President Joe Biden is again proposing to keep blocking Washington, D.C. from legalizing marijuana sales as part of the budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2023 that he sent to Congress on Monday. To the relief of advocates, however, he again kept a separate rider intact to protect legal medical cannabis programs from federal intervention. Advocates and lawmakers expressed frustration and disappointment when the president’s last budget failed to remove the D.C. rider, which was sponsored in Congress by Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) and has continued to be annually renewed. It prevents D.C. from using its local tax dollars from implementing a system of legal adult-use sales even though local voters approved a legalization ballot measure in 2014. Both the House and Senate appropriators removed that language from their Fiscal Year 2022 appropriations legislation in spite of Biden’s request. However, it was ultimately included in a bicameral omnibus spending bill that was introduced by congressional leaders earlier this month and will remain in effect until at least the end of September. The latest Biden budget separately stipulates that D.C. cannot use federal funding to “distribute any needle or syringe for the purpose of preventing the spread of bloodborne pathogens in any location that has been determined by the local public health or local law enforcement authorities to be inappropriate for such distribution.” That seems to contravene the administration’s stated support for harm reduction services.
Kyle Jaeger, Marijuana Moment, 03/28/2022 11:46:00