Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Nation high

D.C. residents will vote in November on whether to legalize marijuana use in the nation’s capital after elections officials voted Wednesday to place the question on the ballot.

The three-member D.C. Board of Elections voted unanimously Wednesday morning to approve the ballot initiative, certifying that activists gathered the tens of thousands of voter signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot.

Several of those activists attended Wednesday’s meeting and cheered the vote, which puts D.C. further down the path of joining Colorado and Washington as the only places in the nation where marijuana possession and cultivation is fully legal.

“In a democracy, the voice of the people should be heard,” said Malik Burnett, a doctor and leader of the D.C. Cannabis Coalition, an umbrella activist group that said it collected more than 57,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Tamara Robinson, a board spokeswoman, said the petition, turned in July 17, had 27,688 valid signatures. To qualify for the November ballot, 22,600 signatures were required.



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