Gay marriage and marijuana legalization have a lot of political similarities. They both have the support of roughly 50% of Americans, they're both seeing wins at the state level but not the federal level (yet), and the strongest support for both issues comes from young democrats.
But the movements themselves are very different in nature. LGBT campaigns are moving. They're centered on real people facing heart-breaking discrimination. Marijuana legalization campaigns are practical. They're about tax revenue and zoning marijuana dealers out of residential neighborhoods. In short, they're about making marijuana users pay taxes and making them less of a social burden.
There's a need in the legalization movement to connect with the public on a personal level, something the LGBT movement has done an inspirational job at.
It's no longer socially acceptable to use "gay" as a derogatory adjective. The LGBT community has relentlessly driven the point home that words can hurt even when it's not the speaker's intention. Calling things gay was totally acceptable 10 years ago when I was in middle school. Things are far from perfect today, but now there are public campaigns aimed at opening people's eyes to the issue. I don't remember anything like these campaigns in the early 2000s.
"What were they smoking?" is used to describe someone who did or said something unbelievably dumb. The underlying message of the comparison is marijuana makes people make stupid decisions, marijuana users make stupid decisions.
The "What were they smoking?" jab is so socially-accepted it was the headline of an Op-Ed on a medical marijuana Supreme Court ruling from a syndicated columnist. It's written off as a joke, satirical word play. After all, the Op-Ed favors medical marijuana patients so he wasn't trying to make fun of marijuana users.
But the reality is that many marijuana patients
are ashamed to "come out" to friends and family. The stigma of marijuana users as stupid makes them feel like they need to hide a part of themselves. The above headline might make a marijuana user feel similiar to how a gay person would feel reading an Op-Ed headline like "Supreme Court Ruling, So Gay." The columnist could say they don't have a problem with gay people, in fact they support gay rights. That doesn't mean they would ever consider publishing the headline "Supreme Court Ruling, So Gay" in the New York Times.
I'm not saying the issues are equivalent. For one thing, people are born with their sexual identity while people choose to use drugs (although there is some evidence of genetic predisposition to drug use.) What makes them similar is their history of stigmatization, and how it has deprived them of certain civil liberties. The LGBT movement has been tremendously successful at connecting on a deeply personal level with the public at large to reverse such stigma.
The legalization movement focuses on practical cost benefit analysis. I think this is in large part due to fear of being labeled selfish drug addicts who simply want easier access to drugs. The problem is that while laws are passed to regulate access, the civil liberties of marijuana users get left behind.
Marijuana users are legally fired for using marijuana. College students lose their financial aid. Parents lose custody of their children. Immigrants are deported. Welfare recipients lose their benefits and public housing. Medicaid patients lose their coverage. Students are expelled. The convicted lose the right to vote. The unemployed face job discrimination.
Practical reasons for legalization are not enough. The stigma needs to be addressed too.