The federal ban that’s blocked Washington, D.C. from regulating marijuana sales for nearly a decade would be renewed again under a Fiscal Year 2024 spending bill that cleared a congressional panel on Thursday.
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said she was “outraged” to see this and other anti-home rule riders included in the legislation that passed the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee.
While D.C. voters legalized cannabis possession and home cultivation for adults at the ballot in 2014, the rider from Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) has prevented the District from using local tax dollars to enact rules to create a commercial market. There have been attempts to eliminate the ban under Democratic control, but the rider has nonetheless survived as part of the final spending packages enacted each year since.
Now, with Republicans holding the House majority, the policy has been intentionally included in the base bill, with a summary noting that it “retains the ban on federal and local funds to legalize marijuana in D.C.”
Norton, who has long advocated for D.C. statehood and sharply criticized the ban, said in a press release that while she is “pleased at many of the provisions in the text
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