[caption id=”attachment_117988″ align=”aligncenter” width=”705″] (AP Photo/David McFadden, File)
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Sometimes government meddling backfires—like when Congress tried to shut down D.C.’s voter-approved marijuana legislation, and instead created a legal quagmire that might make weed consumption mostly legal, but largely unregulated, as of next week.
What, exactly, does that mean? The ambiguous legal situation appears to leave growing and consuming marijuana products legal, but commercial buying and selling banned. From a tremorous Washington Post report:
Unregulated businesses?! Quick, the smelling salts!
D.C. passed marijuana legalization last year, but Republicans in Congress attempted to block legalization by slipping a measure into the omnibus spending bill that forbids using city funds to “enact” the legislation. D.C. lawmakers now argue that legalization is “self-enacting.” They are simply banned from instating the legal framework to free up commercial sales.
Would-be sellers could make their way around this situation in several ways. Sellers could navigate around the law with indirect sales—selling some small extraneous item with a “free” side of pot, for example.
Another possible solution could be “cannabis clubs,” where members pay a fee and then exchange marijuana amongst themselves.
“If you look at Spain, this is how it works,” Malik Burnett, D.C. policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance, told the Post. “Spain has these social clubs that are totally nonprofit entities. They are private, you pay to the social club a membership fee, and they cultivate, grow and allow you to consume marijuana for free as a member of the social club. There is a whole blueprint for this that is totally a real possibility for the District.”
Maneuvering around the law will undoubtedly be a strain on pot entrepreneurs—but, as Reason’s Jacob Sullum noted, “The challenges that D.C. will face are not very different from the challenges that Colorado faced in 2013, when it was legal to grow, share, and possess marijuana there but state-licensed retailers had not opened yet.”
So will DC soon turn into “the Wild West of marijuana,” as WaPo fears? If so, here’s hoping the city’s first move is to tar and feather Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)
