So you are in favor of spending billions every year to lock up otherwise law abiding citizens? How many people does marijuana kill every year? zero…. How about alcohol, cigarettes, and poor diet? 885,000 people every year.

The war on drugs has only done one thing and that’s erode our constitutional rights. The drug war made the 4th amendment effectively a joke… “I smelled marijuana therefore I can just bust in and take a look around” Amazing what you can get away with when all you have to say is “I thought I smelled marijuana”

Of course we didn’t really need that amendment anyways right?

You know, the ones who had their scholarships taken away?

They may move on in to D.C. to disrupt this “legal activity”.

I can see plenty of houses being bought on the cheap in DC for use as grow houses should this actually go through.

Because legislation that legalizes marijuana in the District of Columbia would certainly be big news. So I tried to verify the headline here, and only came up with:

… the final version of the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act lifts the restriction that prevented the District of Columbia from implementing a medical marijuana law approved by voters in 1998. The restriction, which prohibited D.C. from using any money to put the law into effect, was originally known as the Barr Amendment, after Bob Barr, then a Republican congressman from Georgia. [cite]

Washington, DC will finally be allowed to implement the medical marijuana initiative that voters overwhelmingly approved in 1998 but has been blocked by Congress each year since then. [cite]

I tried to locate the specific verbiage in the bill that repeals the Barr Amendment but couldn’t find it; I did find this bit which is interesting to me:

None of the Federal funds contained in this Act may be used to enact or carry out any law, rule, or regulation to legalize or otherwise reduce penalties associated with the possession, use, or distribution of any schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 801 et seq.) or any tetrahydrocannabinols derivative. [cite]

So on this one they look to have actually gotten it right. A federalist approach (insofar as you might concur that the citizens of D.C. should have the opportunity to decide such matters themselves) and keeping federal taxpayer funding out of it (i.e. let D.C. local taxes cover it, I presume).

If you wanted to complain about something and be accurate you could have chided them for including federal funding for needle exchange in D.C., another topic that ought to be left to local government (and local taxes) to deal with.