Pubdate: Fri, 21 Feb 2014
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2014 The Washington Times, LLC.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Deborah Simmons
Page: A12

IT'S HIGH TIME SOMEONE MADE SENSE ON POT PLAN

Thank you, Mr. Irvin B. Nathan. There are a lot of folks both here in
the nation's capital and elsewhere in the country who are none too
pleased with Mr. Nathan's legal rendering on the D.C. marijuana initiative.

But, hey, no lawyer makes all the people happy all the time. Besides,
that's not his job. As the attorney general for the District of
Columbia, Mr. Nathan wrote a clear-eyed letter to the D.C. Board of
Elections that narrowly explains why the board should not approve a
November ballot proposal to decriminalize.

Mr. Nathan says in his Feb. 19 letter to the board's general counsel,
Kenneth J. McGhie, that federal law trumps D.C. law. The marijuana
issue is another distraction. The District has serious business in
need of practical and undivided leadership - from hunger and
homelessness to education and economic development to unfilled and
disjointed civic needs.

If nobody and everybody walking around is high, sober ideas will never
make it to the table.

Heck, folks won't even be able to find the discussion table,
considering this gnawing fact: The initiative would allow individuals
to possess, purchase, use or transport up to 2 ounces of marijuana as
their personal stash, and allow them to cultivate up to six plants,
three of which can be mature.

Imagine the clouds of smoke in homes and businesses. Hotels. Dorms.
The National Mall. Parks, including Lafayette Square, where the
William Tecumseh Sherman Monument and protesters during the heady
1960s stood by, awaiting the words "pass the joint." Public
transportation areas, affordable housing complexes and public housing.
Wait. Public housing? Yes. Enter Mr. Nathan. In his letter, Mr. Nathan
spelled out his chief legal reasoning by saying that the initiative
"would violate federal law because it conflicts with the Anti-Drug
Abuse Act."

"The Initiative is improper because its prohibition on denying any
benefit based on conduct that it purports to make lawful is
incompatible with at least one area of federal law involving
District-provided benefits: federal public-housing law. It conflicts
with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which (as amended) requires that
public housing leases make 'drug-related criminal activity' on or off
public-housing premises a cause for terminating a public-housing lease."

That the city's attorney general weighed in on pot decriminalization
is no small matter.

The Justice Department essentially has said it's taking a wait-and-see
position now that a couple of states have moved on decriminalizing
recreational use.

The timing of Mr. Nathan's legal rendering is important because the
D.C. Board of Elections is expected to rule next week on whether the
wording of the ballot initiative is proper.

The Nathan decision doesn't give the board much wiggle room, but it
gives the pro-marijuana crowd a few more days to sober up and try to
rewrite an initiative that passes legal muster.

The pot-legalization groupies should settle down because it'll be a
snap to get 23,000 people to approve a pro-pot initiative once one
gets on a ballot.

Adam Eidinger said he and his initiative-sponsoring group, DCMJ, are
working to see if the questionable wording in the initiative can be
changed before the board's hearing on Tuesday.

"It might just be a matter of four words that have to be changed," Mr.
Eidinger told reporter Andrea Noble. "I don't want to lose our
opportunity to collect signatures."

The difficulty will come when local, federal and private law enforcers
smell smoke and can't determine who to question or where to
investigate.

That is where we're headed: A capital where even police throw up their
hands and say, "Peace. Pass the joint."
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MAP posted-by: Matt