Inspections of gift shops in Washington, DC have been suspended

Scheduled inspections of unlicensed cannabis retailers in Washington, DC have reportedly been delayed.

The inspections, announced last month by the city’s Alcoholic Beverages Regulatory Agency, were intended to ensure companies were “complying with the regulatory requirements of DC Health, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA), the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services.” Department (FEMS) and the Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR). “The inspections, announced last month by the city’s Alcoholic Beverages Regulatory Agency, were intended to ensure that businesses “comply with regulatory requirements from DC Health, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA), the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department (FEMS) and the Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR).”

But the DCist reports that officials are “delaying plans to inspect the city’s many marijuana gift shops this week, deepening confusion around the maybe-legal, maybe-not industry that continues to grow across the city.”

The outlet, citing a source familiar with the situation, said law enforcement officials “had raised concerns about the protocol used to inspect the stores and what would happen if inspectors found any weapons or other illegal items.”

Inspections should begin after Labor Day.

Voters in the nation’s capital approved a 2014 ballot initiative that legalized recreational cannabis, but due to an obscure provision that gives Congress control of its laws, the sale of marijuana remains banned in DC

Since that vote eight years ago, every budget bill passed by Congress has included the so-called “Harris Rider,” Republican Congressman Andy Harris of Maryland banning Washington, DC, from the commercialization of recreational cannabis.

Democrats on Capitol Hill flirted with the idea of ​​removing the Harris Rider from the latest spending bill when it released a bill last fall.

But in March of this year, the final version of the bill included the Harris Rider, much to the chagrin of DC cannabis reform advocates

“Congress needs to get out of here,” Phil Mendelson, the chair of DC City Council, said in March. “It perpetuates the current lawless situation in the city.”

That hasn’t stopped a number of intrepid Washington, DC business owners from finding a workaround for the ban.

The city is home to a number of illegal retailers who sell cannabis through the practice of “gift giving,” where a customer pays for an item such as a t-shirt in exchange for receiving cannabis as a “gift.”

Gift giving has become so ubiquitous – and popular – in Washington, DC that some policymakers and industry officials have expressed concerns that it’s chewing on the margins of legal, medical cannabis surgeries, and patients are choosing the illegal route instead paperwork to fill out.

“The medical side is on the brink of existence while the illegal side has only grown faster,” Mendelson said in April.

This month, the DC Council rejected a proposal that would have imposed harsh fines on “gift-giving” retailers.

A few months later, the council passed another measure, also proposed, to help the city’s beleaguered medicinal cannabis retailers. Under the new regulation, signed into law by Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser in July, medical cannabis patients in the city are now allowed to “self-certify” their qualifications for the treatment, allowing them to bypass a doctor.

“We’ve made building a more patient-centric medical marijuana program a priority over the years, and this legislation builds on those efforts,” Bowser said in a statement. “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 know we can protect residents, support local businesses and bring clarity to the community.”