Dear America,

I take it back. I don’t apologize.

Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months a year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, spare me the lecture.

I put myself through hell. I make my body do things nature never really intended us to endure. All world-class athletes do. We do it because you love to watch us push ourselves as far as we can possibly go. Some of us get hurt. Sometimes permanently. When you watched the Super Bowl, you saw 300 pound men smash each while running at full speed, in full pads. You know what the average life expectancy of an NFL player is? Fifty-five. Yet you jump up and spill your beer when a linebacker lays out a wide receiver on a crossing route. Yet you all get bent out of shape when Ricky Williams, or I smoke a little dope to relax. Why? Because the idiots you’ve elected to make your laws have, without a shred of evidence, beat it into your head that smoking marijuana is something akin to drinking antifreeze, done only by dirty hippies and sex offenders.

I SMOKED POT. I LIKED IT. I’LL PROBABLY DO IT AGAIN.

You’ll have to pardon my cynicism. But I call it bullshit. You don’t give a damn about my health. You just get a voyeuristic thrill from watching an elite athlete fall from grace– and exercise a little moral righteousness in the process. Hypocritical righteousness, given that 40 percent of you have tried pot at least once in your lives.

If I can smoke a little dope and go on to win 14 Olympic gold medals, maybe pot smokers aren’t doomed to lives of couch surfing and video games, as our moronic government would have us believe. The list of successful pot smokers includes not just world class athletes like me, it includes Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, the last three U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices and luminaries from business, the arts, sciences and humanities.

So go ahead. Ban me from the next Olympics. Yank my endorsement deals. While you’re at it, keep arresting cancer and AIDS patients who dare to smoke the stuff because it deadens their pain, or enables them to eat. I’ll apologize for smoking pot when every politician who ever did drugs and then voted to uphold or strengthen the drug laws marches his ass off to the nearest federal prison to serve out the sentence he wants to impose on everyone else. I’ll apologize when the sons and daughters of powerful politicians who get caught possessing or dealing drugs in the frat house or prep school get the same treatment as the no-name, probably black kid caught on the front stoop.

Until then, I’ll have none of it. I smoked pot. I liked it. I’ll probably do it again. I refuse to apologize. By apologizing I help perpetuate this stupid idea that what someone puts into his own body on his own time is any of the government’s damned business.

Go ahead and tear me down if you like. But let’s see you rationalize in your next lame ONDCP commercial how the greatest motherf****** swimmer the world has ever seen… is also a proud pot smoker.

Yours, Michael Phelps

RADLEY BALKO is a contributor to Reason.com magazine.