Sometimes, when I have a little extra space, I like to explain how things work at the Daily for those people who have a burning desire to know why we do the things we do. Today is such a day.

The Daily has often received criticism from its readers for a variety of politically motivated reasons.

We get called Nazis by the commies and commies by the Nazis. It’s all in good fun, and no one gets hurt usually, so we blow it off. It’s kind of funny when you think about it.

We can’t satisfy anybody! This is the clearest indication I have ever seen that we are doing something right.

I stand by this. If no one ever complained, we wouldn’t be doing our job. Not in the opinion section, anyway.

But recently I received some criticism that kind of hurt my feelings because it came from a portion of the Daily’s readership I thought I was down with. I had placated these folks many times over with my unique brand of rye bread humor and social commentary: the pot legalization front.

In particular, what they didn’t like was our use of the “Makes you respond to ‘Hey Stupid’ ten seconds slower” anti-pot advertisements. Why do we use them? Don’t we know we are creating a hostile work environment for pot?

All good questions. Here are some answers for you.

Those are what we in the newspaper-cranking-out business call “fill ads.” Hard as we might try to fill every single square inch (or square centimeter, for readers from every other country in the world), sometimes we just can’t do it, Cappy.

We use fill ads for those small and not so small corners of the paper that would be just too much hassle to stuff with other more legitimate material.

When you’re working all day for peanuts and the only thing standing between you and the latest installment of “Friends” is a tiny square on the bottom left-hand side of the paper, you can either squeeze a three-word letter into it or plop down a public service announcement for recycling.

One of our regularly used fill ads is “hey stupid” from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

We use it with blatant disregard for what most of us at the Daily call “our own policy of legalization.” We may have even done some editorials about it; I can’t remember.

Is this hypocrisy?

Maybe, if you think it’s hypocritical to espouse a philosophy you don’t believe in just to save yourself a little time AND if you think a tiny, little ad in the corner of the paper that is actually someone else’s philosophy counts as “espousing.”

I prefer to see it as irony.

I have never, ever smoked marijuana in my entire life. I didn’t even try it in high school when Cocaine Wayne and I shared a locker for three years outside the Industrial Arts room where Mr. Cryer routinely took naps and left the back door to the teacher’s lot unguarded. That is, until Cocaine Wayne and I had a parting of the ways. It was over a woman, and I’d rather not go into that right now.

I cannot testify to the “euphoric” effects that so many others talk about. Nor can I address the effects known as “the munchies,” “cotton mouth” “sweaty marbles,” “existential goofiness” or “the clamps.” C.W. seemed pretty happy and well-adjusted most of the time though.

Coming from Council Bluffs as I do, I have known my fair share of pot-smokers. Besides Cocaine Wayne, there is the one I like to call Aunt Stephanie.

Now, my Aunt Stephanie did most of her growing up in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Before she had kids, Stephanie had no problem bragging about her wild youth and how much weed she had choked down at rock concerts, sporting events, drive-in movies, during church and at boat shows in the Omaha/Council Bluffs metropolitan area.

She described the amounts as gargantuan, but I suspect this to be an exaggeration of sorts since to this day she gets sleepy after one glass of wine at Thanksgiving dinner.

So everything I know about the effects of marijuana, I learned from her and C.W.

Personally, I don’t see the problem with marijuana. It absolutely should be legalized.

People get messed up — that’s just a fact. People get buzzed off coffee.

They experience positive effects from eating chocolate.

They get a head rush listening to a good preacher, and we don’t make THAT illegal.

I believe it was the Bard, Dennis Miller, who once said that if you made everything that people use to get high with illegal, you would still find people spinning around in circles on their front lawns until they passed out just to get a buzz. God, he’s funny.

But he is also right.

It is a well-documented fact that even animals will eat rotten berries just to get at the sweet, sweet liquor inside.

Finding altered states of consciousness is as natural as making sweet love to a really beautiful woman.

And even though I have never had that pleasure either, I still like to think anything is possible.

So legalize marijuana already, OK? My work is only half done.

I don’t like it when there are hurt feelings, especially in the local druggie community. Let’s face it, I might need to buy a used CD some day or get a tattoo and I don’t need any of these people mad at me.

If those “Hey Stupid” ads are getting you down because you belong to an organization that routinely campaigns for the legalization of hemp, just remember: You do have support here at the Daily.

So in order to placate the masses, I have been working on my own new fill ad.

This one should placate the pot-smokers and hemp-legalizers while managing not to offend those who believe marijuana is the devil’s own weed, either.

As you can see from the included diagram, this new and improved fill ad combines the “just say no”sensibilities of that pill-popping hypocrite Nancy Reagan with the pill-popping sensibilities of that “just say yes” rock god, Jim Morrison.

I hope you like it, and God bless. If you don’t, blame it on the bossanova.

Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily .