Group tries to teach lawmakers how to talk about pot

Reporting from Washington —  After all the avoidance, the awkwardness and the blunders, it was obvious that help was needed: Someone had to explain to these people how to talk about drugs.

Few conversations flummox members of Congress more than the one over legalizing marijuana. As public opinion rapidly shifts, lawmakers have ducked, dodged and bobbed. The prevailing Capitol Hill mind-set is that pot is a political loser. The country is divided, the thinking goes, and the safe path is to sidestep the minefield.

Increasingly, however, avoidance does not work. As more states legalize either medical or recreational marijuana use, members of Congress are being asked to take positions. The results are often cringe-worthy.

So earlier this year, in an over-air-conditioned third-floor Capitol hearing room, an unlikely team of political operatives took it upon themselves to school congressional staff on how their bosses can have “the talk” with voters.

“Members of Congress are extremely bad about talking about this,” said Sarah Trumble, policy counsel at Third Way, an establishment think tank that usually tries to pull politicians away from the fringe. The message the group was delivering was that pot is no longer fringe. It’s mainstream, Trumble said, and avoidance by Congress is undermining efforts by states that are trying to be responsible in how they legalize.

The group has taken upon itself the job of helping moderates find safe passage into the discussion, attaching its brand to the pot lobby along the way.

It’s a strange partnership. Die-hard toker-rights crusaders from such places as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the Marijuana Policy Project find themselves working in tandem with buttoned-down establishment wonks better known for warning Democrats against straying left.

“A lot of politicians don’t have a position on marijuana, and their first impulse is to say ‘no,’” said Michael Correia, the lobbyist for the National Cannabis Industry Assn. “When someone digs deep into the polling the way Third Way has done, they are able to see what people are actually thinking, and it is a lot easier for a politician to develop a message.”

Third Way stepped into the fray after witnessing lawmakers – many of them the group’s allies on other issues – who clearly had no idea what they were talking about when they tried to respond to questions about marijuana policy.

“Reactions would range from giggles to saying something incorrect that needed to be corrected, and then corrected again, and then corrected again,” said Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, who heads the advocacy group’s marijuana effort.

Among the biggest stumblers was House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, who responded to a question last year about drug decriminalization by saying that a show of hands at a news conference would illustrate how many people can be affected by drug laws.

He raised his own hand and said, “the use thereof, the trying thereof - inhaling or not.” Hoyer’s aides later whipped into damage control and asserted that under no circumstances had the veteran lawmaker ever smoked pot.

“They did not know how to navigate it,” Erickson Hatalsky said. “The question we asked was: What can we do for moderate Democrats on this?”

A lot, it turned out.

The group called in pollsters. And consultants. And coalition builders. After a blizzard of online focus groups, the drawing up of some peculiar word clouds, a lot of meetings and some intense data analysis, they developed a coherent message for lawmakers.

The take-away: A huge “marijuana middle” of moderate voters are all for medical pot and have doubts about recreational pot but might be convinced that the federal government should let states go their own way.

Carping about a failed “war on drugs” doesn’t fly with these voters, they found. Nor does carrying on about state’s rights. The discussion needs to shift, Third Way told lawmakers, to the problem of dated federal laws that have gotten in the way of states imposing strict rules on the legal sale and use of pot.

“It’s been critical not to have just groups like the Marijuana Policy Project advocating for this, but a mainstream group that specializes in talking to the middle,” said Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who has been at the forefront of the legalization movement.

The more moderate approach has helped crusaders like Polis enlist more cautious lawmakers like Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), who represents a district that stretches from the Seattle suburbs north to the Canadian border. DelBene is about to introduce what she describes as a common-sense measure that would give states like hers that have legalized marijuana a three-year waiver from the main federal drug control law if they impose tough regulations on the pot trade.

“There are a lot of areas where federal law makes it difficult for states like Washington to move forward and understand what a truly regulated environment would look like,” she said.

The more nuanced approach is also drawing in senior legislators like Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a longtime field lieutenant in the war on drugs. Schumer now supports allowing states to legalize and is cosponsoring medical pot legislation that would change federal rules so that marijuana is no longer treated as a narcotic as dangerous as heroin and LSD.

All that alarms opponents of legalization who warn that the lofty talk of responsibility and moderation is creating a dangerous smokescreen.

Academics and political strategists may be well meaning in their attempt to “find the least bad way to legalize,” but they are ultimately boosting a dangerous industry, said Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana.

“At the end of the day, it doesn’t take much to reframe the debate from responsible-sounding words like ‘regulation’ and ‘control’ to the true reality of the policy on the ground -- pot lollipops, widespread advertising, and secondhand-smoke exposure,” he wrote in an email. “I can’t think of one moderate Democrat that would want to be associated with any of that.”

Third Way argues the greater risk lies in not touching the issue. Too many states have already moved toward legalizing, the group argues. The trend suggests the majority of states could be there by 2020.

“A significant majority of voters believes legalization of marijuana is inevitable,” said Graham Boyd, a strategist who guided state legalization efforts and was enlisted by Third Way to help engage Congress.

“This is a change we all know is coming. So the conversation has quickly shifted to, ‘How do we get there?’”

For more on the marijuana debate, follow @evanhalper.