This blog is pretty boring and not about travel.

Verity Firth is a NSW Labor MP and her husband got caught buying an ectasy pill the other day, for $20.

That sounds like a reasonable price to me-for Australia. In the US (I hear) you could buy half a gram of fizz for $20! Is it possible the drug dealers are ripping us off?!

What's interesting is the huge media reaction to the incident. I wonder what we would come up with if we blood tested all the Murdoch and Fairfax journos who are so shocked with Mr Firth's behaviour. Got them to wee into a jar the night of the Fairfax Christmas party. We are lucky to have such people in Australia holding our moral compass.

Speaking of weeing into a jar, I got drug tested at a surboat carnival on the weekend. I felt a little flattered they wanted to drug test me. But they tested our whole crew including our bowman who we call McAthlete because he looks like Hamburgler. He also has a quarter pounder and a longneck after every training session. So it was just a random test.

After out third race we filled in the paperwork and our chaperone followed us into the toilet. As a boatie you only wear speedo's anyway but I was told to drop mine to my knees and piss into this little jar, while he watched.

Nothing happened.

It's awkward when someone's staring at your sausage hoping it'll do something but it doesn't.

So I went back to the beach, my chaperone (name of John Brown, no kidding) following to make sure I didn't rort the system. Right before my race I pulled the lever and drained my bladder. No use carting all that ballast around. We got knocked out anyway, then it was back to the drug testing room to see if I could muster something up.

Two hours, two liters of Staminade and two schooners later I passed a beauty-190ml, by far the largest sample in my crew. Old John Brown certainly knew me pretty well by then-stuck in the cubicle with me as I tried to squeeze a piss out, I forced out a sneaky fart by mistake. 'Toot-toot' it went and I suggested we bottle that instead..."odeur de boatie!"

He just stared at my cock and and frowned, unimpressed. He's heard it all before has John Brown. But he didn't mind-he's on an hourly rate.

Anyway, back to our scandal. When Verity was asked if she had ever used ecstasy she dodged the questions by refusing to say no and that her conscience was clear. Whose isn't?

Strange things are happening in NSW. Verity's husband bought a pill, and he's getting in big trouble for it. Kristina Keneally and her government have sold the NSW electricity grid to their mates in the private sector for about half the market price, a discount of about $4 billion.

Some bloke buys a pill and he gets arrested for it, someone else rips off the public to the tune of a few billion dollars and no charges are laid.

You might conclude we have our priorities mixed up in Australia.

Since someone in government has now been sprung buying drugs and we know that anyone who wants drugs can get them whenever they like, why not just legalise and regulate drugs like cocaine and ectasty?

If it was legal you could tax it. The government would buy cocaine for one or two dollars a gram from Bolivia and sell it here for $250 a gram. The good stuff. Imagine what you could do with the tax revenue. Most coke is used by people on high incomes (bankers/lawyers/tradies) therefore taxing it is progressive. This means the big swinging dicks are happy because they can get high legally, and so are the left wingers because the rich are paying higher taxes which will eventually trickle down to the them.

You'd also cut out those dealers who've been ripping us off for so long. They would become engineers and solve the labour shortage in WA instead.

The extra taxes could be used to pay for more schools, bridges, roads, trains, carbon schemes, NBN's, flood recovery efforts and drug rehab centres. The good people of Colombia would have a legitimate income and wouldn't have to answer to FARCing guerilla's all the time.

The down side is you it loses some appeal as a pick up tool as it's now only expensive, not illegal and therefore not as naughty. This negatively effects the experience for guys who rely on it to pick up because they are less badass now. To increase their badness they could get tribal tattoo's around their biceps.

While we're on taxes, why not tax junk food*. If fat people cost the health system so much more than healthy people, why should they be subsidised? It's the user pays principle. We do it with cigarettes, toll roads and insurance. By taxing junk food you disincentivise people to buy it, reducing obesity.

The people who can't help themselves and get obese anyway have paid enough taxes over time to fund their stay in hospital as they recover from heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, osteoarthritis, cancer, sleep apnea, abdominal hernias, varicose veins, gout, gall bladder disease, respiratory problems including pickwickian syndrome (a breathing blockage linked with sudden death), liver malfunction, and being a fat bastard.

We could probably extend this to a carbon price but that's another story.

*Except McDonalds, which is maligned in the media and delicious.