal and all will be well," but I see our hundreds of addicted street people daily here in the city, and while they're not in the mess they're in because they're pot-smokers, it's also not the case anymore that the pot you buy these days is the harmless stuff I smoked as a teen. Precisely because it is such a big piece of the economy, there's a huge incentive to maximize its effects, to use additives, to augment it in whatever way so that the high is higher, the buzz buzzier. A window-sill pot plant of your very own is not going to be a "gateway" drug, but some of the stuff coming out of BC's pot industry might well be. The point of it is to get you into stuff that has even more profits attached to it - crack cocaine, heroin, etc. That's where there's even more money to be made. So on the legalization question, you have to ask, 'where do you stop?' Does everything become legal? In which case why have laws that interdict selling cigarettes or alcohol to minors? Simply legalizing pot isn't going to take the incentive away from growers who "design" their product to be potent beyond what the plant in its natural state could achieve.
And if anyone suggests a government regulatory agency to oversee the 'purity' of pot, like an FDA for hemp, then please kill me now. I've had it with government oversight - remember, I live in Canada (not that any government agency here does such a stellar job of oversight, but that's another issue...).
Maybe people should have to get licenses to grow pot for personal use, but not more. <jk> That might address the problem of industrial scale grow-op production...? ;-)
The Tyee article, which I referenced above, focuses on the ineffectiveness of anti-marijuana laws and offers the following information on the scope of the industry's role in the BC economy: QUOTE ...the marijuana industry, which now, according to one reliable source, creates 5 percent of the B.C. gross domestic product, employing 150,000 British Columbians.
Marijuana, most of it exported to the United States, generates $6 billion a year in wealth. By comparison, B.C. forestry and logging totalled $2.96 billion in 2007. UNQUOTE Not exactly chicken feed... Not exactly a simple problem.
Jim Kerney
· 10 months ago
Very well said, but you didn't convince me not to boycott Kellogg and tell others to boycott at every opportunity.
Dank
· 10 months ago
Nice thoughtful post,
I personally was disappointed that Phelps did not tell the world to mind their own business. I have never had to endure that much public scrutiny but the whole "I'm contrite, please forgive me.." shtick is not going to change anything.
No one stands up for what they believe, they DO what they believe, but then they apologize for it after.
It changes nothing but our tolerance for apologies.
Scheister
· 10 months ago
The problem is bad publicity=loss of revenue, and that is simply all they wish to avoid. Parents buy the kellogs cereals for their kids and they dont want their kids smoking dope (even if they did when they were young). I do agree with your points though and a nice alternative would be to add a bong to mikes hand and make a new product - Hemp Flakes. Brilliant!
The Log Maker
· 10 months ago
His only mistake was getting so stoned that he didn't notice someone take the photo :)
nwankama
· 10 months ago
Everyone needs a second chance. Michael Phelps should learn from his mistakes and be allowed to move on (Nwankama).
steve ross
· 9 months ago
The press release was the problem for me, they could have said nothing. they didnt have to notify every reporter they had a micheal phelps bong statement. They are not concered about disapointing the kids or exposing them to marijuana, if that was the case they would have just let the contract run out and not made a bid deal out of it. They held a press conference to get publicity, they think a strong anti drug stance makes their company seem wholsome. I could care less about micheal phelps but this company just made a public stance against marijuana, i have to concider them the enemy.
Jeff
· 8 months ago
The problem with your arguement is that this in fact was Michael Phelps second chance. First the DUI at 19, now the pot at 23. That shows a trend in his character. While I will agree that he is young and will make mistakes, Kellogg did the right thing by dropping him as a sponsor. To do anything differently would be condoning the action and saying to the youth of America, many of whom eat Kellogg cereal, that it's okay to smoke pot and drive drunk as long as you win 9 gold medals.
All Comments
You should run for office, Dave. You make a LOT more sense than the other cowards we have in office...
So, who is it that looks down on Michael Phelps? Lots of hypocrites who have not led the life of Mother Theresa, who have either cheated on their taxes, or stole some property that they did not own (even if it was "only" a pen from work). Or maybe a politician who says he or she has never done anything wrong (but is lying about that very fact).
C'mon people, get over yourselves. No one's perfect, most of us far from perfect.
(I've never smoked pot)
Cheney. The law is the law.
I think that people see that, but people that can do something about it are the powerful ones. This is the dilemma of our society.
I am headed to the store when I leave the office just to buy a some Corn Flakes. Some one needs to take a stand
I believe that the former administration did illegal activites that should be persued to the extent the law allows. I also believe that Michael Phelps should be persued to the extent the law allows as well. We don't want to have two legal systems. One for the people we like and one for the people we don't like, or one for laws we like and one for laws we don't like. That's not how people, laws, and legal systems work.
I never smoked pot, but agree with you that there is an injustice in how the law is applied. However I agree with Kellogg's choice to take Michael off the box. He was being paid to promote Kellogg's because of his success and his image. If he had been known as a pot smoker before he never would have gotten the endorsement in the first place. He has paid a steep price but I don't think it is unjust. I think it is appropriate.
Now while I don't want people buying pot at the local 7-11, I agree that the mandatory sentences for drug possession were misguided at best and has resulted in some serious injustices.
Come on -- use your god-given imagination.
BOYCOTT Kellogg's!
I don't think you fully acknowledge the impact of what you are asking for. If you open this can of worms, you are opening up the possibility that any government employee is fair game for "war crimes" charges the minute they step onto foreign soil.
And honestly, it *is* past. This is just like the cries to prosecute Nixon for Watergate. It's a vindictiveness by the opposition that serves no useful or constructive purpose other than to divide, polarize, diminish, and demean the country for what is essentially personal gratification. Gerald Ford's singular stroke of genius during his time in office was to pardon Nixon. Obama should do the same with the past administration. Think about the message(s) that come from Obama pardoning Bush and Cheney for possible war crimes. He's essentially saying they did it, but it's past and not good for the country. Everyone's interests are served. No one is served by exposing past administration officials to a war crimes trial at The Hague, are they?
I find it amusing that a company named after a medical quack who advocated mutilation to prevent masturbation thinks that a pot smoker gives them a bad image.
The Tiger toking from a bong sayin Kellogg's makes GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT
munchies. Put Bob Marley on a corn flakes box. Give them what they are
trying to avoid by firing Phelps and show em it;s good for business to sell
to pot smokers. That;s how you get the attention of business. It may make
you feel good to be indignant but it doesn't further the cause. Take
ownership of Kellog's because they dared to make an issue of a young man
blowing a little weed with his pals.
No, it isn't "like" we have two legal systems, we do have two legal systems. The Washington insiders, including members of the press, want it to stay that way. Read Glenn Greenwald on Salon.com. The situation is thoroughly disgusting. I want to live in a society governed by law, not by men. Any other issue is secondary.
Michael Phelps has gone buck wild since the Olympics. The pot smoking is just the most recent episode. There's nothing wrong with him doing shots out a stripper's belly button, but I can't imagine any company that sells products aimed at families would want him as a sponsor.
Though I agree with Kellog's decision. It's a kid friendly brand. The outrage from parents would be horrific!
http://gawker.com/5147582/michael-phelps-bong-p...
Phelps will do just fine without Kellogg, but I don't support the glorification and commodification of an Olympic swimmer to lure children to buy crappy food. Nor do I wish my child to get the message that says: hey: doing illegal stuff is cool and you can do anything and achieve success while smoking pot.
There are already enough contradictory messages out there for our children, we don't need another.
Trouble is, I don't particularly like any of their products. And anyway, it's cold. Eat porridge.
Oh..and I had a friend who complemented Mr. Phelps on his choice of bongs.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36521955768@N01/32...
Hemp was a staple crop of virtually every civilization on earth until DuPont developed Nylon back in the 20's and began lobbying for it to be outlawed, because hemp fiber was the only natural fiber that competed effectively with their new product, and had superior resistance to UV degradation as well. With help from the oil industry, a massive propaganda campaign led to the marijuana tax act and the establishment of the DEA under DuPont's son-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger.
A single hemp crop can produce, from the same plant:
ethanol, methanol, fiber (for rope or cloth, both bio-degradable), paper, oil (for cooking and bio-diesel), and medicine. Not to mention recreational uses. For all but it's drug value, it can be grown in the worst of soils, and for all but it's drug and food uses, would be an excellent way to detoxify brown fields, a major environmental headache.
The drug application is a (ahem!) smokescreen. The real reason it's unlawful is that it competes with too many of the oil-chemical industry's products, and is in most cases superior.
Heck, we're all geeks on this bus! This good technology, going to waste (no pun intended) while we're drowning in the waste of the oil-chemical economy. Why aren't we all making more of a stink about this (myself included in said criticism), when we have the loudest voice on the planet right about now. We can out-shout the print media, and within a year to two years, I predict, we'll be stronger than tv, too.
Meanwhile, remember when this was funny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNrbOkvOErk&feat...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeJq8S6-HX4
We've all grown up a lot since then, of course, but this was something of a national pass time in those days, and I think it's worth noting that a majority of today's leaders and innovators indulged quite a bit in the days. We've all been conspicuously silent on this for way too long. It's not about getting high like when we were kids, it's about doing what makes sense: taking advantage of one of our most valuable resources to solve our most pressing problems.
Thanks, Dave, for bringing this up.
We have pretty relaxed laws about pot smoking here. One of our recently-elected city councilors, Philippe Lucas, is "the founder and director of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, a Canadian non-profit therapeutic cannabis research and distribution center; and founder of Canadians for Safe Access, the nation's largest medicinal cannabis patients rights organization."
It's, like, no big deal that a marijuana advocate is a city councilor.
Nearly 7 years after my return to BC, I find I'm a bit at odds with this. When I live in the US, I'm in favor of liberalizing drugs laws; strangely enough, though, when I live in Canada (BC in particular), I get a little conservative around these issues.
At the end of the day, I think I'm against the zealots - the people who get all religious about the issue, whether it's pro or con marijuana use. Being over-zealous about usage (of anything, really) gets you off the rails as easily as anything. For example, my daughter's gr.12 Biology teacher is rabidly anti-nicotine. The other day he told his class in all seriousness that if they're ever offered the choice between nicotine or heroin, they should choose the heroin. That's just whacked, if you ask me.
Bottom line: it's not a good idea to get so bent out of shape about cigarettes that you give grade 12 pupils the "advice" to "choose" heroin because you think nicotine is so evil, and (this is to Americans), by the same token, don't get so crazy about being anti-pot that you're willing practically to bankrupt state economies to keep jails going or to eviscerate an entire generation of youth in some crazy quest to extirpate pot smokers.
To the legalization advocates, I'd say take a look at this Tyee article (from Vancouver), "A cost-benefit analysis of BC gang warfare" (http://tinyurl.com/dyzbqf) - growing marijuana is a booming piece of the economy (at least of our economy here in BC). Some might say, "make it all legal and all will be well," but I see our hundreds of addicted street people daily here in the city, and while they're not in the mess they're in because they're pot-smokers, it's also not the case anymore that the pot you buy these days is the harmless stuff I smoked as a teen. Precisely because it is such a big piece of the economy, there's a huge incentive to maximize its effects, to use additives, to augment it in whatever way so that the high is higher, the buzz buzzier. A window-sill pot plant of your very own is not going to be a "gateway" drug, but some of the stuff coming out of BC's pot industry might well be. The point of it is to get you into stuff that has even more profits attached to it - crack cocaine, heroin, etc. That's where there's even more money to be made. So on the legalization question, you have to ask, 'where do you stop?' Does everything become legal? In which case why have laws that interdict selling cigarettes or alcohol to minors? Simply legalizing pot isn't going to take the incentive away from growers who "design" their product to be potent beyond what the plant in its natural state could achieve.
And if anyone suggests a government regulatory agency to oversee the 'purity' of pot, like an FDA for hemp, then please kill me now. I've had it with government oversight - remember, I live in Canada (not that any government agency here does such a stellar job of oversight, but that's another issue...).
Maybe people should have to get licenses to grow pot for personal use, but not more. <jk> That might address the problem of industrial scale grow-op production...? ;-)
The Tyee article, which I referenced above, focuses on the ineffectiveness of anti-marijuana laws and offers the following information on the scope of the industry's role in the BC economy:
QUOTE
...the marijuana industry, which now, according to one reliable source, creates 5 percent of the B.C. gross domestic product, employing 150,000 British Columbians.
Marijuana, most of it exported to the United States, generates $6 billion a year in wealth. By comparison, B.C. forestry and logging totalled $2.96 billion in 2007.
UNQUOTE
Not exactly chicken feed... Not exactly a simple problem.
I personally was disappointed that Phelps did not tell the world to mind their own business. I have never had to endure that much public scrutiny but the whole "I'm contrite, please forgive me.." shtick is not going to change anything.
No one stands up for what they believe, they DO what they believe, but then they apologize for it after.
It changes nothing but our tolerance for apologies.