Washington, D.C., residents will have to ride on without access to commercial cannabis sales for at least another year. Despite the district’s voters approving adult-use cannabis via Initiative 71 in the November 2014 election, a rider was introduced by Maryland U.S. Rep. Andy Harris the following year, which stripped the district’s power to regulate a retail industry within its roughly 68-square-mile borders. Commonly referred to as the Harris rider, the provision that blocks the district from taxing and regulating cannabis sales has been in place ever since. While there were hopes among district officials and industry advocates that a Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress would strip that provision this year, that wasn’t the case. Congress retained the rider in the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package, House Resolution 2741, which it unveiled March 9. Since the District of Columbia is not a state, Congress retains oversight on the city’s laws and can restrict how its officials use local funds. But certain elected officials in the district were not so thrilled about the rider retention, The Washington Post reported.
Posted Melissa Schiller, Cannabis Business Times, 03/10/2022 10:50:00