It’s all fun and games until the feds crack down

The New York Times reports the Justice Departing is debating what to do about states like Washington and Colorado that legalize pot.

Would the feds actually try to strike down an voter-approved initiative — passed by a blue state no less? Absolutely. This is serious stuff. It’s partial secession. It means local police won’t help with federal pot investigations, and it means that the US government, which uses anti-drug treaties to punish foreign countries that legalize pot — would be letting its own states do exactly that.

So the challenge to federal power is real, and if Washington and Colorado, which will legalize pot next month, want to keep their laws, there’s only one way to do it. Get other states to do the same thing so that as with gay marriage, it reaches a critical mass. Then the feds might back off.

But that means newly liberated pot smokers can’t act like jerks.

Smoke-ins at the Space needle? Bad! One colleague tells me she was at a bus stop, and a smoker walks up and says “Come on you should try it, it’s legal now.” No!

Americans don’t want to live surrounded by Harold and Kumar.

And the other states are watching. If they keep seeing pictures of giggly people barely able to string a sentence together with droopy eyelids playing Reggae at the Space Needle, nobody else is going to vote for this.

The gay marriage movement was smart — the first couples in line for licenses had been together longer than most straight couples. They were well-dressed, sober, and even conservative-looking. They didn’t fornicate on the courthouse steps.