Posted on 12/10/2014 12:43:59 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A congressional deal to avert another government shutdown contains a provision to stop the District of Columbia from allowing the sale of marijuana, angering supporters of a pro-pot initiative that D.C. voters approved overwhelmingly in November, The Washington Post reports.
The anti-pot measure — a budget "rider" slipped into a $1.1 trillion catchall spending bill that would keep the government running past Thursday — could prevent the nation's capital from joining Colorado and Washington as legal weed havens.
The measure does not overturn the results of Initiative 71, the legalization referendum that passed on Nov. 4 with more than 60 percent of the vote, but it strips any local funding for oversight and regulation of legal pot sales.
Critics call the rider unjustified, and a violation of the city's Home Rule Charter, which Congress approved in 1973 to guarantee the District more autonomy in policy and spending.
"To undermine the vote of the people — taxpayers — does not foster or promote the 'limited government' stance House Republicans claim they stand for; it’s uninformed paternalistic meddling," a D.C. city council member, David Grosso, complained in a press release entitled, " Don’t Blunt D.C.’s Election," the Post reports.
Under the Constitution, Washington, D.C., is a federal enclave that operates under congressional supervision and with no voting representatives of its own in the House or Senate.
That arrangement has allowed individual lawmakers from anywhere in the county to influence and dictate limits to the city's budget in the past.
The push against legal marijuana in D.C., is led by Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican who inserted an even stricter provision into the omnibus spending bill that lawmakers are racing to complete before the holidays.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
That applies to the prospective pot dealers, not to the City's regulators.
The Mayor just needs to issue an Executive Action foregoing all regulations and licensing. Problem solved.
I am willing to bet that your city spends a lot of money on health inspectors, fire inspections and other regulations of the grocery store.
I don’t know all the ins & outs of the formal power dynamic between Congress & DC, but I’m guessing it’s not that simple.
Why not Obama did it?? Holder said if you don’t like the law you don’t have to enforce it, sounds simple to me, but would require a real man to implement, not too many in Politics these days.
That applies to the prospective pot dealers, not to the City’s regulators.
= = = = = = = = = =
Granted - I did say I was sorta ‘spoofing’. Actually it shouldn’t be allowed to turn back the voters on something that didn’t just land on the ballot, whoever allowed it on the Ballot must have known the ins and out (Oh OK!!).
I mean I realize that if You & I were against Pot/Same Sex Marriages etc we go to the polls and vote NO. If it passes then it means the majority of the people in that state (WELL, those that cared enough to vote and if you didn’t, you really didn’t care one way or the other so you really don’t have a say in it) wanted it.
Like the OJ trial, you say damn and go about your business.
If you are of a certain whatever, you burn the town down BUT the vote should stand..Will of the People doncha know.
See, typically ‘we’ won’t stand up and yell for the proponents and the people that passed it BUT if You and I were part of a block that voted for Concealed Carry and it passed and won and some Court or Congress or whoever say ‘it ain’t gonna happen, when we rise up in anger we expect all those that had been crapped on before to stand with us, as we should have stood with them...for ‘will of the people’.
Why is Andy Harris being against part of a bill that also funds the legalization of marijuana a bad thing? It is the bill that the leadership put before the members to vote on.
Thanks for the ping!
So does that mean that under DC law, pot in DC will be an unregulated laissez faire market? Is that what Rep. Harris intended?
> I am willing to bet that your city spends a lot of money on health inspectors, fire inspections and other regulations of the grocery store.
True. Agreed. But if the grocery story adds marijuana as item number 3,235 to what was previously its inventory of 3,234 items, this shouldn't add anything to the cost of government inspectors and regulators.
But yeah... I see where this goes.... ugh...
Also, there is probably not a lot of shoplifting of green beans that goes on. Put MJ out in the produce aisle and it will be a different story. It just has a “context.”
Exactly. All Congress has to do to ban green beans in DC is to say that the City shall not spend any money on inspections of stores that sell green beans. Since there already is a law that no grocery store can operate without a health inspection, there go the green beans.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.