Cannabis is already legal in Colorado and Washington state and looks likely to be legalised in the US capital Photo: AP Photo/Brennan Linsley
12:24PM GMT 31 Oct 2014
The fresh air of the White House’s rose garden may soon be fragrant with the
smell of cannabis.
On November 4 – while other Americans are voting for their senators and
congressman – residents of Washington DC are expected to vote overwhelmingly
to legalise marijuana.
The referendum would go beyond decriminalisation and give the drug full legal
status, meaning it may one day be possible to set up a dope shop across the
street from the halls of Congress.
A yes vote in the US
capital would be a hugely symbolic ripple in the wave of marijuana
liberalisation sweeping America.
Recreational cannabis is already on sale in Colorado and Washington state -
where the laws are more relaxed than Amsterdam – and may soon be legal in
Alaska and Oregon.
Medicinal marijuana, meanwhile, is available in half the country and polls
show that for the first time a majority of Americans, around 58 per cent,
support full legalisation nationally.
The momentum for legal cannabis has come largely from the western United
States, where libertarian instincts still run strong. Voters have concluded
it is simply not the government’s business to stop people smoking weed.
But in Washington DC, where half the city’s population is black, the case for
cannabis is being made in terms of racial justice.
Proponents of legal pot argue that existing drug laws are used
disproportionately to prosecute young black men and point to police figures
to support their case.
In 2010, 91 per cent of all marijuana arrests in DC were of black people.
Three-quarters of all civil fines for cannabis use are handed out in the
city’s black neighbourhoods.
“Police use marijuana laws to harass people of colour,” said Malik Burnett, a
young black doctor helping to lead the legalisation effort. “The way to deal
with that is to simply take marijuana out of the equation.”
Initiative 71, as the marijuana measure is formally known, would allow people
to possess up to two ounces of cannabis for personal use and grow six pot
plants in their own homes. If there is a yes vote, the city council is
expected to move quickly to pass laws regulating how it is bought and sold.
Polls suggest Dr Burnett and his colleagues are on course for an easy victory.
A September survey
by the Washington Post found 65 per cent of voters back the initiative.
Perhaps ironically, it is the African-American community that is the most
ambivalent about the prospect of legal pot. While DC’s affluent white
population is expected to vote in favour of Initiative 71 by a large margin,
the city’s black residents are more divided.
Those divisions were on display in the basement of the Michigan Park Christian
Church, a historically black church in the northeast of the city.
“I have a lot of fears about what this is going to lead to,” said Dr Stephen
Tucker, one of several black pastors who gathered at the church to listen to
a debate between supporters and opponents of the initiative.
Dr Stephen Tucker
“The church is always where people end up at when they’ve spent all their
money, when their health is bad, when they’re addicted, when their children
have run away,” he said.
Opponents of legalisation have raised the spectre of a “Big Marijuana”
industry which would pursue profits with the same ruthless disregard for
public health as cigarette and alcohol companies.
Washington DC was also deeply scarred by the crack cocaine epidemic that swept
through the US in the 1980s and many in the capital’s black community are
wary of loosening drug laws.
“Young guys my age do not need one more way to get high,” said Will Jones, a
24-year-old African-American activist spearheading the fight against legal
cannabis. “It’s not going to help us in our education or our careers.”
Supporters of legalisation argue that marijuana use is already widespread in
Washington and that keeping it in the shadows benefits only criminal drug
dealers.
They also brush aside fears of “Big Marijuana”, saying the pot industry is
likely to be made up of small producers akin to small craft beer brewers and
very different from the giants of alcohol and tobacco.
That may reflect the current reality, where artisan pot growers produce small
batches of brands with names like “Psychosis Cheese” or “Desert Dragon
Kush”. But with some analysts predicting cannabis to become a $35 billion
industry by 2020, it’s easy to imagine large corporations wanting a puff of
the profits.
DC is already part of that market as medical marijuana is legal in the city
and pot prescriptions can easily be obtained to treat pain or anxiety.
Vanessa West, general manager at one of the city’s medical cannabis
dispensaries, predicted few would even notice once legalisation extends to
recreational pot. “The sky didn’t fall in in Colorado or Washington state
and it won’t here, either.”
Cannabis remains illegal under federal law and Congress and the White House
could in theory step in to block the capital’s experiment with legal dope.
However, Barack
Obama- who in high school was at the heart of a “Choom Gang”
of dedicated pot smokers – has signalled he is prepared to let recreational
marijuana laws go ahead at the state level.
The danger for cannabis enthusiasts and investors betting on the pot industry
is that a future president will be less lenient than Mr Obama.
Republicans generally take a harder line on drugs than Democrats and Hillary
Clinton, who was at university in the 1960s but insists she has never tried
cannabis, is less laissez-faire than the current president.
Earlier this year, Mrs Clinton described cannabis as “a gateway drug” and
warned: “There can’t be a total absence of law enforcement.”
For now, the cannabis movement is riding high and pushing for the day when
smoking pot is as uncontroversial as drinking red wine. Legalisation on the
President’s doorstep would be a major step in that direction.
Marijuana expected to become legal in Washington DC
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