"Inventive" kids litterature: It's just a plant.

"What's that, Mommy?" Asked Jackie. "Are you and Dad smoking a cigarette?"
"No, baby." Said her Mother. "This is called a 'joint.' It's made of marijuana."
"Mar-a-whah? What's that?" asked Jackie.
"Marijuana," smiled her Mom "is a plant."

I don't know whether to resent the lousy writing and pictures, or praise the fact that someone is taking drug information an iota more serious than the usual scare tactics. I remember some vaguely authoritarian teacher at Goleta Valley going on and on about how heroin, LSD and amphetamines were the immediate next step after taking your first puff off of what he called, with elaborate diction so that you could hear the hyphens, "mari-hu-ana cig-garettes." But at least in the states, they mostly pretended drugs didn't exist. After I came back to Norway, it was all about how dangerous and evil they were.

(Not that drugs are good, mind, they're just not uniformly bad, particularly marihuana. In fact, the application of current law to marihuana is so hurtful, it's much like curing a headache by having one's head cut off with a dull and rusty saw sans anasthesia.)