Party On

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Just Say No.

I was a touch surprised that this cartoon got through the gauntlet of editors-that-be and appeared in newspapers all over the continent without any complaints. (That I know of.) My guess is that the kind of people who would object to this cartoon didn't understand it.

Usually, any reference to illegal "drugs" that is not wholly pro-abstinence gets some heat. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not an avid consumer of recreational drugs, though I've tried a few of the more popular ones. But on principle alone, I am incensed by the absurd notion that alcohol in moderation is acceptable but natural substances like hemp and psilocybin mushrooms are "of the devil."

What started with greedy capitalists wanting to ban natural substances they could not sell to the public so that they could make more money off of booze and nicotine (and paper made of wood, and cloth made of cotton instead of hemp) has received such a PR snowjob that most Americans still believe they should be illegal. Even people who have smoked pot and eaten mushrooms continue to lobby for their criminalization. How many of you learned in school that George Washington was a hemp farmer and believed it was the crop that the United States should build its economy on? That's my point, neither did I.

The reason these substances are associated with darkness and evil is because they are illegal and are sold by criminals. Marijuana is no more of a gateway to death by heroin overdose than Cheetos is to murder. (Statistics show that 99.8% of all convicted murderers have eaten Cheetos at some point in their life, many are even "addicted" to them.)

I'd love to see our society grow up, but I'm not holding my breath.

NOTE: To my mind there is a HUGE difference between natural substances like pot and mushrooms and manmade chemicals like acid, meth, XTC, etc. One can argue the logic of keeping those illegal or not, but my point here is that plants don't belong in the same category as those.