The summer job is anathema to most college students. You need it to pay the bills and get a leg up on next semester, but there is still nothing you’d rather avoid than getting a job when you could be sleeping until noon, hitting the bar by five and playing frisbee at the Ledges in your “spare” time.

But work you must.

There are two things that stand in the way of my perfect summer jobs. They are the laws against selling marijuana and the laws which make it difficult, if not illegal, to be a pimp.

I am kind of a cherry. I don’t do half the things I talk about, but if I lived in a free society and were given half the chance to sell weed without the fear and dread of being imprisoned, I would do it.

Why the hell is marijuana illegal anyway? Our streets are filled nightly with drunk drivers, and we can’t do anything to stop that. But God forbid we turn a blind eye to someone lighting up a fat, chronic blunt, or the walls will come down.

I would much rather people toked up like Cheech and Chong at a Kingston film festival than one where drunks, by the virtue of their sheer numbers, can get away with driving.

Studies have shown alcohol is worse than pot for driving. I don’t recommend driving under the influence of anything, even car phones or Howard Stern. When weighing two evils, you can’t afford to be a Pollyanna. People will drive stoned.

Still, our society is so paranoid about the devil’s weed that we throw thousands of otherwise innocent people in the pokie just for carrying the stuff around. Sitting in your pocket, wacky weed is no more dangerous than a bag of oregano. I could see if weed spontaneously combusted, then being in possession of it might be dangerous.

Too many people buy the line our country was fed in the classic cult film “Reefer Madness.” They believe that marijuana is more danger than cocaine or heroin because of the relative ease with which one could purchase it. They tell us that marijuana is a gateway drug and espouse faulty logic like “no one who does heroin didn’t start with weed.” Well, I bet you don’t see too many people doing heroin who don’t eat cheeseburgers, either. That doesn’t mean there is a causal relationship there.

The truth is that the government is missing out on a big money-making, taxable luxury item here.

My humble suggestion to the government of the United States is pull your head out and get with the times, baby. Legalize pot, slap a tax stamp on it and sit back and reap the rewards of society on soma.

Haven’t these people read their “Brave New World” or seen “THX 1138?” A well-drugged society is a productive society.

In spite of what happened in the ’60s, getting stoned doesn’t make you more likely to go out and protest. It makes you more likely to stay at home, watching re-runs of “Duckman” and eating Funyuns.

The other summer job I would like to get, if this country ever works its way out of the puritanical Dark Ages, is pimp. I think that if prostitution were legalized, I would have the best stable of ‘hos in Ames.

I know lots of freaky chicks who would be happy to set up shop here just to soak up some of that extra student loan money that otherwise gets wasted on books and beer.

Why is it illegal to sell something which is legal to give away? Why make criminals out of women who are guilty of no greater crime than abandoning their romantic delusions in favor of performing a skanky public service.

Is whoring really any more debasing and humiliating than scrubbing toilets? I don’t think so.

I would be a good pimp, too. In order to be a good pimp, you have to be a good listener. I wouldn’t slap my bitches or take more than 50 percent. If they held out on me, I’d just give them the cold shoulder.

I don’t think a good pimp should have to get his girls strung out on junk to keep them in line. If a woman doesn’t want to hook for the love of hooking, then by all means, she should get into another line. No hard feelings. Pimps who use coke and heroin to keep their girls in line are just cheating when you think about it.

The advantages to legalized prostitution are obvious when you consider them. Look at Canada. That place rocks like no other two countries on the face of the earth.

If nothing else, Canadians know this: The only thing better than socialized medicine is being able to pay to get a nut any time you want one.

Legalized prostitution is the main reason you never see Canadians bombing anyone. When you are happy, well-educated, drunk on good beer and freshly laid, you don’t WANT to kill people. You love everyone. It’s a fact.

For too long now, the U.S. has been delaying the inevitable and wasting public resources on fighting crimes that really harm no one until they are enforced. This free society of ours has more people in prison per capita than any of the countries we claim moral superiority over.

The price of freedom is constant vigilance, not locking up every other person for engaging in heretical lifestyle choices.

Let’s reserve cell space for those who deserve it: Murderers, rapists and CEOs who close down profitable manufacturing plants to relocate in Mexico.

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