On Saturday night, I’ll be celebrating the Fourth of July back in my home town of St. Helens, Oregon, as I’ve done every year for the past twenty years. I’ll gather with friends and family down at the Columbia River and look longingly across the water to a sea of mortars, bottle rockets and other patriotic displays that our state has banned in the name of public safety.

Eventually the city-sponsored fireworks begin, which will launch stunning colors and lights into the air with a thunderous boom. Afterwards, we all race out of the parking lot through the worst traffic of the year, and return home. I drag out a bag of fireworks purchased in a Safeway parking lot from a tent smelling of gunpowder and pavement, which all provide the same hollow display of sparks shot below the six-foot legal limit.

Nearby neighbors sometime fire off contraband that flies harder into the sky. It’s an annualized humdrum display of patriotism that often matches the modern American experience: a commercialized facsimile of joy sanctioned by the state.

Oregon’s regulations of fireworks are among the most strict in the country. While tents offering them can be found everywhere, the product they sell is a paltry selection compared to the rest of the nation.

By law, all fireworks sold in the state of Oregon must not “explode, eject balls of fire, or travel more than six feet on the ground or 12 inches in the air.” An at-home fireworks experience in Oregon typically consists of staring at a cardboard cone in a suburban driveway, as it shoots colored sparks into the air for about 30 seconds before burning out entirely. Of course, more exciting contraband is available just across the river if you’re willing to risk paying $1,000 in fines, per violation.

What confuses me about Oregon’s archaic fireworks law is that as a community, we’ve already clearly shown a distaste for prohibition. In the same week that our proud state has decriminalized recreational marijuana – only the third state in the nation to do so – countless proud Americans will drive across the border to Washington, load their cars up with contraband fireworks, and smuggle them home as if it were a brick of cocaine. And don’t be mistaken: people are making the trip.

When demand is high for a product blocked only by a short trip across the border and a bit of risk-taking, the people will obtain it. It’s a lesson that America has learned countless times over, and one that Oregon of all places should understand.

But of course, fireworks and pot can’t be compared so readily. Marijuana has medicinal properties, and less-proven risks than many legal drugs. Illegal fireworks are dangerous, posing a fire risk to our great state. Right? Washington must be a dystopian hellhole, engulfed in flames all night from these deadly rockets flying off like popcorn in the pan.

From June 23 to July 6, 2014 (the officially sanctioned “fireworks season”), the state of Oregon experienced a total of 165 fires. Across the border in Washington, they experienced 155 firework-attributable fires. In a state with nearly twice the population of Oregon. Whatever Oregon’s fireworks’ ban is doing, it’s not stopping fires.

There’s no doubt that fireworks are a dangerous thing, and the ones banned by Oregon law pose a larger risk. However, in the face of statistics, we must question our current behavior. How much longer will we condemn our children, and our children’s children, to lackluster explosive expressions of this nation’s greatness? We must apply the lessons of one prohibition to another, and reconsider this state’s view on fireworks.