POT VOTE UP IN SMOKE

Can you have too much democracy? Congress seems to think so, at least for
District of Columbia residents who want to vote on an issue that enflames a
lot of passions these days: medicinal marijuana.

Seven states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and
Washington) have voted in the past six years to legalize the medicinal use
of marijuana when approved by a doctor. But Congress has beaten back
similar efforts in the district to the point of overturning a vote that
took place in 1998.

Congress does not have to listen to what the district thinks before
deciding for itself what the district needs. The federal city has no
senator or congressman, except for a single House delegate who cannot vote
on the House floor.

So, when the district voted overwhelmingly in 1998 to legalize the
medicinal use of marijuana, Congress passed an amendment sponsored by Rep.
Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican, to the district's annual appropriations
bill to block funding from any local initiative on the issue, including
counting the 1998 votes.

Federal courts later released the vote count and ruled Barr's amendment
unconstitutional, but not before anti-pot congressmen passed a new
amendment that completely overturned the 1998 vote.

So advocates are trying again. The district-based Marijuana Policy Project
submitted new signatures recently to put the measure on this November's
ballot and Rep. Barr has vowed a new challenge.

This time, Congress should at least pay district voters the courtesy of
finding out what they want to do before preventing them from doing it. It
may be within Congress' legal power to block the district's voters from
voting, but that does not make it the right thing to do.

It is important to hear what the public has to say on timely issues,
particularly when public opinion has shifted dramatically. A national Zogby
poll released in June found that 63 percent of registered voters nationwide
said Congress should stop interfering with the district's medical marijuana
initiative, while only 24 percent wanted Congress to block the measure.

Marijuana does not appear to concern people as much as it used to. Great
Britain, with the highest rates of cannabis use in Europe, has announced
that Her Majesty's government will no longer arrest private users of
marijuana in small amounts.

The controlled, medicinal use of marijuana, as proposed in the District of
Columbia, is hardly a threat to anyone.

More frightening are politicians who stand in the way of anyone's right to
vote on issues of great public concern.