I took a puff, and then the girl you have seen on the commercials and I made beautiful love… I took a puff, and then the girl you have seen on the commercials and I made beautiful love and created a baby. We would not have done it otherwise, you see, but the irresistible aphrodisiac of marijuana — and marijuana alone — led to the inevitable baby-making procedure and thus ruined both of our lives.

Furthermore, there is a distinct possibility that the inhaling of the green substance alone impregnated her — not the act of copulation itself.

Down the street, a posse of smokers ran over a little girl on a bike while exiting a drive-through window, a small child drowned while her babysitter smoked a joint and Ganja fired a loaded gun, killing a teen’s smoking partner. While these sorts of things play down the everyday depictions of the dangers marijuana presents, the one that really convinced me of the society-ruining impact widespread marijuana use can have was the new commercial of a high school swim team left without an anchor while their teammate smoked up. That, friends, we just cannot have.

The incidents I cite are, of course, the more, uh, creative part of the government’s ongoing media campaign against drugs, with marijuana being the primary target. These outlandish situations are apparently “realistic portrayals” of the harmful effects of marijuana, as www.mediacampaign.org states, intended to show the “benefits of a drug-free lifestyle.”

So how successful has the Drug Czar John Walters been in his campaign?

An independent study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that, $185 million later, “there is no evidence consistent with a desirable effect of the Campaignon youth.” Additionally, teenagers who saw the advertisements most often “tended to move more markedly in a ‘pro-drug’ direction.”

Needless to say, $185 million was not needed to achieve these results. We could have just bought an eighth.

Not only has this struggle against marijuana been tremendously ineffective — as the figures above, its rise in popularity, and its easy accessibility show. The focus on marijuana itself has clearly been misguided.

Anyone seriously interested in the ongoing debate already knows that the dangers associated with marijuana have long been exaggerated, especially considering the legal status of tobacco and alcohol, both of which are arguably more dangerous to the health of an individual. While the physiological addiction myth in particular has been dispelled, the “gateway effect” remains the chief concern of the opponents of relaxed laws on possession of marijuana.

However, of the 70 million plus Americans who have tried marijuana, 83 percent have never tried cocaine, and since 1991 — when the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse started collecting its data — the use of marijuana has climbed, while the cocaine rates remained steady.

While these numbers certainly do not support the validity of the gateway effect, the success of other governments in handling identical concerns should serve as a model.

Legalizing marijuana in government-regulated coffee shops in order to discourage the use of harder drugs — the drug policy of the Dutch — has been a success. While there has been an increase in marijuana use, a similar result has been conspicuously absent in the case of serious drugs.

This war on marijuana has shown itself to be misguided, wasteful and, ultimately, a losing cause. Instead of continuing to pursue a fleeting goal of eliminating its presence as a popular recreation drug, we should cease the silly media campaign that has succeeded only in amusing the vast majority of people, and follow the example of other Western countries and make the sensible choice on marijuana, focusing more on the serious drugs.

Because really, when was the last time you heard this exchange:

“Hey, man, you wanna hit this?”

“And be grounded again? Nah, man, I’m cool.”

E-mail columnist Pedja Jurisic at [email protected].