D.C. Proposes Welfare Reefer For Poor Jazz Criminals

Yeah, this one's not going to cause any rightwing freakouts: A proposal in the District of Columbia would require that marijuana dispensaries set aside 2% of profits to assist low-income people with medical marijuana purchases. Tell us about it,  Washington Times:   

Under the regulatory proposal, dispensaries would give at least a 20 percent discount on marijuana to low-income people at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

Clinics often offer lower prices to poor patients, and states that allow medical marijuana often encourage discounts for low-income patients. But Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said no state has inserted this type of provision into regulations.

“This rule is totally unprecedented in the medical marijuana community,” he said.

Can't imagine that this is going to end up being one of those D.C. home-rule things that Congress feels obliged to step in and crush, no, not at all.

In a surprisingly non-freaked-out bit of reporting, the Washington Times notes that

Often, marijuana patients do not hold full-time jobs because of the nature of the illnesses that qualify them to use pot medically, analysts say. Medical marijuana cards issued to patients indicate whether they are low-income and eligible for discounts on the drug.

The article also notes that one of the chief differences between existing state policies and the D.C. proposal is that while several states mandate sliding-scale registration fees for medical marijuana patients, the discounted fees for low-income patient registration are subsidized by the states' taxpayers, not by the dispensaries.

Who knows, since the funding to subsidize medical pot would be coming from dispensaries' profits, maybe culture warriors in Congress won't quash the proposal? Hahaha, we are engaging in laughable speculation, of course they will stop it. Poor people do not even deserve to get food, so of course they must be prevented from getting free loco-weed!

[ Washington Times ]