'IN VERY POOR TASTE'?

Ah, to live in the United States, where we are fortunate to enjoy broad First Amendment freedoms and live under strict laws against tracking someone down and putting sugar in their gas tank simply because you don't like something they wrote.

This week's installment of my weekly column prompted one irate reader to leave a 10-minute phone message on my editor's voicemail, ranting about the column which he felt was "in very poor taste" and threatening to cancel his subscription.

In the column, "Portugal's reefer madness," I wrote about the recent news that Portuguese police in Lisbon announced they wouldn't arrest visiting British soccer fans for posession or consumption of marijuana, following the rationale that hey, if the hooligans get stoned out of their gourds, they'll be too mellow to start a riot.


I chided the police for making it known that the nation's already lenient drug laws were being selectively enforced, but I noted that dozens of Europeans have been killed in soccer riots and if letting the pot go unpunished increased public safety, then they've got to do whatever it takes to keep order.

What was perhaps an oversight on my part was devoting about 10 inches of the column to the lighthearted suggestion that maybe we should try passing the pipe to sports fans and athletes in the U.S. It was meant to be taken lightly--there's no way I'd actually support the introduction of drugs into pro sports--but if someone totally missed the sarcastic tone, I can see how it would appear to be a puff piece on puffing the magic dragon.

More telling stil, I received four e-mails in response to the column at my Freedom Communications e-mail address; three of them clearly written by proponents of marijuana legalization. One e-mail was from a self-styled "Welsh stoner" writing all the way from Wales.

Anyone who has read the offending column is invited to give their feedback in the tagboard on the right hand side of the blog. Let me know what you think; was it harmless hyperbole or pot-friendly piffle?