(Washington City Paper) A measure to once again ban D.C. from implementing a 1998 medical marijuana initiative failed in a House appropriations committee vote this evening.

The D.C. budget made it out of its appropriations subcommittee without the so-called Barr amendment—a rider, first introduced by Georgia Republican Bob Barr, which has graced the District budget since 1998. But this evening Missouri Republican Jo Ann Emerson attempted to put it back on.

After a short debate, with Jim Moran (D-Va.) standing up to defend District home rule, the Emerson measure failed by a voice vote. The bill still has to survive the House floor, Senate consideration, and conference committee.

This really isn’t so much about medical marijuana as it is about letting the citizens of the district determine their own laws.  For too long, the people in our nation’s capital have been taxed but not represented in the House, and too often Congress pulls funding stunts like the Barr Amendment to squelch their democratic urges.  These so-called “riders” have also been used to prevent the District from using funds for abortion and to curb firearm rights as well.

Shouldn’t the people living in the capital of the world’s leading democracy have the right to vote for their own laws?

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Update: I’ve modified the headline from “Congress lifts…” to better reflect the story — “R”R

A House appropriations subcommittee has lifted a long-standing budget rider banning the District government from spending any money to decriminalize marijuana.

The Financial Services panel, which has oversight of D.C., has removed from the 2010 budget 11-year-old language outlawing the District’s use of federal or local funds to legalize marijuana or reduce penalties for its possession or distribution.

Rep. Jose Serrano, the subcommittee chairman, said … the budget bill “allows the District to conduct and implement a referendum on use of marijuana for medical purposes as has been done in various states.”

The District voted on medical marijuana once before, in 1998, but the votes were declared invalid. Former Rep. Bob Barr raced to have his anti-legalization language added to the budget two weeks before the initiative vote was held. When the ballots were unofficially tallied nearly a year after they were cast, it was learned that 69 percent of voters backed legalization.

It has always struck me as ironic that in the Land of the Free, our capitol was built by slaves, and that in a country born from a revolution because of “taxation without representation”, the citizens in the capital are taxed but get no vote in the House or Senate.  Add to that irony that the people in the seat of democracy were unable to exercise self rule on the matter of marijuana because the Congress wouldn’t allow them to count their votes.

Also ironic: that former Rep. Bob Barr, who introduced these democracy-killing amendments against marijuana, is now a paid lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project.  The author of these anti-marijuana bills came around faster than the Congress has!

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When Susan Axelrod tells the story of her daughter, she begins like most parents of children with epilepsy: The baby was adorable, healthy, perfect. Lauren arrived in June 1981, a treasured first-born. Susan Landau had married David Axelrod in 1979, and they lived in Chicago, where Susan pursued an MBA at the University of Chicago and David worked as a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune. (He later would become chief strategist for Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign and now is a senior White House adviser.) 

The Axelrods didn’t know anything about epilepsy. They didn’t know that seizures were the body’s manifestation of abnormal electrical activity in the brain or that the excessive neuronal activity could cause brain damage. They didn’t know that two-thirds of those diagnosed with epilepsy had seizures defined as “idiopathic,” of unexplained origin, as would be the case with Lauren. They didn’t know that a person could, on rare occasions, die from a seizure. They didn’t know that, for about half of sufferers, no drugs could halt the seizures or that, if they did, the side effects were often brutal. This mysterious disorder attacked 50 million people worldwide yet attracted little public attention or research funding. No one spoke to the Axelrods of the remotest chance of a cure.

At home, life shakily returned to a new normal, interrupted by Lauren’s convulsions and hospitalizations. Exhausted, Susan fought on toward her MBA; David became a political consultant. Money was tight and medical bills stacked up, but the Axelrods had hope. Wouldn’t the doctors find the right drugs or procedures? “We thought maybe it was a passing thing,” David says. “We didn’t realize that this would define her whole life, that she would have thousands of these afterward, that they would eat away at her brain.”

via PARADE Magazine | I Must Save My Child.

I hope that someone close to the Axelrods has pointed out that there is a wonderful medicine that will help halt the seizures, with no “brutal” side effects… the only problem is that Congress won’t let the people of Washington DC use that medicine for epilepsy, even though 69% of them voted for that privilege.  Maybe Susan Axelrod should read the testimony of grand mal epilepsy sufferer Valerie Corral of WAMM, who’s lived with her epilepsy for 36 years now.

You can contact the White House and encourage President Obama to pressure Congress to overturn the Barr Amendment and allow the residents of our nation’s capital to finally have their will recognized and their votes respected, so maybe Susan and David Axelrod could find some relief for their daughter.

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