Here’s a lesson in salesmanship: Do you think William McCloundy and George Parker, the two conmen who allegedly separately ‘sold’ the Brooklyn Bridge to naive tourists around the early 20th century, approached their marks while wearing cut-off jeans, 20-year-old bargain bin sandals and a beaten-up, pit-stained Grateful Dead T-shirt? No, of course not.
Chances are, like all good salesmen, they wore a suit. They smiled. They were polite. And they stuck to their script. As unlikely as it seems, they were able to con gullible people into their scam in a matter of minutes or hours or — with a particularly skeptical mark — a couple of days.
Yet the pro-pot brigade has stumbled from ever-more hysterical pro marijuana rallies over decades and not yet managed to get marijuana legalised. Why, we ask? Most people actually believe marijuana should be legal or at least decriminalized. So if you already have the support in principle to your cause why can’t you actually seal the deal? The answer probably has a bit to do with presentation.
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