Very probably, the most disappointing thing about this story is that it was over before I could even get to my keyboard and log in wind up on it. It’s darned near perfect, too. The title alone makes it perfect bait for the weekend… Pro-marijuana ad to appear outside big NASCAR race.

Comparing grass to Budweiser on a huge screen as tens of thousands of pumped up NASCAR fans drive by just had to be the best way to open a rational discussion on legalization. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Fans attending a major NASCAR race this weekend will see a most unlikely video posted on a giant video screen shortly before entering the track: a pro-marijuana legalization ad.

Outside the NASCAR Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis, the same track that hosts the famed Indianapolis 500, Marijuana Policy Project, the nation’s largest pro-marijuana legalization advocacy group, has purchased space to air – dozens of times over the weekend – a video that pushes the theme that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol.

Unfortunately, we’ll never know how this particular brainstorm might have worked out. Before the sun was even set, the ad was no more.

Pot ad outside Indy race snuffed out

Brickyard 400 race fans probably missed the public-service message that marijuana should be considered safer than alcohol.

A 30-second Marijuana Project Policy video that referred to pot as “the new beer” appeared for several hours Friday before it was pulled from a portable screen across from Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Few NASCAR fans seemed to notice the board, propped up on a trailer in front of the American Legion Speedway Post 500 lodge on Georgetown Road.

The original USA Today article was a little misleading, if I may say so. When I first read it, it made it sound as if it was some giant, Jumbotron type deal blaring across the front of the speedway. In reality, it was a portable electronic sign on a trailer – a type we’ve rented in some rural areas for political campaigns before. And the video was pulled anyway, once the operator figured out how to do it. (Read the full article for more on that part of the story.)

Seems to me that there was very little attempted education going on here. It looks far more like a deliberate provocation. But I’ll let you be the judge. The video follows.