Law District of Columbia

[Baron23]

President Joe Biden wants to maintain a long-standing policy that’s protected state medical marijuana laws from Justice Department interference as part of his fiscal year 2022 budget proposal—a notable administration decision given that previous presidents from both parties have called for its elimination in their annual plans.

But Biden wants to continue to block Washington, D.C. from using its own tax dollars to legalize adult-use marijuana sales, declining to recommend that current language barring such activity be eliminated.

He has no idea what he wants....seems to depend on who is whispering in his ear last.

 

[bulllee]

US Senate panel removes barrier to DC recreational marijuana sales​

By MJBizDaily Staff
October 20, 2021

The U.S. Senate’s Appropriations Committee this week released a spending bill backed by Democrats that removes a longstanding prohibition on adult-use cannabis sales in the District of Columbia.
But as The Washington Post reported, the bill still faces significant opposition from Senate Republicans and so might never get signed into law as-is.
All 50 Democrats and 10 Republicans would have to support the spending package in order to bypass a filibuster – and the marijuana provision is not the only major change proposed for the appropriations package.
Democrats also removed a provision preventing DC from subsidizing abortions for low-income residents, a change that Republicans vociferously opposed.
Democratic “bills are filled with poison pills and problematic authorizing provisions,” GOP Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the Appropriations Committee vice chair, told The Post.
Do you have a ticket to MJBizCon in Las Vegas, October 19-22?
Tens of thousands of cannabis executives already have reservations for the most anticipated event of the year:

• 1,100 exhibits for cultivators, manufacturers and retailers.
• 70+ presentations, plus a keynote by Shark Tank’s Daymond John
• Networking and partnerships

DC voters approved recreational marijuana legalization in 2014, but Congress has forbidden the city from launching legal, licensed MJ sales.
Because it’s legal in DC for residents “gift” each other marijuana, consumers often will pay extra for a T-shirt or some other cheap commodity to receive cannabis along with the purchase.

 

[momofthegoons]

Older D.C. Patients Could Get Medical Marijuana Without Doctors And City Would Have 4/20 Cannabis Tax Holiday Under Council Bill​

Washington, D.C. lawmakers on Tuesday approved a measure to expand access to the District’s medical marijuana program in a series of ways.

The D.C. Council voted unanimously to allow senior citizens to self-certify their own eligibility for cannabis without having to get a recommendation from a doctor, further extend the registration renewal deadline for patients and create a week-long medical marijuana tax relief “holiday” that coincides with the unofficial cannabis event known as 4/20.

The emergency legislation is meant to ease logistical burdens for patients in the jurisdiction and incentive people to obtain cannabis from licensed dispensaries, rather than buy their products from gray market vendors who have taken advantage of a workaround related to the District’s policy allowing for marijuana gifting between adults.

The “Medical Marijuana Patient Access Extension Emergency Amendment Act of 2022” would help address rising cannabis costs at licensed dispensaries and “the continuing threat posed by illicit cannabis storefronts and delivery services,” the text of a companion resolution says.

“It is estimated that the illicit cannabis market in the District logs $600 million in sales annually, including those by illicit cannabis storefronts and delivery services, and this, in turn, is economically harming the medical cannabis program,” the resolution from Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) and Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (D) says.

With respect to senior citizens over 65, the proposal makes it so those individuals would no longer have to go through the hoop of obtaining recommendations and renewals from physicians to continue to access cannabis products based on self-certification for medical need until September 30.

The Washington Post reported that councilmembers suggested they may consider legislation in the future to off patients of any age the ability to self-certify without having to get doctors’ approval.

It would also generally expand on prior emergency legislation that the Council approved at the height of the coronavirus pandemic to extend registration eligibility for the medical cannabis program. If signed into law, patients under 65 with registrations will continue to be validated through at least September 30.

Finally, the measure creates an incentive to keep people out of illicit or gray markets by creating a “‘4/20 Medical Cannabis Sales Tax Holiday Week’ where medical cannabis patients would not pay the 6 percent sales tax for the period of Friday, April 20, 2022 through Sunday, April 24, 2022.”

In 2019, another D.C. lawmaker proposed a separate medical cannabis reform bill meant to ease the registration process for patients. Instead of having to wait several weeks for regulators to process their medical cannabis approvals, patients would simply fill out an application with the city health department and would then automatically qualify to legally purchase marijuana on a provisional basis.

The legislation’s author, at-large Councilmember David Grosso (I), introduced a similar bill in 2017, though that version allowed residents to self-certify as medical marijuana patients—without the need to involve a doctor—by signing an affidavit, and it didn’t have the stipulation that their qualifications could be later rejected.

All of this talk about expanding and improving D.C.’s medical marijuana program comes as the jurisdictions prepares to implement adult-use cannabis sales, which they’ve been blocked from doing so due to a congressional rider despite D.C. voters approving legalization in 2014.

Lawmakers held a joint hearing in November on a pair of bills to authorize the legal sale of recreational marijuana and significantly expand the existing medical cannabis program in the nation’s capital.

A provision of the bill that could have led to a broad crackdown on the city’s unregulated market for recreational cannabis was removed, much to the relief of advocates who criticized the proposed measure over a component that would have punished businesses that “gift” marijuana in a manner that effectively circumvents the local prohibition on retail cannabis sales.

Marijuana possession and gifting is legal under a voter-approved 2014 initiative—but there currently isn’t a regulated market and people aren’t allowed to accept any form of renumeration for gifting.

The U.S. House passed Fiscal Year 2022 spending legislation that would remove the block on D.C. marijuana sales in July. The Senate has not yet advanced its version of the bill through the Appropriations Committee or on the floor, though panel leaders released a draft measure in October that would similarly let D.C. legalize marijuana commerce.

Democratic congressional leaders are moving to delete the rider despite the fact that President Joe Biden’s budget proposal sought to continue the Republican-led ban.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), who represents the District in Congress, said in November that she is “closer than ever” to removing the blockade on cannabis commerce in her district.

Meanwhile, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said last April that local officials are prepared to move forward with implementing a legal system of recreational marijuana sales in the nation’s capital just as soon as they can get over the final “hurdle” of congressional interference.

Bowser introduced a cannabis commerce bill last February, though her measure was not on the agenda for November’s hearing alongside the cannabis legalization proposal put forward by Mendelson.

Under the chairman’s bill, at least half of marijuana business licensees would issued to social equity applicants, defined as people who faced previous convictions for cannabis-related offenses or have lived in areas with high levels of poverty, unemployment or marijuana arrests for 10 of the past 20 years.

The tax rate for adult-use marijuana products would be set at 13 percent, while medical cannabis would be taxed at six percent.

Thirty percent of tax revenue from cannabis sales would go toward a Cannabis Equity and Opportunity Fund, which would “provide loans, grants and technical assistance to these applicants.

Fifty percent of tax revenue would go to a community reinvestment fund that would provide grants to “organizations addressing issues such as economic development, homeless prevention, support for returning citizens, and civil legal aid in areas with high poverty, unemployment, and gun violence.

The courts would be required to identify and expunge records for people convicted of marijuana offenses made legal under the law. People who are actively incarcerated could have their sentence “modified, vacated, or set aside.

There are also consumer protections written into the legislation, ensuring that people using cannabis in compliance with the law don’t lose benefits, employment or other social services.

Local marijuana activists also proposed an amendment to Mendelson’s legalization bill that would allow small entrepreneurs to sell cannabis at farmers markets. It’s not clear when D.C. lawmakers will convene again to vote on proposed changes and the overall legislation.

The separate medical cannabis bill that the Council considered late last year would allow patients to obtain marijuana from any registered dispensary in the District, instead of just one that they’re registered with under current law. A summary says that dispensaries could also “operate safe use treatment facilities as well as offer tastings and demonstrations and/or classes with the proper endorsements” under the proposal.

Further, delivery and curbside pickup would be permitted. The cap on the number of plants that a cultivation center can grow would be eliminated, and the number of dispensaries permitted in the District would be increased. Additionally, the bill seeks to remove “certain prohibitions against returning citizens ability to take part in the medical marijuana industry.”

Last March, a federal oversight agency determined that the congressional rider blocking marijuana sales in D.C. does not preclude local officials from taking procedural steps to prepare for the eventual reform, such as holding hearings, even if they cannot yet enact it with the blockade pending.

Separately, another group of activists announced an effort to pressure local lawmakers enactbroad drug decriminalization, with a focus on promoting harm reduction programs, in the nation’s capital. A poll released last year found that voters are strongly in favor of proposals.

 

[momofthegoons]

D.C. Lawmakers Approve Ban On Pre-Employment Marijuana Testing For Most Workers​

A Washington, D.C. Council committee on Thursday unanimously approved a bill to ban most workplaces from subjecting job applicants to pre-employment marijuana testing.

The legislation, sponsored by Councilmember Trayon White (D), cleared the Labor & Workforce Development Committee. It would expand on previous legislation the D.C. Council approved to protect local government employees against workplace discrimination due to their use of medical cannabis.

“This is an important step towards eliminating historic inequities of cannabis use and ensuring that those who use cannabis medically or recreationally are not penalized in their work spaces [for what they do] on their private time,” White said at the committee meeting on Thursday.

The new bill stipulates that, with certain exceptions, “it shall be an unlawful discriminatory practice for an employer, labor organization, employment agency, or agent thereof to require a prospective employee to submit to testing for the presence of any tetrahydrocannabinols or marijuana in such prospective employee’s system as a condition of employment.”

Police, safety-sensitive construction workers and people with jobs that require a commercial driver’s license or work with childcare and patients and positions “with the potential to significantly impact the health or safety of employees or members of the public” could still be drug tested for cannabis, however.

There are also exceptions for workers contracted by the federal Department of Transportation (DOT).

“Nothing in this act shall be construed to require an employer to permit or accommodate the use, consumption, possession, transfer, display, transportation, sale, or growing of marijuana in the workplace,” the bill says.

The move is also consistent with moves in other states to loosen drug testing policies for marijuana as more states move to legalization.

In New York, for example, the state Department of Labor announced last year that employers are no longer allowed to drug test most workers for marijuana.

Prior to the passage of statewide legalization, New York City officials had established a local ban on pre-employment drug testing for marijuana.

Drug testing and workplace issues related to marijuana has become a hot topic as more states move to end criminalization. The conversation has reached everywhere from private industry to Congress.

For example, Amazon recently said that its earlier decision to end drug testing for cannabis will also be retroactive, meaning former workers and applicants who were punished for testing positive for THC will have their employment eligibility restored.

Lawmakers in the Senate and House have both included language in recent appropriations reports urging a review of employment policies for federal agencies with respect to personal use of cannabis. The House version passed in July, while the Senate Democrats’ report was released later that year.

The White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently issued a memo to federal agencies that says admitting to past marijuana use should not automatically disqualify people from being employed in the federal government.



Back in D.C., the mayor recently signed a bill into law that will expand access to the District’s medical marijuana program in a series of ways.

Now, senior citizens will be able to self-certify their own eligibility for cannabis without having to get a recommendation from a doctor. The law also further extends the registration renewal deadline for patients and creates a week-long medical marijuana tax relief “holiday” that coincides with the unofficial cannabis event known as 4/20.

That bill also generally expand on prior emergency legislation that the Council approved at the height of the coronavirus pandemic to extend registration eligibility for the medical cannabis program. Patients under 65 with registrations will continue to be validated through at least September 30.

In 2019, another D.C. lawmaker proposed a separate medical cannabis reform bill meant to ease the registration process for patients. Instead of having to wait several weeks for regulators to process their medical cannabis approvals, patients would simply fill out an application with the city health department and would then automatically qualify to legally purchase marijuana on a provisional basis.

The legislation’s author, at-large Councilmember David Grosso (I), introduced a similar bill in 2017, though that version allowed residents to self-certify as medical marijuana patients—without the need to involve a doctor—by signing an affidavit, and it didn’t have the stipulation that their qualifications could be later rejected.

These latest reform developments in D.C. come as the jurisdictions prepares to implement adult-use cannabis sales, which they’ve been blocked from doing so due to a congressional rider despite D.C. voters approving legalization in 2014.

Lawmakers held a joint hearing in November on a pair of bills to authorize the legal sale of recreational marijuana and significantly expand the existing medical cannabis program in the nation’s capital.

A provision of the bill that could have led to a broad crackdown on the city’s unregulated market for recreational cannabis was removed, much to the relief of advocates who criticized the proposed measure over a component that would have punished businesses that “gift” marijuana in a manner that effectively circumvents the local prohibition on retail cannabis sales.

Marijuana possession and gifting is legal under a voter-approved 2014 initiative—but there currently isn’t a regulated market and people aren’t allowed to accept any form of renumeration for gifting.

The U.S. House passed Fiscal Year 2022 spending legislation that would remove the block on D.C. marijuana sales in July. The Senate has not yet advanced its version of the bill through the Appropriations Committee or on the floor, though panel leaders released a draft measure in October that would similarly let D.C. legalize marijuana commerce.

Democratic congressional leaders have been taking those steps toward deleting the rider despite the fact that President Joe Biden’s budget proposal sought to continue the Republican-led ban.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), who represents the District in Congress, said in November that she is “closer than ever” to removing the blockade on cannabis commerce in her district.

That said, it’s not clear if a forthcoming funding bill for the rest of 2022 will continue the rider or not.

Meanwhile, the mayor said last April that local officials are prepared to move forward with implementing a legal system of recreational marijuana sales in the nation’s capital just as soon as they can get over the final “hurdle” of congressional interference.

Bowser introduced a cannabis commerce bill last February, though her measure was not on the agenda for November’s hearing alongside the cannabis legalization proposal put forward by Mendelson.

Under the chairman’s bill, at least half of marijuana business licensees would issued to social equity applicants, defined as people who faced previous convictions for cannabis-related offenses or have lived in areas with high levels of poverty, unemployment or marijuana arrests for 10 of the past 20 years.

The tax rate for adult-use marijuana products would be set at 13 percent, while medical cannabis would be taxed at six percent.

Thirty percent of tax revenue from cannabis sales would go toward a Cannabis Equity and Opportunity Fund, which would “provide loans, grants and technical assistance to these applicants.

Fifty percent of tax revenue would go to a community reinvestment fund that would provide grants to “organizations addressing issues such as economic development, homeless prevention, support for returning citizens, and civil legal aid in areas with high poverty, unemployment, and gun violence.

The courts would be required to identify and expunge records for people convicted of marijuana offenses made legal under the law. People who are actively incarcerated could have their sentence “modified, vacated, or set aside.

There are also consumer protections written into the legislation, ensuring that people using cannabis in compliance with the law don’t lose benefits, employment or other social services.

Local marijuana activists also proposed an amendment to Mendelson’s legalization bill that would allow small entrepreneurs to sell cannabis at farmers markets. It’s not clear when D.C. lawmakers will convene again to vote on proposed changes and the overall legislation.

The separate medical cannabis bill that the Council considered late last year would allow patients to obtain marijuana from any registered dispensary in the District, instead of just one that they’re registered with under current law. A summary says that dispensaries could also “operate safe use treatment facilities as well as offer tastings and demonstrations and/or classes with the proper endorsements” under the proposal.

Further, delivery and curbside pickup would be permitted. The cap on the number of plants that a cultivation center can grow would be eliminated, and the number of dispensaries permitted in the District would be increased. Additionally, the bill seeks to remove “certain prohibitions against returning citizens ability to take part in the medical marijuana industry.”

Last March, a federal oversight agency determined that the congressional rider blocking marijuana sales in D.C. does not preclude local officials from taking procedural steps to prepare for the eventual reform, such as holding hearings, even if they cannot yet enact it with the blockade pending.

Separately, another group of activists announced an effort to pressure local lawmakers enact broad drug decriminalization, with a focus on promoting harm reduction programs, in the nation’s capital. A poll released last year found that voters are strongly in favor of proposals.

 

[Baron23]

And how is this so? A single party that promised cannabis reform and legalization as part of its platform and which has been recently touted by the Senate Majority Leader, controls the Exec branch and both chambers of Congress.

So, what is the excuse this time?

Congress upholds DC weed sales ban, protects state medical programs​

As D.C. seems unable to fully create a proper cannabis program, it is overcoming the roadblocks step by step.​

The new bicameral omnibus spending bill presented on Wednesday by congressional leaders in Washington D.C. would keep a ban on allowing legal recreational cannabis sales. On the other hand, a different provision that protects state-legal medical marijuana programs from federal interference was left unchanged in the proposed measures, reported Marijuana Moment.

And so, the long-standing problem for cannabis businesses in Washington D.C. looks like it will remain, despite recent efforts to change it.

On March 4, the Drug Policy Alliance and more than 50 criminal justice reform, business, labor, and drug policy organizations, sent a letter to key House and Senate appropriators as well as Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, demanding the removal of the appropriations rider that has prevented the District of Columbia from spending its own money to legalize and regulate adult-use marijuana sales.

Though adult-use cannabis was legalized in Washington D.C. in 2014, a rider that has remained valid over the course of several presidential budget proposals has prevented the District from fully exercising its legal cannabis program.

As such, adults over 21 are allowed to grow and possess cannabis yet commercial sales remain stalled under the rider, which was also included in President Biden’s last budget for 2022. Last year, the rider was purposely left out of a spending bill approved by the House and circulated in draft form in the Senate.

Now, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) is urging members of Congress “to maintain the removal of the Congressional budget rider, also known as the ‘Harris’ rider,” that continues to prohibit the District of Columbia from establishing a regulatory framework for the sale and taxation of marijuana.

The newly introduced bill proved to be a disappointment to advocates who were expecting congressional leaders in the Democratic-controlled Congress to remove the rider. In addition, an expansion of the current state medical cannabis protection language to cover all state cannabis programs from the Justice Department intervention was also dismissed.

What’s Next?​

The House is expected to vote on the omnibus appropriations legislation on Wednesday. If passed, the bill would move to the Senate. The move comes several days before a government spending deadline, which has already been pushed back several times. This means that the bill will require Biden’s signature before the deadline in order not to be thrown into the crisis of a possible government shutdown.

When and if that occurs, D.C. officials will be denied a chance to pass a measure that legalizes recreation cannabis sales until at least the end of September, after which Congress can choose to remove the rider, or not.

Nevertheless, as D.C. seems unable to fully create a proper cannabis program, it is overcoming the roadblocks step by step. Take, for example, the District’s recent pre-employment marijuana testing bill, unanimously approved by the Labor & Workforce Development Committee, that bans most workplaces from subjecting job applicants to drug testing procedures.

Sponsored by Councilmember Trayon White (D), the proposal builds on previous legislation the D.C. Council passed to help local government employees who face workplace discrimination due to their use of medical marijuana.

 

[Baron23]

Bowser signs bill allowing adult DC residents to self-prescribing medical marijuana​

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signed into law Wednesday an emergency bill allowing residents 21 and older to self-prescribe medical marijuana.


Effective immediately, under the new law, residents over 21 no longer need a doctor’s recommendation for a medical marijuana patient card, which was required to enter and make purchases at one of the city’s seven medical marijuana dispensaries.


Residents can register for their patient card for free through Aug. 18 at the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration’s website, in person at the ABRA’s office inside the Reeves Center in Northwest or by mail at 2000 14th Street NW, Suite 102A (First Floor), Washington, D.C. 20009.


“We know that by bringing more medical marijuana patients into the legal marketplace in a timely manner and doing more to level the playing field for licensed medical marijuana providers, we can protect residents, support local businesses, and provide clarity to the community,” Bowser said in a statement.



The law — which passed the D.C. Council in late June — is intended to boost the business of medical marijuana dispensaries while dealing a blow to unregulated marijuana “gifting shops.”


There are several dozen unregulated gifting shops throughout the District, which operate through a loophole in D.C.’s 2015 law legalizing possession of marijuana.


The gifting shops provide gifts of marijuana to buyers of cheap, incidental items, such as artwork, clothing or other items.



Bowser said the new law is an “innovative solution to a complex issue.” She said she looks forward to more comprehensive medical marijuana legislation in the future.

 

[Tincandtoke]

I would have my chair and a tarp and be in line immediately

Cannabis as currency, paying with or getting paid with a half smoked joint
I'd take it

 

[Baron23]

Wow, what a shock...LOL​

​

Politics​

D.C. Medical Marijuana Registrations Surged In July After ‘Self-Certification’ Law Took Effect, Data Shows​

Washington, D.C. residents have wasted no time taking advantage of a new law that allows people to “self-certify” as medical marijuana patients that took effect in early July, with officials releasing data that shows a significant spike in registrations last month now that people no longer need a doctor to sign off to join the program.


The District’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA) posted the monthly figures on Thursday. More than 1,200 people registered to become cannabis patients in July, for a total of 15,730.


While it’s not clear how many of those patients self-certified since Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) signed the District Council-passed bill into law on July 6, last month saw the largest jump by far in registrations this year. Registrations have been steadily increasing, but most months have only seen a few hundred additional patients.

From June to July, medical marijuana patient registrations increased from 14,468 to 15,730—roughly nine percent growth.


Since the beginning of this year, the next largest bump in registrations took place from March to April, when the number grew by 403 patients, from 13,445 to 13,848. That was a three percent difference.


Observers expected to growth in patient registrations with the self-certification option, as the proposed policy change received significant attention. What it does is effectively allow D.C. to circumvent a congressional spending bill rider that’s blocked the local government from using tax dollars to implement adult-use marijuana sales.

Voters approved recreational legalization at the ballot in 2014, but that rider from Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) has served as a consistent barrier to seeing through the will of voters.


Bowser, U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and other elected officials in the city have routinely criticized Congress for singling out the District and depriving it of the ability to do what a growing number of states have done without federal interference. Lawmakers and advocates have also expressed disappointment over the fact that President Joe Biden has included the rider in his last two budget requests despite saying he supports D.C. statehood.

 

[Baron23]

Washington, D.C. Mayor Signs Medical Pot Bill ​

Washington DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser signed a new bill that is making some major changes to the capital’s medical cannabis program.​

The recently passed bill, called the Medical Cannabis Amendment Act of 2022 (B24-0113), was sponsored by Chairman Phil Mendelson of the Washington, D.C. Council in February 2021. The Washington, D.C. Council voted unanimously to pass on Dec. 20, 2022, followed by Bowser signing the bill on Jan. 30, just two days before a response was due on Feb. 1.

The bill expands the capital’s medical cannabis program in many ways, including lifting the cap on dispensaries, creating new license types, and codifies emergency measures passed in 2021 and 2022.

Originally the amendment proposed implementing an increased cap on dispensaries, but was later revised to include no maximum number (although the Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Board is given the power to establish a cap one year from the passage of the bill in January 2024).

t also authorizes the creation of more cannabis license types, including cannabis delivery services, online sales, educational programs, and areas dedicated to cannabis consumption. “At least half” of all licenses given to currently unlicensed businesses will be given to social equity applicants (defined as those who are D.C. residents with low income, have spent time in prison for cannabis-related charges, or are related to someone who was affected by the War on Drugs).

Medical cannabis was legalized in Washington D.C. in 2010, and an attempt to legalize adult-use cannabis was passed by voters in 2014 through Initiative 71. While it allows possess of up to two ounces of cannabis and home cultivation, it also allows adults to gift up to one ounce of weed to another adult, which created the loophole of gifting (or a way to get around cannabis sale restrictions by selling merch or apparel with a gift of cannabis for free). The Medical Cannabis Amendment Act of 2022 seeks to target those unlicensed businesses, giving them a path to obtain a legal license.

The act also codifies emergency measures that were implemented for cannabis. This includes the emergency measure that provides support for Washington, D.C. patients with expired cards and help struggling dispensaries as well, which was passed in November 2021. In July 2022, Bowser signed a bill allowing adults to self-certify themselves as medical cannabis patients.

Overall, enforcement action related to these changes won’t be implemented until 315 days have passed since the signing of the bill, which would be later this year in December. It also needs congressional review before officially taking effect.

 

[Baron23]

Inside DC’s absurdly confusing Recreational Weed market ​

Federal meddling in local laws has created a challenging and preposterous gray market for DC's canna-businesses—and their customers.​

When I first signed up for a bus tour of the Washington area conducted by Lucky Chuckie Tours, the $70 price seemed a bit high. It was only after I boarded a small Ford bus at a pocket park in Foggy Bottom that I began to understand the pricing philosophy. The cabin was decorated like a dorm room, complete with green window lights and a banner reading “Let the Shenanigans Begin.” On my seat was a gift bag that contained high-quality THC gummies, as well as a fat, pre-rolled joint.

Billing itself as “The Best Cannabis Tour in Washington DC,” Lucky Chuckie is owned by Steven Slaughter, a former bank branch manager in Silver Spring who came up with the idea while driving for a ride-share company at night to save money for a down payment on a house. “I knew people in DC smoked weed,” he says, “because when they got into my Uber, they smelled like it.”

My tour took place on a cold afternoon in early January. Because business tends to be slow in winter, Slaughter did what would usually be two separate jobs, driving and narrating. He didn’t have a microphone—the previous one got damaged when someone spilled THC-laced honey on the dashboard. We saw the monuments, swung by the Wharf, and gawked at Nationals Park. As we passed the Build-a-Bear Workshop on Waterfront Street in National Harbor, I felt reality turn a bit elastic. My edible was kicking in. (I’m not a smoker, but I hate to be rude to my hosts.)

The most Washington thing about the tour, however, wasn’t the sights. It was the rules. Lucky Chuckie may be extremely 420-friendly, but it’s not looking to get in trouble with the law. Drivers remain stone-cold sober, and passengers aren’t allowed to consume cannabis in the bus—instead, guides will gladly help them find quiet outdoor spots to light up.

Legally speaking, smoking outside is also verboten, but if you have a working nose and have walked down pretty much any local street in the last few years, you’ve probably noticed that the cops aren’t working up a sweat enforcing that ban. Meanwhile, those gummy ’n’ spliff gift bags are exactly that, gifts, because while recreational cannabis use and possession are legal in the District, sales and large-scale production are not—even though it’s perfectly legal to give the stuff away, which is what many tax-paying operations such as Slaughter’s end up doing.

If that all sounds confusing, well, welcome to DC. Across the nation, legalized cannabis is on the march, creating new business opportunities alongside the chance to toke up or pop a gummy. In California, for example, a West Hollywood cafe featuring tableside weed sommeliers offered loaded vape pens and rent-a-bongs before the pandemic forced it to close. But here, a unique crazy quilt of incongruous local and federal laws has created a bizarro market—one in which budding weed entrepreneurs face a frustrating gauntlet of obstacles, customers can’t be sure of what they’re getting, and the best way to run a canna-business is to pretend you aren’t.

You know how if you want a bottle of vodka, you can just walk into a liquor store, pay for one, and walk out? Washington’s cannabis industry works nothing like that.

DC, says Adam Eidinger, who led the effort to make weed legal for adult use, “looks like a city where there’s the law—and then how things work.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2013, District dispensaries sold medical marijuana for the first time. A year later, city voters overwhelmingly passed Initiative 71, a ballot measure shepherded by Eidinger that legalized the possession of up to two ounces of cannabis, the ability to gift up to one ounce, and the personal cultivation of a small number of marijuana plants (six per person and up to 12 per household).

While I-71 didn’t legalize recreational sales, the DC Council planned to introduce subsequent legislation to tax and regulate the recreational market. (DC’s medical market had sales of more than $56 million in 2022, and the trade publication MJBizDaily estimates that a recreational market could be almost four times larger.) The upshot? Create a rational framework for what a whole lot of people who live, work, and visit here want: a convenient way to get high safely, at a reasonable price. “What we were envisioning,” Eidinger says, “was the ability to purchase [marijuana] in a wide variety of venues.” Think coffee shops, like in Amsterdam, or salons or music venues.

Only Holland-on-the-Potomac never happened. Roughly a month after I-71’s passage, Congress struck a spending deal that included a rider from Representative Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican and staunch cannabis opponent. The rider prevents the city from spending any money to tax and regulate marijuana, effectively blocking the creation of a legal way to buy and sell recreational weed. Local officials were incensed—but thanks to congressional authority over DC’s budget, their hands were tied.

In the years since I-71 passed, national attitudes and laws around cannabis have softened. Pew Research Center found last year that only 10 percent of Americans oppose legal marijuana, and last year’s midterms saw Maryland and Missouri join 19 other states, the District, and Guam in permitting recreational use. At the federal level, possession and sale remain a felony thanks to War on Drugs–era legislation that dates back to 1970.

However, President Biden has given marijuana advocates hope by issuing a mass pardon for people convicted of possession by the feds. He also has ordered the government to review—and potentially change—the drug’s status as a Schedule I controlled substance, a designation that puts a mango-flavored THC gummy in the same dangerous category as a balloon of black-tar heroin.

Despite this momentum, the Harris rider remains in effect. The House removed it last year while under Democratic control, only to see Democrats in the 50-50 Senate restore it due to what they claimed was Republican pressure. As a result, DC’s burgeoning cannabis industry is populated by a bewildering array of so-called I-71 businesses that take full advantage of the law’s gifting provision to look and act like marijuana sales operations—without actually selling marijuana.

Terrence White is chairman of the I-71 Committee, one of several cannabis business associations in the city. He opened Monko, an I-71 store in Mount Vernon Triangle, last October. White says he invested about $1.6 million to build out a retail space that wouldn’t be out of place on Rodeo Drive—in fact, White drew inspiration from Christian Dior’s Beverly Hills boutique. The average yearly income in Monko’s neighborhood is more than $150,000, White says, and many of his customers are professional women who want to shop for cannabis “somewhere that’s safe.”

Pop into Monko and you’ll be greeted by a security guard who scans your driver’s license before a salesperson toting a tablet and wearing an earpiece greets you and starts to show you around. Upstairs, you’ll find a high-end boutique for premium T-shirts, hats, and other apparel. Those garments, plus some CBD products, are the only things for sale. But once your salesperson learns what else you’re looking for—something to help you sleep, perhaps, or unwind at the end of a long day—they’ll escort you to another room. There, you’ll choose your gift: a package of elderberry-flavored THC gummies, a horchata-inspired pre-rolled joint, or a classy glass jar that holds an eighth of an ounce of Jet Fuel Gelato, a citrusy cannabis strain prized for its high THC and subtle cinnamon notes.

“I never envisioned we were creating a workaround with the so-called gifting loophole,” Eidinger says of I-71 businesses.

Many I-71 businesses started out as delivery or pickup services, but as the pandemic ravaged commercial real estate, more and more shops have opened—landlords, Eidinger says, are happy to find tenants for “spaces that have been dead forever.” Some, like Monko, have the professional sheen of an Apple Store. Others are alarmingly cowboy operations.

What they all have in common is peddling an array of curiously expensive items—stickers, trading cards, digital artwork, even motivational speeches, the last of which seem somewhat antithetical to the stoner ethos—alongside ostensible cannabis freebies. The now-shuttered delivery service District Derp sold paintings made by its owners’ dog, an Alaskan Klee Kai named Sudo. Lonny Bramzon, a criminal-defense attorney, offers “discounted coupons redeemable for legal services” with “an optional free cannabis gift of your choice” at his Street Lawyer Services shop next to the Nando’s on H Street, Northeast.

Lisa Scott, president of the DC Cannabis Business Association, freely admits that the city’s gray market for recreational weed can be deeply absurd. “You could sell your dirty underwear as long as you pay taxes,” she says. And that would be fine, fodder for a toke and a giggle, if not for a sobering truth: Without the rules and standards commonplace in other industries, challenges abound.

“There’s always a probability for any entrepreneur that you’re going to fail,” says Hannah Clarke, director of operations for Toker’s Guide, a website that offers reviews and advertising of I-71 businesses, “but especially in an industry where the barriers are so changing.”

Diana Alvarez’s I-71 store, , is a clean, comfy place just steps away from the DCUSA shopping center in Columbia Heights. Walk inside and you’ll find a box for a coat drive, a sofa in front of a picture wall, and artwork that salutes powerful women such as Frida Kahlo and Princess Diana—Alvarez really wants women to feel at ease in her shop. There are sharp-looking displays of cleaning supplies and cannabis paraphernalia including $30 basic glass pipes and $300 hand-blown bongs. “All the glass I have here is American,” she says. “No China stuff.”Lit City Smoke Shop

The daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, Alvarez grew up in Adams Morgan and later left college to work in banking. But after she trusted a friend with information that he used to steal money from other customers’ accounts, she had to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud in 2012.

US Attorneys praised Alvarez for her acceptance of responsibility and her decision not to ask for a costly jury trial, moves that won her supervised release and a five-figure fine. With a felony conviction on her record, Alvarez knew she couldn’t return to finance. She got a job in real-estate development—and then her son, Anthony, started looking at universities where he could study video-game design, some costing almost $60,000 a year.

Alvarez decided she needed a second job. “I told my best friend, ‘If I can’t find anything good, I’m going to be a stripper,’ ” she says with a laugh. She began working at a tobacco shop a friend had opened, the Green Room, and in 2017 began managing it full-time. The shop sold pot-smoking supplies alongside tobacco and convenience items like soap and toothpaste, but Alvarez had zero idea of what bongs and grinders were used for. She’d never really messed with weed. “I remembered, growing up in the city, how many of my Black and Brown brothers and sisters went to jail for carrying little joints,” she says. She always thought, “What if I get caught?”

When Alvarez’s friend decided to exit the business, she gathered her life savings, borrowed money from her family, and bought him out. Customers began asking her to carry cannabis products, and with Anthony about to start college at Clark University in Massachusetts, she decided to test the waters with a basket of THC-laced brownies—displayed by the register in a basket labeled “ANT’s College Fund Brownies.” Alvarez’s mom reluctantly helped her develop the recipe. Other family members chipped in to help her source enough cannabis to make infused butter.

Customers were very into Alvarez’s new offerings. In 2017, she changed the shop’s name and started selling stickers and tote bags that read “Buy Weed From Women,” alongside an expanded selection of gifts. She now has nine employees and was able to pay for Anthony’s education. “I’m grateful that the I-71 law allowed me to do that,” she says.

While canna-business has been good for Alvarez, it also has brought headaches. I-71 operations are taxed on their revenues, just like bookstores and pizza shops. However, the IRS doesn’t allow businesses that are illegal under federal law—even if they’re permitted at the state or local level—to deduct common expenses such as staff salaries, marketing, and rent. Similarly, the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 and federal money-laundering statutes criminalize transactions for businesses that engage in “unlawful activity,” even if that activity is legal in their states. As a result, banks and merchant-service companies seldom work with I-71 businesses. Few take credit cards, and most deal strictly in cash. “There was a time in District Derp’s history when we had upwards of $50,000 in a safe,” says Chris Licata, one of the shuttered delivery service’s co-owners.

This can make cannabis businesses crime targets. In recent years, robbery waves marked by gunfire and killings have hit shops in the Bay Area and Seattle; in DC, statistics are hard to come by amid conflicting crime data, but some neighborhood associations claim a rise in crime near I-71 businesses. At some, it’s hard to miss the guards at the door; Monko employs four to five security personnel through an agency.

Then there’s the matter of product quality—and safety. DC’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, which oversees the city’s seven medical dispensaries, has for years been willing to license an independent local laboratory to test the products those dispensaries sell. However, only one lab has ever applied, and it didn’t meet the agency’s requirements.

That leaves the city’s medical dispensaries relying on supplier assurances, and I-71 businesses sometimes relying on the personal impressions of staffers who use weed. None of this is ideal for customers, says Darel Dawson, who came to the area from California as a botany student to conduct psychopharmacological research at NIH and Johns Hopkins and now owns an I-71 shop, Peace in the Air, in Adams Morgan. If you’re an experienced user—and have a jeweler’s loupe handy—you can spot problems with the sticky crystals, called trichomes, that cover the leaves of a cannabis bud. If they’re dried out, fuzzy, or hairy, the product is probably old; if there’s a powdery coating, it’s a sign of mold or mildew. Smoke the latter and you could end up with an unpleasant allergic reaction—or, if you’re immunocompromised, a serious infection.

Independent testing, Dawson says, would “optimally” eliminate quality problems, “but we’re a long way from optimal.” He points to an issue that has bedeviled California regulators: Product that doesn’t pass lab tests often gets dumped onto the unregulated black market—and can end up in overnight packages heading to DC.

That’s important, because while I-71 businesspeople like to talk up the local provenance of their product, Eidinger says few vendors “can look you in the face and tell you the cannabis was grown in the District of Columbia.” Under the law, only a shop’s owner is legally allowed to grow the cannabis sold in his or her shop. But according to Eidinger, there’s a strong chance that any cannabis you buy here comes from California (or, increasingly, Maine).

By sheer accident, the legal uncertainty surrounding the District’s recreational market has made it more equitable, scaring off large multistate companies and allowing smaller local operators to establish themselves. Similarly, minority entrepreneurs and people with criminal records can more easily get into the cannabis game here than in states like Nevada and Massachusetts. In 2009, White was convicted of aiding and abetting mail fraud and spent about a year and a half in a federal prison in Morgantown, West Virginia; there, he met so many people incarcerated on marijuana charges that he began researching the then-nascent legal weed industry. DC, White says, is “one of the few places in America that gives returning citizens the opportunity to be middle-class, upper-class again, without the scrutiny.”

The I-71 landscape is also something of a Wild West. While medical dispensaries answer to ABRA and have to follow strict rules governing what they can sell and who can buy it, I-71 businesses are largely unsupervised. “You have gift shops that are operating as legitimately as possible,” Alvarez says. “And then you have other ones that just don’t care.” In 2018 and 2019, she says, DC police and the FBI raided what cops called an “illegal marijuana pop-up” that set up in her building, forcing her to close Lit City for days at a time.

City government has accordingly struggled to get a handle on I-71s. In 2019 and 2021, DC mayor Muriel Bowser proposed legislation that would have fully legalized adult-use cannabis sales and used taxes from those sales to support entrepreneurs in areas of the city disproportionately harmed by the War on Drugs. Both plans presumed that congressional Democrats would end the Harris rider—and withered accordingly.

Last year, DC Council chairman Phil Mendelson threatened to close or otherwise kneecap I-71 shops after medical dispensaries complained that they were siphoning away sales, but strong pushback from I-71 owners and business associations convinced the Council to back off. In July, it passed a temporary measure allowing residents to self-certify that they require a medical card—no doctor required. Then, in October, Bowser signed another temporary measure extending that privilege to nonresidents.

The goal of these measures? To encourage cannabis customers to use medical dispensaries instead of I-71s—the better to reconcile, however imperfectly, the chasm between federal law and local desire. “We’re in the most liberal city in the country,” White says. “But when it comes to our cannabis laws, we’re almost some of the most conservative. The city doesn’t reflect where the people are.”

Unlike businesspeople in most industries—tech, finance, energy, take your K Street lobbying pick—many I-71 shop owners will tell you they want more regulation and oversight, not less. Both the I-71 Committee and the DC Cannabis Business Association have rules for membership, such as obtaining a certificate of occupancy from the District’s Department of Buildings, submitting sales-tax records, and not selling edibles that resemble candy.

“Yeah, we’re in a gray area,” White says. “But we want to do it right. We want the opportunity to hang a license on the wall.”

Which brings us back to the Harris rider. Its namesake, a member of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus and a former Johns Hopkins physician, cosponsored a recent bill signed into law by President Biden that will make it easier to study medical marijuana. Still, Harris “categorically opposes” recreational use. He says he focuses on DC—and not Maryland, where a recreational market will come online this summer—because he reads “the Constitution, and I think the Constitution gives oversight of the federal enclave to the Congress.”

Stymied by the federal stalemate, the DC Council hit upon a novel solution in December: It approved a bill that would eliminate the current cap on the number of medical dispensaries in the city, provide a pathway for current I-71 businesses to go medical, crack down on those that don’t, and make the temporary ability to self-certify for medical-marijuana cards permanent. In January, 27,036 people held medical cards, according to ABRA.

The bill became law last month, though there’s always the possibility Congress could try to bigfoot DC again as it did with criminal code reform this spring. Customers who once pretended to buy T-shirts could now become customers who pretend to be doctors, specifically to prescribe themselves weed. Preposterous? Of course. Yet in a city that lacks full control over its own laws, it also makes a strange kind of sense. “I have not thought of a better idea yet,” says James Kahn, a rabbi whose family has operated the medical dispensary Takoma Wellness Center since 2013.

In February, I visited Lit City, where I found the same edibles I’d received on my Lucky Chuckie tour. This time, I knew exactly what to say: “How much do I have to spend to get a gift of the level-5 Honey Blooms?” I paid my $35, plus tax, and received my purchase in a bag. It was almost like buying anything else in the city, except for one thing. “Don’t forget to take your sticker,” the clerk told me.