The Washington Post article on the etiquette of Washington marijuana smoking didn’t just lack a certain sense of perspective. It was also missing the paper’s most prominent party-thrower and ex-magicdoer, Sally Quinn. How can you talk about Washington etiquette without bringing her in—-especially when it means a chance to ask Sally Quinn about getting high?

As it turns out, the question of communal blazing isn’t that complicated for Quinn, at least hypothetically. “I would know my group,” she says. “And I would say ‘Who wants to smoke some dope?'”

Which isn’t to say that sharing pot can’t be a little sticky. Quinn was shocked by the Post‘s anecdote about a guest trying to smoke weed while children were in the house, and she and husband Ben Bradlee ban the drug from their own Georgetown parties, citing their employment with the Post. There’s also complicity in the international drug trade to be consider.

Quinn compares pulling out some pot before knowing your guests’ reaction to it to pulling out your keys and proposing some wife-swapping when your guests aren’t swingers.

“So you invite another couple over for dinner, and you say, ‘Now we’re all going to have sex together,” says Quinn. “Well now, you wouldn’t do that.”

Photo by Financial Times photos via Wikimedia Commons