La Tertulia caught my attention because it’s exactly what a yuppie, Upper West Side hash bar might look like, if such a thing existed. I’ve often thought that aesthetic considerations—and not moral or health concerns—are at heart the biggest stumbling block for the “legalize it” movement. Because while we associate alcohol with all sorts of vibes and venues—including black-tie affairs and professional gatherings—we associate pot-smoking only with smelly hippies and zoned-out videogamers. Weed’s got an image problem.

What it really needs is a better publicist. Someone who could play up, say, the scene in Eyes Wide Shut where Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman roll a joint. Here we see a successful, rich Manhattan couple (he’s a doctor, even!) smoking pot in a decidedly non-hippy, non-smelly manner. This is good for the stoners’ cause. (Of course, Cruise’s character later attends a perverted, masked orgy … and it seems that Cruise himself is a couch-stomping loon—but a decent publicist could gloss over this.)

— from “Should I Move to Amsterdam?”, a weeklong series by Slate’s Seth Stevenson