Will Washington D.C. really do it?

I can't believe my eyes, This post article gives me much hope for things in the nations capital.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...137-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html?hpid=z1

freedomtime808 said:

I can't believe my eyes, This post article gives me much hope for things in the nations capital.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...137-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html?hpid=z1

Click to expand...

that was beautiful, kind of a supremely idiotic response by the federal 'team'
for those that don't like to click on such links, here's a quick summary
federal response is to forbid the municipality from implementing legal mj outlets
but that response doesn't address the actual proposition legality
it's legal in a few days according to expert legal opinions
so it's a mj land rush(so to speak) in a matter of days

"will Washington DC really do it?"
absolutely! the voters voted, the results legally tabulated, one side won. just because the morons in the GOP forbid them to use federal funds to pass rules/regulations regarding sales etc does not annul the initiative. a classic case of GOP overreach & total failure to think things through to their logical conclusion-the law of unintended consequences. aint no idiot like an old, white, out of touch idiot... "but, they won't LISTEN to me! I'm trying to SAVE them, & they just point & laugh at me...sob..."

Anyone have any info on the massive seed giveaway they mention for March?

we can only hope all the stories we've heard about the dreaded "contact high" are true.

maybe our government will get one and start making some sensible decisions.

Eighths-n-Aces said:

maybe our government will get one and start making some sensible decisions.

Click to expand...

that is even less likely than the dreaded "psychotic skunk attacks" reported in England overnight... them poor boys need some sugar cubes to get their heads right...

I just read that article and I'm super pumped. Shit is gonna hit the fan though they need to regulate it quick. I'm gonna need to join one of these "clubs". Maybe they have a gorilla glue club...

Great things seem to be in the future. I have not found anymore info on the seed give away, I will sure be on the look out for that

freedomtime808 said:

Great things seem to be in the future. I have not found anymore info on the seed give away, I will sure be on the look out for that

Click to expand...

Please feel free to shoot me a PM if you find any info

This thread absolutely needs to be bumped today! This is not far from me!

So weed be legal today in D.C. . possess 6 plants but 3 late flowering cultivation, 2 ounces possession, 1 ounce transfer but not for money.....GREAT STEP!

This is the however part....there's no commercial setups or dispensaries (or any formal grower to seller market) because of the relationship of D.C. to Congress. Congress has ultimate authority over D.C. and blocked D.C. from spending any money for anything to regulate, track, or tax this new policy. So if you were the normal Joe on the street that didn't have access to quality recreation herb from an illicit dealer, there's no place to now go and pick it up. (Well, I guess you can grow now! ) As with the other states that have tried different laws, w'll see what this policy turns into....

A great step forward!

So anyone know of a good real estate agent in D.C?

simple green said:

So anyone know of a good real estate agent in D.C?

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supposed to be a big place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue available next year...go for it!

Stupid politicians make stupid laws..

Stupid politicians make stupid laws..

Kinda reminds me of a business trip to Utah years ago.

So I am staying at a Holiday Inn in the Capital, I could see it down the street.

I mosey down to the bar and order a Beer and a Shot.

The waiter comes by with my drinks on a tray and tells me State Law says he can't serve me two drinks at once.

So I take the Shot and down it and he gives me the beer.

I think that this will be the outcome in D.C.

Once yet let the cat out of the bag, it's hard to get them back in.

420somewhere said:

Kinda reminds me of a business trip to Utah years ago.

So I am staying at a Holiday Inn in the Capital, I could see it down the street.

I mosey down to the bar and order a Beer and a Shot.

The waiter comes by with my drinks on a tray and tells me State Law says he can't serve me two drinks at once.

So I take the Shot and down it and he gives me the beer.

I think that this will be the outcome in D.C.

Once yet let the cat out of the bag, it's hard to get them back in.

Click to expand...

and even if you pull it off, you are bleeding from all of the scratches on your arms, LOL! GO DC!

Congrats to those in the district.

Yes!!

Green rush is on in District of Columbia

http://columbiadailyherald.com/news/nation/green-rush-district-columbia

The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — As Thursday dawns on the nation’s capital, marijuana will be a legal intoxicant, though Washington will not be Amsterdam, or even Denver. There will be no pot shops, no open-air smoking, but at least for the moment, the District of Columbia — for once in its decades-long struggle for the right to govern itself — has gotten its way, and a green rush is on.

Despite a last-hours intervention by the Republican chairman of the House committee that handles D.C. affairs, Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Council members said Wednesday that they would not back down from implementing the will of the 70 percent of city voters who approved legalization in November.

Now, from private residences where Washingtonians may grow, possess and use small amounts of the drug to shops where budding entrepreneurs plan to sell accessories for cultivating marijuana plants, marijuana will quickly become a more overt part of the capital’s culture.

For advocates of legalization, the idea that weed can be legal in Washington is a breakthrough that will accelerate a similar embrace of the mind-altering plant in much of the nation. At least five states are moving toward legalization votes next year.

“What you’re seeing here is the end of marijuana prohibition, a change in attitudes and a real shift in law enforcement — a huge step forward in the national fight for legalization,” said Michael Collins, national policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance.

“The nation’s capital has an exaggerated impact,” said Keith Stroup, legal counsel at NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). “If Washington, D.C., can legalize marijuana and the sky doesn’t fall, things will get a lot easier in these other states.”

On the streets of the city, the big change actually took place in July, when the District decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, meaning that someone caught with a joint or two faced a ticket rather than an arrest, handcuffs and a trip to court.

Since July 17, when the penalty for possession of less than one ounce of weed went from up to a year in prison to a civil fine of $25, both D.C. police and their federal counterparts have essentially stopped going after people who have marijuana for personal use. Arrest data from the U.S. attorney’s office, which prosecutes drug offenses in the city, found that marijuana arrests in Washington dropped from more than 15 a day to just over one a day after decriminalization.

In the first half of last year, law enforcement referred charges involving marijuana to prosecutors in 2,425 misdemeanor cases and 257 felony cases. From July 18 to the end of the year, arrests dried up, resulting in just 159 misdemeanor and 67 felony cases.

For the most part, D.C. police didn’t bother with the new marijuana citations, issuing fewer than 250 of them in the second half of the year. Even in public places, police may no longer use the smell of marijuana as probable cause for an arrest; an officer must directly observe someone smoking to make an arrest.

Although the federal government owns roughly a quarter of the land in the District of Columbia, and marijuana remains illegal on any federal property, federal arrests for weed possession have also fallen off a cliff since the city approved decriminalization.

U.S. Park Police reported 501 marijuana “incidents” in 2013, though many of those did not result in arrests. After decriminalization, Park Police were involved in 41 incidents last year, only three of which led to marijuana-related charges.

“Basically, police stopped arresting people, and the government stopped papering, unless it was with another charge, like carrying a pistol,” said Betty Ballester, head of the Superior Court Trial Lawyers Association, which represents defense lawyers.

Ballester and other defense lawyers have seen a marked change in how prosecutors handle pot cases as the government has repeatedly halted cases that were already in progress.

“They just came in on the day of trial and said they were not ready to proceed,” she said. “I think that was a policy decision.”

Decriminalization won support from then-Mayor Vincent Gray, a Democrat, and council members after a study by the American Civil Liberties Union showed a racially lopsided pattern of arrests for marijuana possession. Although surveys find that whites and blacks use the drug in roughly equal proportions, about nine out of 10 arrests in the District of Columbia were of African-Americans — a larger percentage than in any other major U.S. city.

Although arrests had already plummeted, legalization is nonetheless a pivotal moment for the nation and the city. Recreational marijuana is already legal in Colorado, Washington state and, since Tuesday, Alaska, but Congress’s decision to do nothing about the D.C. law during the 30-day review period that expired Wednesday marks a significant turning point, according to both sides of the legalization debate.

“A certain number of Republicans in Congress wanted to block D.C.’s marijuana initiative,” said Collins, who lobbies Congress on pot laws. “But the party’s leaders don’t want Republicans to become known as the anti-marijuana party.”

Collins and other lobbyists say Republicans on the Hill fall into three camps — a small group that strongly opposes liberalizing the law because of concerns about health and productivity; a larger group that wants to leave the issue to the states on libertarian and states’ rights grounds; and an ambivalent faction that doesn’t want to be viewed as falling behind public opinion on social issues.

“This opens the door across the country,” said DeForest Rathbone, chairman of the National Institute of Citizen Anti-Drug Policy, a Maryland-based group that favors existing drug laws. “Congress is afraid of acting because everybody thinks marijuana is harmless these days. People are going to regret this.”

‘Initiative 71 is … law’

A threat from congressmen with authority over the District seemed only to bolster the new D.C. mayor’s resolve. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, warned Bowser, a Democrat, to halt legalization or face “very severe consequences,” he told The Washington Post. “You can go to prison for this. We’re not playing a little game here.”

But Bowser made clear that she is keenly aware of her authority and intends to use it.

“I am the duly elected mayor of the District of Columbia,” she said upon taking the stage at a mid-afternoon news conference, during which she announced that the city would “implement and enforce” the law as passed by voters.

The city’s new attorney general, Karl Racine, and several council members stood with Bowser. “Initiative 71 is, in the attorney general’s view, law,” Racine said.

House Speaker John Boehner appeared to steer clear of the D.C. controversy; his spokesman, Michael Steel, said Boehner “deferred to the committee.” And Chaffetz’s Republican colleagues said they had no plans beyond the rhetorical warning.

“There’s no talk of litigation,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the subcommittee that handles D.C. affairs. But he warned that it could become “very difficult for D.C.” to get the money it needs on other matters. Congress can still act to roll back marijuana legalization through budget language.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., who earlier sought to block the city from spending money to implement the ballot initiative, said Attorney General Eric Holder “should prosecute people in the District who participate in this.” That seemed highly unlikely in an administration that has repeatedly signaled that it will let states conduct their own marijuana experiments.

Harris said the city’s planning for legalization may violate federal law against spending public dollars that haven’t been budgeted for that purpose. “Those people ought to be very afraid, because the penalties are severe,” he said.

Bowser allowed that “me being in jail wouldn’t be a good thing, but making sure that the will of the voters is implemented … that’s my job and that’s what I’m doing.”

As the conflict between the city and its federal overseers develops, marijuana’s role in city life is already shifting. Although Congress has stopped the council from planning for eventual retail sales, entrepreneurs are charging ahead with plans to sell accessories used to grow and consume the plant.

Adam Eidinger, a leader in the legalization campaign, said he will reopen his Capitol Hemp store, which the city forced to shut down two years ago because he sold paraphernalia used to consume illegal drugs.

Eidinger said his new store, in Adams Morgan, will sell bongs, vaporizers and hemp products and will be more open about the purpose of its wares. In 2012, “if you said you were going to use the pipe for marijuana, we would tell you to leave,” he said. “We don’t have to play that game anymore.”

A marijuana industry exposition is scheduled to be held at a Capitol Hill hotel this weekend, part of what Stroup, the NORML counsel, called “the green rush.” Stroup said his group is getting calls from people who want to get into the business in Washington. He expects some entrepreneurs will test the limits of the law by establishing clubs where users pay a membership fee and are given the drug, in lieu of buying it directly. Bowser has called for legislation to block the formation of such clubs.

“Most marijuana smokers don’t want to smoke on their own at home,” Stroup said. “It’s a social act. So it will be up to the police and then the courts to decide what is public and what is private.”

Capital City Hydroponics, a small indoor gardening shop in the Petworth neighborhood, already sells everything a gardener needs to grow vegetables and leafy greens. Now, said Michael Bayard, the owner, “we’re expecting volume to increase.”

Until now, when Bayard’s customers have come in asking how to grow marijuana, he has told them that he doesn’t provide that service. Bayard, valuing his relationships with local schools, still doesn’t want to be known as a pot store. Until he is sure legalization is here to stay, he won’t use marijuana leaf images in his marketing or openly talk about growing the plant.

“I don’t want to risk our livelihood,” he said. “The D.C. government works in funny ways. If you live here long enough, you know you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Still, the store already sells fertilizers with packaging that looks as if it could be on a Grateful Dead poster and products called “Kushie Kush” and “Big Bud.” Bayard expects a rush of customers this weekend; he has ordered plenty of kits that could be used to cultivate marijuana at home. Prices range from $420 to $1,250.

Despite legalization, no one expects the black market to dissipate, especially since the D.C. law makes no provision for legal sale of the drug. One dealer, a 24-year-old whose day job is with a government contractor, said he expects to continue selling about four ounces a week.

He believes that legalization will make it much less likely that he will be caught selling illegally. He said it will now be easier to hold and transport the drug because he’ll limit his own possession to the legal maximum of two ounces. And he expects customers will buy in larger quantities than the standard one-eighth ounce, which he sells for $60.

“This makes it easier to stay in because it’s safer,” the dealer said.

- See more at: http://columbiadailyherald.com/news/nation/green-rush-district-columbia#sthash.DbtYK7nM.dpuf

Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol Act. 2015 ......This new bill will really piss off the anti marijuana dopes and crusaders!

"70% want this, but i'm an important politician..."

filed under times throwing shit at people would have been good.

nowhere to buy seeds, clones, etc. sounds like DC will become
"bagseed city" LOL! a good way to figure out what you are doing w/o blowing $$$ on seeds.

armedoldhippy said:

nowhere to buy seeds, clones, etc. sounds like DC will become
"bagseed city" LOL! a good way to figure out what you are doing w/o blowing $$$ on seeds.

Click to expand...

Yeah you have no idea. It's a free trade network. Dc has every seed hey need at their finger tips, and clones, and buds. don't you worry your pretty lil head!