Why marijuana policy gets ignored in Washington

So if it’s not the polls, and it’s not their own behavior, and it’s not that no one is bothered by the side effects, what is it? It’s the optics. If you say you’re interested in legalization, people think you’re a pot smoker — and, worse, that you’re not “tough on crime,” which was historically a killer for Democrats (just ask Mike Dukakis and Mario Cuomo) and a boon for the law-and-order Republicans. Washington is a town based on perceptions, passed-down wisdom and accepted truths based on history — and, let’s be frank, it’s also known for being peopled with the kind of politicians who would probably stand in midtown Manhattan with the oceans lapping at their knees and deny that climate change was having any effect on the weather. Politics is filled with once-teenage parents who preach abstinence, serial adulterers who crow about family values at the drop of a hat and teenage pot-smokers who tell their own kids that it’s a gateway drug that will ruin their lives.

It’s not about the policy, it’s about the politics. And it doesn’t matter if the effects of those policies are the loss of tax revenues, hundreds or thousands of dead at our doorstep or the mass incarceration of generations of African-Americans and Latinos — until the perceptions of the politics of marijuana legalization change (which means getting people to advocate for legalization who aren’t the typical pro-pot activists Washington politicos have come to expect) then the policies are going to stay the same.

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