Reefer Madness

Giants ace Tim Lincecum got nailed for possession of 3.3 grams of marijuana in his home state of Washington on October 30th after getting pulled over for doing 74 mph in a 60 mph zone (they must have some strict cops in suburban Seattle).  He faces a $622 fine and damage to his reputation as a sports hero to the young and impressionable.

A few years, I would have felt conflicted about Tim Terrific getting caught for pot possession.  I have believed that marijuana should be legalized since the 1980’s, but at the same time I have also felt that professional athletes, who get paid a ton of money and have a certain duty to the industry that makes them enormously wealthy, should lay off of the pot at least until after they retire.  They get paid so much money, they should really do without something they don’t necessarily need in the first place.

Now that times have changed, and pot is practically legal in Northern California, I don’t feel particularly conflicted about it at all.  As someone of my years and  and experience, I’m not the least bit surprised that Tim is a midnight toker, as Steve Miller once famously sang.  Hell, anyone could have looked at Tim’s long hair and the Seattle grunge look he maintains assiduously when not in uniform and guessed that he likes to get baked when circumstances permit.

As for his impact on impressionable youth, that’s a lot of hog-wash.  The youth of America are probably better off learning that smoking the occasional dube doesn’t make you a monster, at least no more so than having a couple of beers or glasses of wine at the end of the day.  America’s prisons are full of pot dealers at a cost of approximately $35,000 per prisoner per year, not to mention the other costs of the Drug War, all of which have done absolutely nothing to reduce pot consumption.

I also don’t buy the argument that pot is a gate-way to harder drugs, at least not any more so than alcohol or cigarettes.  The federal government tried prohibition of alcoholic beverages for 14 years from 1919 to 1933, and it was a miserable failure.  Sure, it reduced consumption of alcoholic beverages, but it caused an enormous rise in organized crime and the extreme violence that comes with organized crime.  It also turned millions of Americans, who were otherwise generally law-abiding, into criminals.  It created enormous disrespect for the rule of law, as heavy-handed, stupid laws will tend to do.

In fact, America’s drug laws are so ass-backwards that marijuana is treated under federal law as a more dangerous (Schedule 1) drug than methamphetamine, cocaine, morphine and even more powerful pharmaceutical opiates like OxiContin (Schedule 2), which have recognized (or at least acknowledged) medical uses.  Don’t take my word for it — here is a DEA webpage.

Now that I’ve railed against the stupidity of U.S. drug policy, let’s get back to baseball.  I don’t care that Tim Lincecum likes to smoke pot.  However, he’s just given Brian Sabean some leverage as he tries to negotiate an extension up through the year Lincecum becomes a free agent.  My guess is that the drug bust will cost Lincecum more than 100 times the $622 fine he faces in terms of the likely three-year contract he signs this off-season.  Think about that, boys and girls.