The steady march towards legalization of marijuana is, quite frankly, a model for how people can work outside of D.C. to make things happen. This really began at the state level, then picked up momentum among voters by word of mouth, spreading from state to state.

I remember many years ago, when some political activists thought that medical marijuana was a strategically poor route to legalization. That has turned out to be completely wrong. Acceptance of the medical benefits of marijuana did a lot to change general public perception of cannabis. It completely reframed the issue, from one of moral panic, to one of compassion and economics. Over time, marijuana became so normalized as to stop outraging the kinds of voters it used to outrage. These days, even if many people still don't accept the medical benefits, they're not up in arms about the subject. They've accepted that people are going to smoke weed, and that the world doesn't fall off of its axis when people do. Haters have stopped hating.

Now that cannabis has been destigmatized, and all but normalized--in pop culture, in common experience, and at the polls--its former controversy has been short circuited. It's no longer a hot-button "social values" issue with any significant blocks of voters. Hence, no congressperson's job depends on coming out for or against it every election cycle. So congresspeople are apathetic about it. They're not going to try to help the issue, but they're not going to try to stop it, either.

Marijuana beat Congress because marijuana went around Congress. That seems to be the secret to making things happen in this country: make something a grassroots issue, generate "demand" (so to speak), and build a groundswell of inevitability before dealing with D.C.