Maybe the weirdest part of the Joe Rogan–Neil Young fight is the ridiculous position Neil Young has staked out on "illegal" drug use.  

For those of you under age 50, Neil Young was a moderately famous Canadian rocker from years ago who, like his bandmate David Crosby, was notorious for ingesting loads of controlled substances and living to tell the tale.

There is a hilarious send-up of Young by SCTV at the end of this sketch that gets it dead-on.

Drug arrests were a big part of his earlier career, although in the last decade he claimed to be exploring a new perspective of sobriety after spending most of his life stoned out of his mind.

Young at least remembered he still has the rights to all his music, and he is petty about licensing deals, so seeing him pull out of Spotify over his Joe Rogan/ivermectin snit was actually nothing new.  Apparently, old buddy David Crosby tried the same thing, only to be told he no longer owns the rights.  Well, they always said smoking dope makes you stupid, and left-wing, geezer rockers are Exhibit A.

Of course, Neil Young and the other has-been singers are not necessarily against all drug use.  They just seem to want to focus on one drug: ivermectin — a cheap, super-safe medicine with no narcotic buzz, that's been around since the 1970s.  The worst that can happen to someone taking ivermectin for COVID-19 is that he doesn't do any better than someone not taking anything.  But more evidence keeps coming in every day from around the world that the drug is helpful in treating the virus.

Contrast this with Young's 1970s attempt to address heroin use, "The Needle and the Damage Done," a vapid tune about a drug death, where heroin is some sad thing that just happens.  Like a traffic accident.  He saved his real anti-drug outrage for today, against a safe medicine being prescribed by doctors across the world for a short-course, off-label use.

Andrew Breitbart was famous for saying, "Politics is downstream from the culture" and thus the left is really good at polluting the culture for its political ends.  But I think this episode proves yet again what a double-edged sword that may be.  An absurd figure like Neil Young is left to tamp down dissent for the leftist-lockdown orthodoxy of our ruling class.  This failing Florida newspaper is typical of the out-of-touch partisans, reduced to rooting on ancient, brain-addled rockers to carry their message.  Most Americans though, are repelled, not impressed.

But to a certain extent, you can't blame them.  Biden is ready to clean house, starting with HHS, over his messed up COVID-19 policies.  He could just go ahead and hire the entire Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young bunch as their replacements.  They already have more real-world experience with pharmaceuticals and hospitals than Tony Fauci, and as for policy-making, they couldn't do any worse.

Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, Ky.

Image via Pexels.