A rider that has blocked recreational cannabis for years in the past for Washington, DC appears in President Biden’s proposed 2022 budget, leaving many to question if recreational cannabis in Washington, DC would be delayed again.
Washington, DC residents voted to legalize possession of recreational cannabis in 2014, but the measure has been on hold since then, derailed by a rider to Washington, DC’s appropriations bill. The rider prohibits officials from spending local funds on commercialization of recreational cannabis (for instance, dispensaries). Biden’s proposed budget for 2022 also includes the same language.
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said in a statement she had a hard time reconciling the Biden administration’s support for Washington, DC statehood alongside a budget that would prevent it from commercializing recreational cannabis.
“With Democrats controlling the White House, House and Senate, we have the best opportunity in over a decade to enact a DC appropriations bill that does not contain any anti-home-rule riders,” Norton said.
The Biden administration said in an email to The Verge that the president continues to “strongly support DC statehood, under which the people of D.C. could make policy choices just like other states.”
Washington, DC has, for some time, been in a strange limbo for cannabis legalization, medical cannabis being legal and recreational cannabis being “technically” legal, but unable to be taxed or regulated because of the Harris rider. In the past, DC voters first approved medical cannabis in 1998, but it was initially blocked by the Barr Amendment, which Congress overturned in 2009.
Dozens of states have legalized medical cannabis, recreational cannabis, or both, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) said they would work together to advance a comprehensive cannabis reform bill.
In February, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed legislation to “create an equitable adult-use cannabis program” in DC, imposing a 17 percent tax on cannabis sales, but if the rider remains, then it is unlikely this legislation will take effect.
