State Representative Mary Lou Dickerson (D-36, Queen Anne and Ballard) has introduced a bill to legalize pot and sell it in liquor stores, as I mentioned she would in a post last year. And this week she tells KING TV that she's super dead for real serious about it, OKAY?!

“I’m not kidding around when I’m doing this. I’m dead serious. We need to stop handling Marijuana the way we have been,” says the Seattle Democrat.

I lerv me the shit out of Mary Lou Dickerson. I've heard this "dead serious" line from her before, and she insists the bill can pass. But she can't be dead serious about passing this bill this year because: (a) it's completely unrealistic to expect we can flip a switch, with one bill during a legislative session distracted by the $4.6 biennial budget shortfall, from strict prohibition to regulation, and (b) Mary Lou Dickerson is not an idiot.

But she's not being quixotic, either. Generating a slew of media and imprinting a vision for how pot will someday be sold is a smart strategy for decriminalizing pot—that is, an interim policy that prevents arrests for possession or growing small amounts—very soon. Those measured decriminalization proposals, certain to be in the legislature and/or on the ballot next year, will seem tame next to the ferocious, dead serious, not-fuckin'-around bill from Dickerson.