Continuing with the themes we touched on last week in the premiere edition of this soon-to-be-canceled column (which I'm assuming, of course, that nobody read except my esteemed editors and those who listened to me read it over bribed shots of tequila), let's refrain from - what we in the alternative spheres of life - call "frontin'."

This has been a bummer week for stoners all over Washington. HELLA bummer.

Sweet lovers of Mary Jane, last week you were filled with such hope. Olympia, if not all of the Evergreen State - or at least the I-5 corridor and maybe Tonasket - was alive with the promise that this could be the year, man, this could be the year...

Downtown Olympia's historic Capital Theater presented a well-organized, plain-language and delightfully non-weed leaf emblazoned discussion with Rick Steves, the Northwest's own travel guru, whose guidebooks and travel shows are taken by some smitten with the adventure bug as scripture. You were so blazed on potential that it wasn't even a buzzkill that you couldn't get a seat to see Steves. It was almost like post election Obama elation. You could feel it in the air.

But we're not going there. Those suave swindlers the Swarner Boys can't afford another lawsuit at this point. So let's keep it PG: Potentially Green.

Three bills were presented to our wonderfully articulate and well-intentioned elected officials: delivered into the halls of power on the dreams of their local constituencies to do right by them, to listen to their wishes, to stand and deliver as powerfully as Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington did for those Cub Scouts in the Bible Belt - refusing to bow to pressure for what they believe in, as if right and just representation for the folks who elected them was the main motivation for pursuing public office. What a fantastical world to believe in and be a part of!

But that dreadful doublespeak! Oh what despicable wings you ride upon!

It only took about 20 minutes of House committee executive session to stub your hopes out like a roach that reached the crutch.

Rep. Chris Hurst, (D) Enumclaw (You remember Enumclaw right? Home of sex farms where people paid to have intercourse with livestock for nearly 20 years...), self proclaimed "believer in state's rights" opened the meeting with an adulatory reverence for the passions stirred in the hearings on this controversial issue, disarming listeners with a belief that this is an issue, "better served by individual states."

Passing the mic around like a cipher at a basement party, we heard Rep. Sherry Appleton, (D) Poulsbo, call the war on drugs an "absolute failure" where the state spends "millions of dollars putting away non-violent offenders."

Responding to Appleton, Rep. Brad Klippert, (R), Kennewick, a veteran police officer, retorted that he never had a positive experience on the job with weed. "There were no good calls as a result of marijuana."

Hmm. I've personally never met a stoner that lit one up and then beat his wife, but then again, I'm not from the Tri-Cities. Maybe it's a little different over there. Over here it's mostly the heavily state-taxed and regulated liquor fiends that like to throw a few back and slap the old lady around, relaxing afterwards with a nice cool cigarette, which now run nearly $10 a pack thanks to aggressive state taxation.

Perhaps the only informed and positive comments to be made on the failed process came from Reps. Roger Goodman and Al O'Brien, both Seattle-area Dems who seemed to have actually done their homework and read the numbers.

Goodman eloquently stated, " A no vote is a vote for continued chaos," believing that we are exemplifying Prohibition-era standards of moral judgments and ineffectiveness while continuing to create "the illegal markets this supports."

"People don't respect it," said Goodman in reference to the law prohibiting marijuana and its very public, rampant usage. "We don't trust adults," he continued, commenting that it sets a bad precedent for the future generations and their ability to make informed decisions. "The government doesn't respect you, so you don't have to be respectable."

O'Brien, a 21-year Seattle Police Veteran, was the most vocal proponent besides Goodman for the decriminalizing of amounts under 40 grams, making it a civil infraction where a ticket would be issued and the contraband confiscated, instead of arresting the individual and filing misdemeanor charges.

"It takes the pressure off local governments," O'Brien said, adding, "A lot of prosecutors don't prosecute it anyways."

After all was said and done, Hurst chimed in, being the voracious state's rights advocate he claimed to be. Hurst said he could not, "in good conscience" support a bill that violated a federal law prohibiting use or possession of marijuana, which is a "Schedule I Controlled Substance."

Hurst then utilized a silly metaphor about unsuspecting boaters being boarded by Coast Guard or Homeland Security agents and charged with a most heinous federal offense, or even worse, "trafficking a controlled substance" if they happened to be coming back from Canada.

Seriously, bro? WTF are you smoking?

Here's the rub, kids. It is time for the hypocrisy to stop. Liquor is processed from the rotting of grains and vegetables. Tobacco is processed with hundreds of chemicals, many of which are found in lethal poisons. Both are controlled and taxed by our state before they are sold to you.

Weed goes straight from the plant to the smoking device.

Think of it this way. You see a cadre of police officers smiling with big cigars around a drug bust touting a win in the War on Drugs, and behind them sits, oh, let's say, 500 lbs of the sweetest cheeba. At an average street value of around $3000 a pound, that's $1.5 million in untaxed, soon to be destroyed, potential revenue in a state that's on budget to run out of money just around the time you're going to be thinking about buying back-to-school clothes for junior again. Compound that with all the money spent detecting, tracking, enforcing, prosecuting, locking up, and maintaining these "criminals" and you'll start to see the numbers not making any sense.  Legalize it, tax it, and promote weed tourism, ala Amsterdam. If Washington were the one state where you could travel to and smoke legally, every stoner in the country, as well as others, would come up here for the experience. They'd stay in hotels. They'd eat at restaurants. They'd buy it and produce tax revenue, without raising or introducing new taxes on an already stressed populace.

Luckily for you stoney types, the legalization issue that was humored and then hammered into smithereens with contempt and cowardice is marching forward as a ballot measure to be voted on by the general public. There's still another bill alive in the senate. All hope is not lost.

And besides, it's not like you needed the government's approval before all this anyways. Smoke it if you got it, especially while it's tax-free.