Every year a line of military ships line up on the banks of the Willamette River during Rose Festival. Their crews storm downtown Portland where they hand out Navy hats to vixens and generally get drunk and loud while local, nude bicyclists take to the streets.

But consider what I spotted on the side of a Coast Guard ship in this year's fleet. You've got to draw the hell-raising line somewhere and our brave, fighting Coast Guard troops apparently place it between full-blown, drunken lechery and hash pipes.

Beware all potheads who spend time at sea...

...the USS Steadfast is patrolling our nation's aquatic borders...

...and its crew has no vested interest in "legalizing it."

They're also braggarts.

I wonder if the Steadfast's crew spent their long weekend promoting "abstinence-only" education at area schools while making sure to get to bed by 9 PM. Oh, I keed, I keeeeeeed...

But, seriously, doesn't most of America gets its pot from basement hydroponics gardens, pseudo-communes out in the sticks and, uh, the entirety of northern California? Or are there speedboats cruising up and down the west coast with loads of South American Mary Jane in their cargoholds? Or do these X'd out marijuana leaves indicate the number of "eighths" the crew has smoked? Take note of the lack of a red X over the golden leaf on the ship's (ganja?) smokestack. The "Steadfast" could be a reference to the crew's steadfast refusal to leave their bongs at home.

There's so much I don't know about the Coast Guard...

While I'm asking stupid questions, does anyone out there have any idea what that second symbol is supposed to represent? What else has the crew been cracking down on and/or smoking? My guesses:

Slurpees!

Crystal meth.

Poached ice from the Arctic.

Crates of stolen zambonis.

An international criminal organization headed by Mr. Freeze, the Coca Cola polar bears and Santa Claus.

Ice pirates.

UPDATE: I finally found the answer in an article on about.com. It looks like the snowflake symbolizes drug busts in general. The addition of a mounted bullet casing over a snowflake indicates that the crew shot out the engines of a smuggler's boat. As a metalhead teenager living in the year 1991 might put it, "WICKED!"