So, I've got CNN Headline News on in the background (Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares is over) and my ears pick up when I hear the words: "Controversy. Children's Book. Marijuana." Well, sounds like book news to me. Turns out Ricardo Cortes, director of Magic Propaganda Mill has self-published It's Just a Plant, "an illustrated children's book about marijuana" that is "a book for parents who want to educate their children about the complexities of pot in a thoughtful, fact-oriented manner." Seems to me that this could be a gateway book to harder subjects, like "it's just a needle" (Trainspotting), or, gasp, faux memoirs about drug abuse and rehab (cough: Frey).

I reached out to the best expert I could on the subject of reefer and literature, none other than Mike Edison, former publisher of High Times and author of I Have Fun Everywhere I Go (BTW, I can't wait to go to that book launch party next week!) to see what he thought of "the ganja" as a suitable subject for a picture book.

The book's premise stinks worse than Snoop Dogg's last record - little kids catching mommy and daddy in the act of getting stoned? If you can't get stoned without getting busted by your six-year old, you should have you bong taken away. I am all for education, but there is something seriously wrong about teaching first-graders about weed. What's next, Fisher Price's "My First Water Pipe"? The whole thing sounds like some vast stoner conspiracy to increase the flagging circulation of anachronistic marijuana magazines. Either that or Bill O'Reilly created it so he'd have something new to scream about. What someone should really write is a dumbed-down book for gullible parents who've been conned by corrupt pharmaceutical companies to keep their kids high on behavior-modification drugs.

Mike should know what is and what's not appropriate, especially with the subtitle to his book being "Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World."

As a side note, what I love is how Headline News paired this story with the new White House report on dope use and mental illness and the story about the teens who (in this great headline) Dig Up Skull For Pot 'Bong'.