For all the enthusiasm in DC for craft cocktails and microbrews, it turns out you may be better off shooting up some craft heroin than spending an evening drinking on U Street. And, aside from not using any drugs like a total Romney, your safest way to alter always-unappealing reality is to smoke some reefer.

So say the findings of a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports, and summarized by the Post. The study found alcohol to be slightly more lethal than heroin and cocaine, appreciably more lethal than meth and ecstasy, and 114 times more lethal than that butt of so many cheesy jokes, marijuana.

Of course, these findings won’t do much to sway the very serious Washingtonians who scoff at marijuana use as the trifle of silly stoners while they down Manhattans and old-fashioneds that cost more than a gram bag. An article in the Post last November examined the potential impact of legalized marijuana on the District’s bars and clubs. The piece quoted Derek Brown, the owner of Mockingbird Hill and several other bars, and one of Washington’s most respected dispensers of deadly, deadly poison. Brown makes a fine living intellectualizing the lethal act of getting drunk, but fears that a bunch of stereotype stoner characters will cut into his bar’s bottom line by getting high, sitting at the bar, not ordering anything, and being “goofy.”

“Surely,” Brown was quoted as saying, “there must be a beanbag somewhere that they can go plop down on instead of my bar stool.” Ha ha! Good one, Derek! Yes, pot smokers are such confused imbeciles, especially when compared to the very composed and upstanding drunks who frequent your bars. Nevermind that a bunch of people in those bars are already stoned, or that many high patrons will be inclined to order more of Brown’s toxic tonic. It’s just this kind of puerile attitude towards marijuana, exhibited by so many self-important Washingtonians, that hinders the national legalization of the safest recreational drug out there and helps keep tens of thousands of mostly black men in prison for minor possession charges. That’s no laughing matter, no matter how stoned you are.