Not that anyone's talking about synthetic cannabis in those terms. No, they're worried about what's in it, not how you use it.
But even if all a fake-whacky joint's contents were proven safe, government could still ban them on the smoke-is-harmful line alone.
Of course, they'd be total hypocrites to do so, considering the amount of tax they reap from legal killer tobacco, but hypocrisy has never stopped a politician.
In this case, it hasn't stopped them moving to slap bans on every additional alternate substance the purveyors of these low-dose tokes are now trying to use to allow them to continue sales.
And slap they have, indiscriminately. So indiscriminately one wonders how many other products there are out there with one or several of these substances in them yet, because they're not being sold as "drugs", real or synthetic, they're going under the radar.
Wine is an example. Technically, most red and white wines as well as sherry and port are now illegal. Why? Because they have been found to contain traces of the Class B substance that is the active ingredient in the party-drug fantasy.
Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) and its precursor gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) are naturally occurring chemicals produced in the fermentation of grapes. So, of course, they're in wine. Both are used as the main ingredient in fantasy.
Now, the levels found in a bottle of wine are small compared with those in a fantasy tab, but current law is zero-tolerance.
So wine-makers, sellers and knowing consumers are all, technically, criminals.
Mr Clean's reaction to this news is instructive. He said it would be "an outrage" if wine were found to be illegal, didn't think there was "any serious suggestion" people were deliberately breaking the law and added that "a fair measure of common sense would need to be applied" if this was shown to be true.
Hypocrite. It's okay to swill the legal killer alcohol, heavily taxed, note, even if it contains a classified illegal substance, but it's not okay to smoke a pretend doobie even when it has not been shown to contain anything (previously) illegal. Or necessarily harmful.
I'll just add that GHB is also an ingredient in a range of beauty products that have been sold, and continue to be sold, here for years. No wonder women so enjoy and spend so much time at the beauty parlours, eh?
Don't get me wrong. I support moves to analyse and classify any and all commercial products - from hand sanitisers to a can of peas - that are imbibed, inhaled, snorted, eaten or absorbed by humans. Because we can only make genuine healthy choices about what to put into our bodies if we know what's in the stuff we're consuming.
But this debate is only tokenism on that level. No one in authority actually cares whether these products are dangerous or not. If that were the driving concern, they would ban tobacco and alcohol overnight.
No, all they care about is that some smart-alec has found a way to get round the law and market something the Government can't justifiably slap a decent tax on, so they do the cop-out shuffle and make it illegal instead.
Bottom line is these products are mild intoxicants designed to let users have a bit of synthetic fun. If there's some harm in them, it's minor compared with the enormous harm the legal killers cause every day.
But that's not a vote-grabbing campaign issue, is it?
That's the right of it.
Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.
