If Olympic gold-medal swimming champ Michael Phelps had been snapped sipping a glass of Jack Daniels rocks, would he have lost a major sponsor and been suspended from competition for three months by USA Swimming? Of course not. And yet this is what happened when a photo of him smoking dope was published by a British tabloid on 2.1.

I’m sorry to be behind-the-curve but isn’t alcohol just as poisonous and bad for the system and deblilitating to the soul as dope, if not more so? It’s not as if Phelps was photographed mainlining heroin or smoking crack. The guy was just smoking a little weed — big deal. I heard a news guy on CNN say this morning, “He broke the law so he has to suffer the consequences.” The laws against pot smoking are ridiculous — they’re in force because of a taxation and political issue, pure and simple. And because of a cowardice issue among politicians, lawyers and civil servants

I don’t turn on at all and I limit my imbibing to wine in the evenings, but it’s the height of hypocrisy for everyone in the athletic world to gulp drinks at social occasions like there’s no tomorrow and yet suffer cardiac arrest when an athlete takes a single bong hit at a party. Is there a hole somewhere I can get sick in?