Washington, DC passes bill to expand sales of medicinal weed

Local lawmakers in Washington, DC last week passed legislation to expand sales of medical marijuana, giving the city’s popular but unlicensed weed gift shops a path to the regulated market. The bill, approved by the DC District Council on December 20, comes after Congress included an existing ban on regulated adult cannabis sales in the nation’s capital as part of a spending bill approved last week.

The bill significantly expands Washington, DC’s medical marijuana program, removing a cap on dispensaries and increasing the number of authorized grow facilities. The legislation also creates licenses for new types of cannabis businesses, including marijuana delivery services, online sales, educational programs like cooking classes, and cannabis consumption areas in dispensaries. Half of the new licenses will be reserved for social justice applicants, defined as DC residents who have low incomes, have served time in prison, or are related to someone who has been incarcerated for a cannabis or drug offense.

Bill addresses the Weed Gifting Shops in DC

The legislation aims to address the vast unregulated market for cannabis in Washington, DC, where medical marijuana was legalized by local lawmakers in 2010. In 2014, voters approved Initiative 71, a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana. Under the measure, adults are allowed to possess up to two ounces of marijuana, grow cannabis at home, and give away up to one ounce of weed to another adult. However, Congress, which controls Washington, DC’s budget, has refused to allow the city to spend money regulating the sale of recreational marijuana.

The situation has resulted in dozens of businesses using I-71’s gift provision to openly distribute cannabis from retail outlets. Under the joint program, companies sell benign goods like clothing or art and offer what appears to be a free marijuana gift with purchase. Phil Mendelson, chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia, estimates that the unregulated marijuana market in the nation’s capital is worth up to $600 million a year.

“Unlicensed and unregulated companies will always have an advantage: they don’t have to pay taxes, they don’t have to provide quality,” Mendelson said in an interview with DCist/WAMU. “Congress supports and encourages this by forbidding us to regulate this. It’s a real public safety issue,” he said.

Patients can self-certify that they use medical marijuana

Legislation passed last week also makes permanent an emergency measure passed earlier this year that allows adults to certify their own eligibility to use medical marijuana, eliminating a previous provision that required certification by a licensed physician. At the time, Mendelson and some members were also attempting to enact bans on the gift-giving industry, but met with opposition from a group of business owners. Legalizing the businesses so they could be regulated was not possible under the congressional ban, making granting companies a route to the medical marijuana market an option, an option favored by a majority of the district council.

“This will allow the district to be much healthier on the cannabis side,” Terrence White, chair of a group known as the i-71 Committee and gift shop owner, told The Washington Post. “It will allow us to do it ‘right,’ as I call it.”

The bill, which passed the council last week, gives existing operators 90 days to apply for a medical marijuana license and prevents enforcement of gift shops for at least 315 days after the law goes into effect. David Grosso, a former council member and current lobbyist for the DC Cannabis Trade Association, a group representing licensed medical marijuana operators, said the bill is a positive development for the industry.

“We would definitely like to see a level playing field across the board and that hasn’t been the case for very long [Initiative 71] People operated illegally. So we hope that these efforts will bring them into the legal market and then treat them equally with us,” Grosso said. “And that means all the regulations that come with it, the fees you have to pay, the inspections you have to endure, all the restrictions on where you can stay and everything the current legal market has had to deal with for more than now ten years, which weighs heavily on us.”

Norbert Pickett, the owner of Cannabliss, one of seven licensed medical dispensaries in the nation’s capital, agreed, saying the legislation is an opportunity to expand the medical marijuana market in Washington, DC and give patients new options Offer.

“It gives patients better access to safe and tested cannabis,” he said. “It brings together the unregulated market and the legal market. For me that is a win.”

Mackenzie Mann, project leader for the giftware industry trade group Generational Equity Movement, said the county council’s legislation represents a drastic change for the cannabis landscape in Washington, DC.

“It’s surreal,” Mann said. “A year ago they tried to shut us down.”

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