What Is Initiative 71 (I-71)?
If you want to know why buying weed in DC can be so complicated these days, it all goes back to Initiative 71 (I-71). The ballot measure, officially known as the Legalization of Possession of Minimal Amounts of Marijuana for Personal Use Initiative of 2014, passed with an overwhelming majority and went into effect the following year. However, after I-71 legalized the possession of marijuana, Congress quickly placed a rider on the annual budget that banned the commercialization of cannabis.
While the sale of recreational marijuana remains illegal, there’s a bit of a gray area when it comes to giving it away as a gift. This has led to the so-called gray market of weed shops in DC. These shops sell items or experiences other than weed, but just so happen to give weed away as a free gift with your purchase. Neat!
So does DC have recreational dispensaries? Well, according to the law, it doesn’t. For now, I-71-compliant shops are the closest thing to a weed dispensary that DC is going to get.
It may have happened in a roundabout way, but I-71 has quickly created a thriving market for cannabis in DC. However, it can be a bit different if you’re not used to it. That’s why we’ve created this handy guide on how to buy weed in DC.
Does This Mean Weed Is Legal in DC?
The short answer is yes. Recreational marijuana in Washington DC is legal to possess, consume, and gift—though, in order to use weed in DC, you must be over the age of 21 and only do so on private property. Also, you are only allowed to possess two ounces or less at a time.
Residents can buy their DC weed with a medical card or obtain it through the gifting system. Federal regulations or legislation may allow for Washington DC recreational weed dispensaries to open in the future, but for now, we just have I-71.
How DC Marijuana Gifting Stores Work
The way many Initiative 71 marijuana-gifting services get around the restriction on sales is to sell something else, like a T-shirt, some juice, or a piece of digital art. Then they’ll hand you a bag of buds as a free thank-you gift.
You don’t have to be a DC resident, and you don’t need a medical card. This is the only way to get legal recreational weed in DC in 2023 since we still don’t have licensed dispensaries.
Is taking advantage of the gifting loophole legal? The answer very much depends on who you ask. Not everyone agrees that cannabis gifting is legal in DC. There are several members of the DC Council who have made it clear they consider this market to be wholly illegal, and the DC Metropolitan Police Department has conducted raids on these businesses with some frequency throughout the last six years.
But what you really want to know if you’re buying weed in DC is whether you can face legal consequences as a customer, and that answer is a very technical “maybe.” It hasn’t been fully tested in court, so nobody can say for certain, but we’ve never heard of that happening to anyone since it was legalized.
Option 1: Follow The Current DC Gifting Process
Weed gifting is a practice where weed gift shops sell you an item (T-shirt, art, or sticker) and give you marijuana with the purchase. Gifting weed can be done in different ways. For example, you could buy an entry ticket to an event that comes with a gift of weed, or you could purchase a ticket to a raffle with weed as one of the prizes.
How to Ask for Weed in DC
You definitely can’t walk into one of the I-71-compliant shops in DC and say “Hi, I’d like to buy some weed.” That would be illegal. What you can do is ask what item you’ll need to purchase to receive a certain strain of weed as a gift.
Option 2: Get a DC Medical Marijuanna Card
DC's medical marijuana program has been accepting patients for any condition whatsoever thanks to emergency legislation enacted in 2015. The DC Department of Health started DC Reciprocity in 2018 and now accepts patients from a whopping 28 states, including: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
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