The outrage among some happens to be very real - misplaced and idiotic, but real. However, as is usually the case, the outrage of a vocal few leads to feigned, trumped-up outrage from the infotainment, whorish media, which leads to the outrage being thought of as far more prevalent than it really is.

The overwhelming public sentiment appears to be that any outrage over this little episode is absurd. Perhaps Phelps is what the country needed to reexamine our ridiculously expensive, ineffective, and stupid drug laws. I have a feeling this is just the start of the debate, and that's a good thing. A lot if it is up to Phelps, though - if he has the balls to stand up to this ridiculous double standard and become sort of a national spokesperson (tokesperson? ha!), it could get interesting.

As I read this article I couldn't help but notice the ad on the right side of the page. It's for a place called Passages Malibu ("The World's Premiere Addiction Cure Center"). What appears to be a rehab facility, thinly disguised as a MacMansion, symbolizes much of what's wrong with this country. The idea that "recovery" should be comfortable and luxurious...exclusive even, was enough to make me almost retch. The absurdity of this shit is inescapable. Even rehab centers are class conscious in America it seems. Where do you go when you are an addict and poor? Wherever the hell you can afford to go I guess. And the assertion by this place that there is actually a "cure" for addiction is perhaps the most laughable part. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of addictive behavior knows you are never "cured". You just learn to manage your addiction. I wonder if, when you go to a place such as this (no doubt boasting of 300 thread-count sheets and celebrity sightings), you get a refund if you manage to pick up any new "addictions" while you're there.

As for the article itself, it was a fluff piece at best. For a topic that deserves far more attention, I'm extremely disappointed that all the author could come up with was one measly page.

Oh, and Salon... spare us the ridiculous adverts. I would like to think that the people running this place are a little more aware of inane bullshit when they see it.

To Salon,

I apologize for implying that you somehow control the advertisements that appear next to your articles. I failed to see the "fine print" next to the rehab facility ad. It was apparently provided by "Ads By Google". Sorry Salon. And fuck you Google.

America's drug policy is idiotic.

I don't know anybody who's given the matter any serious thought at all who doesn't agree with this. People differ on what we ought to do -- legalization, "harm reduction", whatever -- but it's tough to find anybody who actually thinks what we're doing now is anything but disastrous. So why do we keep doing it?

Phelps already is a millionaire. He is 23 years old, not 13. He should have known darn well that he should not pose grinning with a bong. I would not have done it, and I am not even a millionaire. Would you? Are you a millionaire?

To heck with him. Even if this brings him down some, he will have plenty of opportunities, and he already is rich as Croesus, fer cryin out loud.

When I was 23, I was trying to manage a financial sales career and a wife with social pretensions. I was a young fool, but not as foolish as Mr. Phelps. And I had to act as an adult.

To heck with Michael Phelps. Reform drug policy, but do not try to use that weenie as a poster boy.

I don't see this as fluff. I'm tired of the major and "real" news (let's say Gaza) scolling in tiny letters across the bottom of my screen while Nancy Grace babbles on about some missing teen in Schenectady or some movie star's latest underwear exposure. If celebrity news is all we care about as our sons face the Taliban and babies are bombed in Qana, then we are indeed a sick people. Tobacco is clearly a noxious substance yet we wink at it while the analgesic cannabis is reviled by law. Priorities are bassackwards.

Eight suspected marijuana users have been arrested so far in Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott's campaign to bring Michael Phelps to justice.

Computers and other devices have been seized to be searched for evidence to be used against Phelps.

BTW Lott is a Democrat. Last year he bought the sheriff's department a tank equipped with a 50 caliber machine gun in the turret. He calls it "The Peacemaker."

Maybe he'll drive it to Maryland when he goes to pick up Phelps.

This is such a non-event.

There is an abundance of hypocritical behavior over an Olympian hitting a bong when the pros are endurance enhancing and puffing up on all kinds of banned stuff and banking millions.

(Logic suggests that Phelps was hitting a water pipe. No one can prove what was burning from just a photo.)

It's not the fake moral outrage or your defense of him that gets us, Sirota. It's your inability to make the moral jump.

The problem is the people who are against charging and arresting Phelps are against that ONLY. This article is certainly an improvement over the last one, in that at least you obliquely take on the notion of a ridiculous war on marijuana. But it shouldn't TAKE Michael Phelps for people to realize marijuana ought to be legalized.

And they certainly shouldn't get over and drop the issue, two seconds after Phelps is free and clear, whenever that is. That's many of our problems with it.

It's like, now that it happened to Michael Phelps, we have to use some common sense. Well we should have been doing that in the first place. And we should still be trying to do it, whenever this Phelps story fades from the front pages. But something tells me we won't. Society will drop the issue and go back to actually incarcerating people for this silliness just as soon as our Olympic hero can skate free.