Sixty-five percent of DC residents voted for marijuana to be legalised. But will any of them admit to liking it, or using it, or growing it? No

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

I’m at Pennsylvania Ave and 2nd St South East. A stone’s throw from Congress.

It’s just before lunchtime on Friday, and the streets are teeming with political interns running out to fetch the boss’s feed.

Prime time, then, to find out what these young professionals in highly pressured jobs think about the legalisation of recreational marijuana in DC.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” says the first woman I encounter, who gives her age as 22.

Nor do two-thirds of people in Washington DC, according to the official ballot on legalisation, which was held in November. Mayor Muriel Bowser implemented the initiative at 12.01am on Thursday, meaning it is now legal for residents to smoke pot in their own homes, grow up to six plants in their own homes, possess two ounces of marijuana with impunity, and hand out, should they wish, an ounce at a time of marijuana. (As long as they don’t charge for it.)

Given all that, will the 22-year-old woman be growing up to six marijuana plants in her home, and distributing up to one ounce to individuals, as long as she is not paid in return, I ask?

“I’m not a big smoker. But I’m sure all my buddies will.”

Sure. So where does this woman work? “I probably shouldn’t answer that.” OK. What is her name? “Can you use a fake name?” she says. “Like, Sarah … Johnson?”

This will be a recurring theme. Sixty-five percent of DC residents voted for marijuana to be legalised. But will any of them admit to liking it, or using it, or growing it? No.

“I’m totally OK with it. It’s liberalising America,” says Sarah Johnson’s friend, who is also 22. “But it’s a little disappointing that marijuana is legal and a lot of other things aren’t: like immigration.”

Good point, I say. So where do you work?

“I do the same thing she [Sarah Johnson, not her real name] does, which I can’t tell you.”

I ask her name.

“Katy Miller.”

“Is that a fake name?”

“Yes.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Washington DC resident Rica Madrid, who identified herslef to the AP – smokes pot in her home on the first day of legal possession of marijuana for recreational purposes in the District. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

I spot a young man striding confidently down the street. Dark suit, striped tie, dark overcoat, hair parted to the side: he looks like he knows what’s what. He’s 24 years old, and tells me his first name immediately.

“I’m from LA. Personally I’m not a drug user but I have a lot of friends who have dabbled,” he says when I ask him about the legalisation decision.

“A lot of people in my generation think the effects of nicotine and alcohol are just as dangerous as marijuana.”

I have jotted his first name down in my notebook, interviewed another two people, and am wondering where I’m going to find a nearby bathroom when the 24-year-old, who is personally not a drug user but has friends who have “dabbled” comes running up to me.

“Hey could you not use my first name?” he says.

It is clear that while it might be legal to grow and smoke marijuana in the nation’s capital, there is still a major taboo in talking about it. At least there is among smartly dressed young people who work in some vaguely political field but won’t tell you exactly what they do, where they work, or what their name is.

Another two men in suits and overcoats come and go. “My boss has a prohibition on talking to the press,” says the first. “I’m a government employee.”

The second, to be fair, is hobbling around in a protective boot and has just managed to hail a taxi when I collar him.

“I don’t really care to be honest,” he says as he slams the door.

Just as it is beginning to seem like as if everyone in DC is running for office, I speak to a woman who immediately tells me her name. She is Rachel Stevenson, 24, an employee at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She does not agree with the legalisation.

“I’m not a fan of it personally, mostly because I think it reeks and turns people into mindless zombies,” she says. Stevenson grew up in Iowa, but now lives in the capital. She says she will not be growing marijuana plants in her house. “We’re clean livers.”

“I also associate it with college. I find it a little immature that people want to do that.”

Did she smoke marijuana in college?

“I did not. I tried it once, or I was in the room, and it was boring, frankly.”

Hang on, so did she try it or not?

“Well I was in the room in a group of people and they just passed it to me and I just passed it on. I was trying a group of new friends. It didn’t work out.”