it is their community. They favor the measure. Let it go.

Fuck them.

Good on you, DC.

D.C. Potheads!

This sucks that Congress' "will" has it over the People of Washington D.C.. who voted in Initiative 71!

Mahalo Judi Lynn~

Don't think I'll participate, but it should make for some interesting conversation tomorrow.

and hold pot smokers in the congressional basement for contemp. What other enforcement powers do they have.

BIG middle finger to GOP pot-hating buffoons in Congress.

But beware it is still illegal on federal land like the parks and monuments, which would probably be fantastic places to get high and contemplate freedoms and history and how our country's founders grew hemp.

This is the first time legal pot has been within striking distance of me here in...a nearby city.

Just sayin'

Isn't Congress stoned enough already ?

Washington, D.C. – In a letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, two Republican congressmen Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chair of the appropriations subcommittee that handles D.C.’s budget, ominously warned not to move forward with legalization in the District, claiming that to do so would be a violation of federal law.

D.C. officials and federal lawmakers have sparred over whether Initiative 71, a ballot measure approved by 70 percent of voters in November, can legally take effect.

The letter arrived the same day that the voter-approved legalization measure is scheduled to become law, at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday. It sets the stage for a showdown between the will of the D.C. voters and their city and the federal government, attempting to enforce its will over that of the District’s constituents.

“If you decide to move forward tomorrow with the legalization of marijuana in the District, you will be doing so in knowing and willful violation of the law,” read the letter.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Rep. Chaffetz went further, saying that if Bowser and city officials are “under any illusion that this would be legal, they are wrong. And there are very severe consequences for violating this provision. You can go to prison for this. We’re not playing a little game here.”

The letter goes on to state that if the city moves forward with legalization, Congress could potentially charge D.C. city officials with violating the Anti-Deficiency Act. The Anti-Deficiency Act says that the District can’t spend any funds not appropriated by them.

In addition, the letter requests an accounting of all monies spent on enacting the legalization measure. It states that the city provide names of any city employees that assist in “any action related to the enactment of Initiative 71.”


Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/pot-legal-d-c-congressman-threatens-send-city-officials-prison/#qc2GMTGP10VOQHFW.99

Despite threats from Congress of jail time, Mayor Muriel Bowser and other District leaders say Initiative 71 is going into effect tomorrow.

By Benjamin Freed
@brfreed

Published February 25, 2015

DC Council member Jack Evans was asked, somewhat jokingly, if he would be willing to share a jail cell with Mayor Muriel Bowser if a high-ranking House Republican made good on his threat to lock up District officials who carry out the city’s impending legalization of marijuana.

“I don’t get arrested,” Evans said before darting into a meeting with Metro officials instead of heading to a press conference Bowser and most of the Council staged Wednesday afternoon to defend Initiative 71, which takes effect tomorrow at 12:01 AM. He should have taken the question less seriously: the member of Congress doing the threatening, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, is actually Washington’s most powerless wannabe drug cop. No city officials are going to see the inside of a jail cell over the legalization of small-time pot possession, now matter how much nasty correspondence Chaffetz sends their way.

“We are prepared to enforce and enact Initiative 71,” Bowser said. “Our government is prepared to implement and enforce Initiative 71 in the District of Columbia.” ... Bowser’s statement was a clear shot at Chaffetz, who as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is DC’s de facto boss on Capitol Hill. Chaffetz, who tried to stall the District’s medical marijuana program during his back-bencher days, sent Bowser a highly charged letter Tuesday night, warning the still-green mayor that if she or any other city employee could be charged with violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, a hoary federal statute that prohibits government agencies—and in DC’s case, jurisdictions whose budgets are subjected to congressional review—from spending funds that have not been appropriated.

Chaffetz can send all the letters he want, but he’s unlikely ever to get his pound of flesh. Besides the fact that since the law’s 1884 passage, nobody has ever been prosecuted under the Anti-Deficiency Act, it would take a highly improbable sequence of events for Chaffetz to throw charges at Bowser. He’d have to convince the Justice Department to open an investigation into Bowser and the rest of the DC government. Besides the fact that there’s no documented legal precedent, it seems just as implausable that Chaffetz would succeed in getting a Democratic attorney general to open an inquiry of a Democratic mayor carrying out a ballot referendum that passed with 69 percent support.