Using any consistent standard, either pot should be legal or alcohol and tobacco should be illegal as well. Booze and cigarettes are FAR more dangerous. Weed isn't dangerous to anybody. Being high while driving or operating machinery is obviously irresponsible, but back at college kids would drive high all the time and I never heard of a single case where it was an issue. The same people would never dare to drive drunk, and the ones who dared ended up with DUIs. On that show Intervention you see people addicted to all sorts of different stuff - one girl got high off PC duster aerosol - but you never see anyone who's a "marijuana addict." The ones who do smoke weed are also drinkers or hooked on coke or something. Prohibition does not work. All it does is create crime (along with violence and the other ills that accompany crime), place greater burdens on the justice system, and create a "need" for more government spending and repressive powers. It seems obvious that if what you're doing has no potential to harm anyone, then it shouldn't be illegal.
Michael Phelps is more talented and respectable than any fool who would put him down for smokin' a little weed. I think it's awesome that he can loosen up enough to take a bong hit, being that he is a #1 top notch world class CHAMPION ATHLETE. The only crime is that he was caught on camera. Weed is just a large part of our culture, always will be. BTW I don't smoke, can't stand the shit but it is what it is.
For me the bottom line is that pot use is not something anyone should be going to jail over. I find it interesting that Kellogg was apparently ok with sponsoring an athlete who was caught driving drunk but not the same guy when he was caught on camera hitting a bong.
I can assure you that there are plenty of pot addicts where I grew up. Addiction, for some people, is a manifestation of a compulsive personality (disorder? only if you don't compulsively build businesses or research a cure for cancer or practice piano). Having said that, I agree that it's ridiculous to criminalize it. I haven't read the thread but Phelps' only mistake was being naive enough to take a bong hit in a place where he couldn't see everyone in the room to make sure no one was taking his picture. I heard on the radio yeaterday that Speedo was still on board but Kellogg's was out.