Senate Democrats Surrender to Republican Pot Prohibitionists, Nullifying Legalization in D.C.

Contrary to what National Journal

reported yesterday, it looks like Senate Democrats have agreed
to a spending rider that will not only prevent legal marijuana
businesses from opening in Washington, D.C., but will also block
legalization of possession, home cultivation, and sharing. The
Washington Post reports
that the rider, which applies through next September, would bar the
District from implementing Initiative 71, the marijuana
legalization measure that was approved by nearly 70 percent of D.C.
voters last month.

The initiative
does not address commercial production and distribution, but it
eliminates penalties for possessing two ounces or less,
transferring up to an ounce without payment, and growing up to six
plants (three of them mature) at home. The rider described by the
Post would prevent the District from legalizing those
activities. According to a
summary from House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers
(R-Ky.), an ardent pot prohibitionist, the latest version of the
omnibus spending bill “prohibits both federal and
local funds from being used to implement a
referendum legalizing recreational marijuana use in
the District.”

The Post says “the rider language
mirrored an amendment introduced over the summer by Rep. Andy
Harris, (R-Md.), the most outspoken congressional critic of D.C.
legalization.” The
earlier Harris amendment would have barred the
District from spending money “to enact or carry out any law, rule,
or regulation to legalize or otherwise reduce penalties associated
with the possession, use, or distribution” of marijuana or any
other Schedule I drug. For more than a decade, Congress used a
similar spending restriction to block implementation of a medical
marijuana initiative that D.C. voters approved in 1998.

The Post says this rider “could also roll back a
law passed by the D.C. Council and signed by Mayor Vincent C. Gray
(D) in the spring to join 18 states that have eliminated criminal
penalties for marijuana possession.” If so, possessing up to an
ounce, currently a citable offense punishable by a $25 fine, would
become a misdemeanor again. But it’s not clear how Harris’ language
would accomplish that. Possession has already been decriminalized,
and maintaining the status quo does not require any additional
expenditures. To the contrary: Reversing decriminalization would
mean spending money on arrests and prosecutions that are no longer
happening.

Overriding the will of D.C. voters, who backed Initiative 71 by
margin of more than 2 to 1, would be bad enough. Yesterday
afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who ought to
have some say in the matter, declared that “the District of
Columbia should do what they want to do.” But by last night Reid
and his fellow Democrats had agreed to nullify the changes that the
District’s residents clearly want.

“It is disheartening and frustrating to learn that once again
the District of Columbia is being used as a political pawn by the
Congress,” said D.C.
Council Member David Grosso, author of a bill aimed at
licensing and regulating marijuana businesses. “To undermine
the vote of the people—taxpayers—does not foster or promote the
‘limited government’ stance House Republicans claim they stand for;
it’s uninformed paternalistic meddling.”