Washington, DC: District of Columbia City Council members held their first hearing on Thursday regarding legislation to authorize the legal use and distribution of medical marijuana.
Members of the DC City Council Committees on Health and Public Safety jointly heard public testimony regarding B 18-622, the Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Initiative Amendment Act 0f 2010, which seeks to allow for the licensed production and distribution of cannabis to authorized patients.
The measure would implement components of Initiative 59 – a 1998 DC ballot measure that garnered 69 percent of the vote. However, until this year DC city lawmakers have been barred from instituting the measure because of a Congressional ban on the issue. Congress lifted its ban late last year.
Testifying before the Committee, NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said: "The goals of Initiative 59 were threefold: To provide physicians with the legal authority to recommend marijuana as a therapy to those patients for whom they believed would benefit from its medical use; to legally protect patients who use marijuana under a doctor's supervision from criminal arrest or prosecution; and to provide patients with legal, safe, affordable above ground access to medical marijuana. While NORML commends the efforts of the DC City Council to implement safe and reasonable medical marijuana regulations, these efforts must not run contrary to the intentions of I-59, as unambiguously expressed by 69 percent of DC's voters."
Council members stated that the measure would likely be passed by May of this year. If approved by the Council, Congress has 30 days to either approve or reject the measure.
This article appeared in the NORML Weekly news follow this link for more news from NORML
