DC to Celebrate 4/20 By Legalizing Medical Marijuana

If you're a cancer patient or someone with HIV/AIDS, you'd do well to live in a state like California or Rhode Island. Or any one of the 13 states that allow patients to use marijuana for medical purposes such as stimulating appetite, reducing nausea and treating pain. And today, after an aptly timed 4/20 city council vote, you can add D.C. to that list of jurisdictions.

It's a decision that's been well over a decade in coming. As early as 1998, D.C. voters passed a referendum legalizing medical marijuana, just two years after California became the first state in the nation to accept the drug. (And nearly 150 years after the U.S. Pharmocopeia first started listing the drug as a treatment for conditions from cholera to rheumatism.) Voter support for the measure was weighted nearly 7-to-3 in favor of its legalization — a greater majority than we've seen in any other such ballot-passed initiatives around the country.

But the District's laws are subject to Congressional approval, and for years, the GOP-controlled Congress thwarted the city's move — much as it's blocked myriad bills in D.C. over the years (for eg., D.C.'s domestic partnership law: passed in 1992, it only went into effect in 2002).

As Matt wrote this morning, we've seen resounding progress on drug reform in recent years. In fact, since 1998, the original Congressional opponent of D.C.'s law, Bob Barr, has gone — if you can believe it — from a hardcore drug hawk to a converted libertarian who's made the ardent case for legalization as a presidential candidate.

D.C.'s bill, which would allow patience to receive 30-day supplies of the drug from city-sanctioned distribution centers, is expected to breeze through city council today. Particularly in a city plagued by an HIV/AIDS epidemic that's grown 22% since just 2006 — a rate that's on par with Uganda, and higher than West Africa — it's an incredibly important victory.

It's also one freighted with a deep symbolic importance, one reflective of how far Congress has come on the issue, as well as how far it still has to go. Today, the nation's veterans are denied the same access to medical marijuana treatment that a teenager in California can receive. Marijuana charges can keep an individual from accessing public benefits from housing assistance to student loans (though they're available to rapists and murderers). Even in states where medical marijuana is legal, students can't treat their symptoms in their own dormitories without risking repercussions, thanks to federal law.

This afternoon, just steps away from Freedom Plaza, D.C. legislators will do the job they're elected for — carrying out the will of their constituents. Let's hope that, barely a mile away, members of Congress are taking note of the same.

Photo Credit: trawin