“The End of Laughing at Marijuana Reformers”

The title of this post is the headline of this new piece at The Atlantic, which gets started this way:

Voters in Colorado, Oregon and Washington will decide on election day whether to legalize marijuana in their states. All three initiatives have a chance of passing, and two are ahead in polls. In Massachusetts and Arkansas, voters may legalize medical marijuana. And last year, a Gallup poll found that a majority of American voters supported legalizing marijuana for the first time.

The political taboo against marijuana has been fading for awhile. When Bill Clinton admitted he’d smoked weed as a college student, he felt the need to add that he hadn’t inhaled, and observers still wondered if it would cost him votes. Barack Obama admitted that he did inhale as a college student. Yet his personal history with narcotics hasn’t stopped him from presiding over a draconian War on Drugs and responding to several questions about drug reform with jokes.

It’s hard to believe dismissiveness of that sort can last much longer. A state measure legalizing marijuana would signal a huge shift in public opinion and force the federal government to react. And whatever happens at the ballot box this November, a clever nonprofit is highlighting the fact that more and more prominent people of diverse ideological backgrounds say reform is needed.