Marijuana is now effectively legal in the nation’s capital even though Congress tried to stop it.
District of Columbia residents who are at least 21 years old are free to grow as many as six plants and possess as much as 2 ounces, as a measure approved by voters in November took effect Thursday. It’s still illegal to sell the drug or smoke it in public.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, allowed legalization to begin over the opposition of federal lawmakers, who have constitutional sway over the city. In December, Congress attached a provision to the U.S. budget that blocked the city from spending money to implement the measure. District officials said it doesn’t apply because the initiative was enacted before the budget. The police chief and head prosecutor agree.
“The residents of the District of Columbia spoke loud and clear,” Bowser told reporters Wednesday. “We believe that we’re acting lawfully.”
The decision thrust the city into the expanding nationwide push against marijuana prohibition. Alaska on Tuesday became the third state to legalize marijuana after Colorado and Washington. Oregon is to follow in July, when a ballot measure takes effect.
Voters in at least five states, including California, Nevada and Arizona, may consider similar measures in 2016, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-based group that favors legalization.
District of Columbia officials have already decriminalized possession of as much as one ounce by reducing the penalty to a $25 fine. The step, approved last year, was aimed at concerns that drug-enforcement laws were disproportionately affecting black residents, who make up about half the city’s population of 646,000.
Free Bowser
Congress’s attempt to thwart legalization riled marijuana advocates and city officials, who chafe at the power Congress wields.
Their decision to proceed was challenged by U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In a letter to Bowser on Tuesday, Chaffetz said she was acting in “willful violation of the law.”
Congress didn’t try to block legalization during the 30-day period it had to review the law. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s non-voting congresswoman, said in a statement that city’s interpretation of the law is supported by top-ranking House Democrats.
Bowser said she’s confident in her role implementing a law that was approved by 65 percent of voters.
“I have a lot of things to do here in the District of Columbia,” she told reporters. “Me being in jail wouldn’t be a good thing.”
“But making sure that the will of the voters is implemented,” she said, “that’s my job. And that’s what I’m doing.”
Source: Bloomberg
