It’s now been almost 13 years since nearly 70% of D.C. voters approved an initiative enacting a medical marijuana law in the nation’s capital, though you’d be forgiven if you hadn’t noticed. An obscure budget provision known as the “Barr Amendment” stalled implementation for years, and when it was finally removed (after MPP hired Congressman Barr to help defeat his own amendment) in late 2009, the D.C. Council went to work passing an amendment to the law making the proposed program much more restrictive. Since then, the glacial pace of implementation has kept medicine from patients for another year.
But finally, there’s progress. Today, the D.C. Department of Health is making applications available for prospective cultivation center operators. You can read the official notice in today’s DC Register. Only those who submitted the required letter of intent back in June will be able to apply. There were over 100 letters submitted by groups interested in operating cultivation centers, including Benjamin Bronfman, the fiancé of rapper M.I.A. of Paper Planes fame.
Today’s notice applies only to cultivation centers, not dispensaries, so advocates will have to wait a little longer for those. There’s also no word on when patients will be able to apply to the program. Still, it’s progress.
Im glad to see DC go ahead with this, nd yes this is progress…Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the update…please hurry DC!!!
How many times has someone sat by the side of the road while their vehicle was searched, only to find a single poker, and get a fucking ticket for DRUG PARAPHANAILA? How much money is wasted by task force on STUPID SHIT? I DO NOT want my taxes going to any BULLSHIT GANG with BADGES. My state had a majority vote for med mj but One asshole had the power to veto. This issue has to be one of the main topics for next years election. As of yet there is NOT A SINGLE ONE has stood up for all the good that can come of the legalization of cannabis. I saw a dickhead say ” pot growers use the profits to fund their meth business”. The show was on CURNT tv at 9am today. This is total bullshit. What an irony, Washington D.C. is going to get med mj and the fed gov’t still says there is no medical use for cannabis. To me it is like saying the ocean is dirt. There is no excuse for not having med mj in all fifty states. There is no reason to have our tax dollers go towards drug prevention programs instead of jail. I understand the need to keep hard drugs controled, but the way to control it is to regulate, not make inmates. There are way more deaths from legal drugs than street drugs, why? How can the feds or ANYONE say cannabis has no uses when the A.M.A. says YES? I cannot wait till I see my local task force is forced to get a real jobs, like with a shovel, when the laws get changed. As for me I will pay another fine and prey the laws get changed fot America’s good.
pray
A never ending fight up hill, while in the mean time anyone who wants to get high can smoke MJ via the black market. Makes you wonder who’s really funding the opposition doesn’t it?
Thank you S &P et al. Keep running the economy into the ground until cannabis is legalized. There is so much evil, misery and waste associated with it that it should be the first thing to get cut in putting the fiscal house in D. C. together.
Step by step. Inch by inch.
Jesus said to do unto others as we would have them to do unto us. None of us would want our child thrown in jail with the sexual predators over marijuana. None of us would want to see an older family member’s home confiscated and sold by the police for growing a couple of marijuana plants for their aches and pains. It’s time to stop putting our own family members in jail over marijuana.
If ordinary Americans could grow a little marijuana in their own back yards, it would be about as valuable as home-grown tomatoes. Let’s put the criminals out of business and get them out of our neighborhoods. Let’s let ordinary Americans grow a little marijuana in their own back yards.
Here’s one way that IT IS REALLY WORKING: Arresting the criminals and collecting a fee from registered growers (and bringing in thousands of dollars to support the county budget); what a great plan! This is the way to build a better America! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/07/the-pot-republic-one-sheriffs-quietly-radical-experiment.html
The current proposal before Congress, bill HR 2306, will allow states to decide how they will regulate marijuana. Email your Congressperson and Senators at http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml and ask them to sign on as a CO-SPONSOR of HR 2306.
And a big THANK YOU to the courageous, freedom loving legislators, governors, and countless others who are working so hard to bring this through! You’re doing a great patriotic service for all of America!
How can man make a gift from the Creator (cannabis) illegal? I will always use cannabis and I will never pay a tax on it.
weed grows, cash flows…i think taxing weed is like taxing plants and trees. Why would people want to be richer and richer and richer??
The limiting of cultivation to a certain number of plants should be reviewed and discussed. There are several methods of cultivation that are more efficient than growing 95 plants 10 feet tall. Anyone with experience in the business can testify to the “sea of green” method and how it can be vastly more productive over the long run than ordinary botany methods. The standard should not be the number of plants grown but rather the amount of product produced!
I may be wrong but, if im thinking correctly the d.c. policy had to be approved by congress given the fact that they have no state govt. to approve theses messures. If that is the case how is it constitutionally leagl for d.c. to have med. mj. access and not the hole country. Can anyone at mpp or otherwise answer me that please?
give us youre sick, youre tired, youre hungry, we will make inmates of them, and bleed the middle class dry to do so. Never mind the child porn king who lives dowm the street we have to keep those savage mj. users locked up. NEVER GIVE UP THE FIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dont let youre grandchildreen grow up in this US.
The District of Columbia has its own government separate from Congress that can make laws and policies as it deems fit. Congress only has oversight of D.C.’s budget. This oversight has been used in the passed to prevent implementation of the medical marijuana program here by denying the ability to spend any funds on the program whatsoever, but they cannot simply deny the law itself. Unfortunately, the removal of those funding blocks does not constitute federal approval or sanction of medical marijuana.