Buy Kellogg's cereal. Eat lots of it.
That's our reaction to calls by marijuana advocates to boycott the Kellogg Co. because it chose to stop portraying Michael Phelps as a hero for kids on boxes of Frosted Flakes.
Phelps, as the whole world must know by now, has admitted smoking weed after a photo surfaced of him taking a hit from a bong. Smoking marijuana is a common and piddly offense. Phelps acknowledged it and promptly apologized. He gets points for forthrightness.
But the Kellogg Co. gets points for not renewing its contract with Phelps after the image of him pulling on a water pipe got splashed on screens around the world.
The problem with lionizing him on breakfast tables in front of 7-year-olds was inadvertently underscored by the marijuana touts themselves. When the story broke, they immediately seized on it as evidence that a dope smoker can win a slew of Olympic gold medals. Such a wonderful drug. They somehow neglected to mention the risks of today's high-potency marijuana – or a new report from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center linking dope-smoking to aggressive testicular cancer.
An occasional – or perhaps single – indulgence in marijuana was hardly going to slow down an athlete as naturally gifted as Phelps. That doesn't mean his career would have survived regular use, and regular use is the threat of any potentially habitual drug.
To read the complete editorial, visit The (Tacoma) News Tribune.