D.C. Council to study whether to license private pot clubs

A home pot grower shows some of the yield from a previous harvest in his Washington apartment in August. The female plants, which sprout the buds that users consume, take about 60 days to be ready. (Photo by: Astrid Riecken — For The Washington Post)

By Aaron C. Davis and Abigail Hauslohner

The Washington Post

The District will begin studying whether to license private pot clubs under a measure that the D.C. Council approved Tuesday, potentially giving residents and visitors places to gather and smoke marijuana socially in the nation’s capital as early as next year.

The council action amounted to a compromise between allies of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who had sought to continue a complete ban on pot clubs, and a growing contingent of council members who had threatened to override the mayor and approve a plan to license clubs. Such an effort, they contended, would more fully implement a voter-approved ballot measure in 2014 that legalized pot in D.C.

The District action further aligned it with a vanguard of mostly Western cities, including Denver, where lawmakers are wrestling with how to accommodate fast-shifting public sentiment in favor of greater social pot use. That question has become the next frontier in jurisdictions where voters have already legalized possession.

The council’s unanimous vote to push forward on studying pot clubs came after they unanimously banned such enterprises 11 months ago.

Several members said they were driven to back the effort to study pot clubs out of concerns that current D.C. law, which limits smoking to private homes, had begun to expose more children to secondhand marijuana smoke. Others said widespread disregard for a ban on public consumption in the year since legalization had led to unacceptably high levels of pot use on city sidewalks. Clubs, they said, could corral some smoking behind closed doors.

Council member Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large), the principal author of the compromise, said the unanimous council vote would “keep momentum alive” for the city to address discrimination in its current marijuana law, including the fact that poor residents in public housing can still face eviction for smoking at home.

The measure passed Tuesday was designed to tiptoe around a congressional ban on the District taking steps to further loosen penalties on pot consumption or spending city money to begin to tax and regulate pot sales.

It establishes a task force to recommend how the city would go about allowing business owners to apply for licenses to open pot clubs. It maintains the complete ban Bowser sought on pot clubs for 225 days while the task force develops those recommendations.

The council did not specify a number of possible clubs, but in debate, members made clear they would ask task force members to recommend how to open a handful of clubs, perhaps one in each of the city’s eight wards, or one per quadrant.

The vote thrust the thorny issue of continuing to shape the look and feel of marijuana legalization in the District back to Bowser, who will control a majority of the task force appointments.

Some council members had openly accused Bowser’s administration of lax enforcement of a ban on public pot smoking in the year since legalization. Last month, the council also voted to let expire a package of emergency powers she had sought to close businesses for pot use. Lawmakers said the law had become a sham since it hadn’t been used once.

Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), a co-author of the measure that passed Tuesday, said she was elated that the council reached a unanimous opinion to push toward clubs. Because the task force has four months to meet, she said, the compromise means the city “doesn’t rush into anything.”

Bowser spokesman Michael Czin, who had earlier said the mayor probably couldn’t go along with clubs, said Bowser was “reviewing” the council action.