By Shane McKinley, Torch specialist

"The higher you are
The farther you fall
The longer the walk
The farther you crawl"
-"The House That Jack Built" by Metallica

I was watching "Lords of the Revolution" on VH-1 yesterday. It talked about infamous pot jokers Cheech and Chong's rise to glory. I didn't realize that in the '70s, America was such a pot-friendly country. Or how Nixon and Regan cracked down on wacky tobacky puffers.

I thought about writing an article about how in wrestling there was never a mainstream character that professed their love of smoking weed. Sure, wrestlers may have referenced weed in their promos (I remember during one Raw the Rock saying that the best weed is in California, and damn if that ain't true...not that I would know), but there has never been a full-fledged grappler in hemp tights.

Why? It's the same reason why in all of the years I have been watching wrestling, I have never seen a wrestler smoke on-camera. You know some guys are still taking a long drag behind the curtain before their music hits. I think why they haven't shown Randy Orton smoking or Jeff Hardy lighting up a doobie on TV is because parents would complain that WWE is brainwashing their children. But beer-drinking? We've got Stone Cold to thank for that.

-I mention all of this because by now you've read that Jeff Hardy was busted for housing nearly all of the narcotics in Mexico at his place. This ain't Cheech and Chong goofy pot jokes. This is like "Fear and Loathing in North Carolina."

And I'm not shocked at all. Reading that Jeff got busted for drugs was like reading that it was going to be sunny tomorrow.

It doesn't bother me that Jeff did the same thing what seemingly any celebrity says when they get busted: "Oh, this thing was blown out of proportion. I only had 251 Vicodin pills, not 262. Geesh." I get the sense from the rainbow-haired warrior that he doesn't consider his drug habit a big deal. He's a grown man. He has the right to put whatever he wants in his body.

Jeff: "All of these people are getting their panties in a twist, man. WWE is begging me to come back, man. I thought Vince was at my front door, not those DEA dudes. My soul is a wounded dove, ready to fly up to the milky way. Give me the damn cup. I'll gladly fill it up. Peace, love, dope."

But if WWE.com ran a story about how Jeff was found unconscious at the bottom of a stairwell- for real this time - most of us (sad to say) would have seen it coming. Look, we all have struggles in our lives and our way of coping may not be the healthiest.

But here's the deal: we're nervous about what Jeff does in AND outside the ring. Obviously we don't know the whole story, but at looking at the police reports, personally I'm wishing that Jeff wouldn't feel the need to be surrounded with all of that drug garbage. Drugs are bad. Just say no. And when you give out ecstasy pills, make sure that your fingernails are clean. Inside tip.

(credit to themovieblog.com, movie-moron.com)

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com

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