It's all in the implementation: why cannabis legalization is less like marriage equality and more like health care reform.

• Author: Rauch, Jonathan
• Position: SAVING MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION

Is marijuana legalization on the gay marriage track toward decisive and irrevocable public acceptance? The liberals and libertarians who support it--call them libertarians, to borrow a term from the Cato Institute's Brink Lindsey--certainly hope so, and the similarities are not hard to see.

Public approval trends for legal marijuana and gay marriage look remarkably similar. (See chart on page 43.) Both have crossed the magic 50 percent line defining majority support, and both, as a result, have seen recent political breakthroughs. In 2012, Colorado and Washington legalized the production, sale, and use of marijuana; since 2009, meanwhile, eight states have legalized medical marijuana, bringing the total to twenty-one (including Washington, D.C.). Gay marriage has similarly picked up momentum, winning adoption in three state initiatives in 2012 and subsequently legalized in an additional eight states. Here is one thing we can say for sure: whatever happens next, there will be no going back to the status quo ante. Drug warriors and marriage traditionalists will need to come to terms with that fact.

But, having noticed the obvious similarities between legal marijuana and legal gay marriage, marijuana reform advocates--especially liberals who care about government's effectiveness and reputation--need to pay at least as much attention to the less obvious differences. Otherwise they may encounter some of the same sickening surprises they have run into with an issue that may seem not at all like marijuana, but that in fact has much in common with it: Obamacare.

At first glance, this might seem like a stretch. What can a top-down federal reform of the health care system tell us about a state-led reform of drug laws? Quite a lot, actually. Marijuana legalization, unlike gay marriage but very much like Obamacare, requires the government to execute a complicated new program well. Indeed, one might argue that legalizing marijuana is to the states that are doing it much as Obamacare is to the federal government: a test of modern government's ability to innovate at a time when it is under siege.

Consider, then, four lessons Obamacare holds for marijuana reformers.

1. Pragmatism trumps moralism.

   Gay marriage is a moral values issue. Proponents see it as a core civil right; opponents see it as a violation of God's or nature's laws. Moral attitudes are slow and difficult to change--not a lot of people will be convinced one way or another by looking at...