(ESPN) “The poor guy,” Rick Steves said of the outrage over [Michael] Phelps’ infamous bong hit. “Kellogg’s wants to preserve this fantasy that good athletes don’t smoke pot. Good athletes smoke pot. Smart good athletes don’t get caught.”
If you’ve had the good fortune to travel to Europe, or the lesser fortune of tuning in to a PBS pledge break, you’re probably familiar with Rick Steves. His “Europe Through the Back Door” guide books are the best European travel guides by so wide a margin that I’m not sure which is more essential for a trip overseas, your passport or your Rick Steves book. He also is an outspoken proponent for the decriminalization of marijuana, so I called him recently to learn what he thought about the fuss over Phelps.
“I think it’s a good example of how America is sort of hysterical about a drug that the rest of the world doesn’t think is very dangerous,” he said. “About half the people in America have smoked marijuana. The president has. Some members of the Supreme Court have … many people have. But if a celebrity athlete smokes pot, they lose their endorsements.”
“Nobody is saying drugs are good. No one is saying you should smoke pot. People are just saying: Don’t arrest adults who smoke pot,” Steves said. “It’s a civil liberty. They stopped arresting people in the Netherlands 25 years ago and marijuana use hasn’t gone up. They treat it as a health problem, not a crime. The U.S. is stuck in this mindless war on drugs costing billions of dollars. There are 80,000 people in jail right now for simple laws regarding marijuana. There were 800,000 people arrested last year for marijuana, most for simple possession.”
Steves wants to be clear. He isn’t saying kids should be allowed to use marijuana, just as he doesn’t think they should smoke or drink alcohol. And he isn’t advocating the legalization of harder drugs. “I acknowledge there is a serious drug abuse problem in this country,” Steves said. “I’m the parent of two teenagers. I don’t think they should smoke pot.”
What he is saying is that prohibiting marijuana “causes more trouble than the drug does.”
