On Monday, after Richland County, S.C., Sheriff Leon Lott announced that he did not have enough evidence to arrest Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps for smoking marijuana at a November party in Columbia, the gold medalist issued a statement of regret. "I used bad judgment, and it's a mistake I won't make again," Phelps said. "For young people especially -- be careful about the decisions you make. One bad decision can really hurt you and the people you care about."

Phelps' mistake was not smoking pot so much as doing it in front of someone with a cell phone camera and no compunction about selling the picture to a British tabloid. And if that mistake hurt him, it's not because marijuana turned the record-breaking champion into a slacker or a drug addict. It's because consuming an arbitrarily proscribed intoxicant can result in serious legal (and therefore social and economic) consequences, which cause far more harm than marijuana itself.

This reality should be recognized by President Obama, whose own youthful pot smoking did not exactly hold him back but whose future might have been very different if he had been arrested on drug charges in high school or college. The same, of course, could be said for the two drug-experienced baby boomers who preceded him in the White House. But there are some indications that Obama may take a less dogmatic approach to drug policy.

A few days after that photo of Phelps sucking on a bong appeared in the News of the World, the Obama administration signaled that the president will keep his campaign promise to stop the Drug Enforcement Administration's raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, five of which have occurred since he took office. "The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws," a White House spokesman told The Washington Times, "and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind." Continued...