My colleague Lydia DePillis wonders why residents of Ward 5 aren't pleased with plans to open most of the city's marijuana dispensaries there:
Such antipathy makes no sense. Concentrating marijuana production (and even sales, although that's not what these applications are for) in Ward 5 would be a boon to the area, not a blight—they're employment [...]

SmarTrip Getting Smarter?: It wasn't so long ago that the only way to pay for a Metro ride was to buy a paper farecard, and the only way to pay for a single bus trip was to shove your coins into the farebox on board. But even though Metro only recently upgraded its payment options [...]

You Put Your Weed Application In There: Selling medical marijuana in the District will be risky; applicants have to sign a waiver that seems all but designed to be used as an exhibit by the U.S. Attorney in a future federal narcotics case, after all. But that didn't deter everyone—city officials allowed more than 50 [...]

Legalize, Or At Least Discount, It: The District's medicinal marijuana program is moving along, albeit not as quickly as some might like. But what about those of us who don't qualify under the strict regulations? Turns out we're overpaying for pot. A study by Floating Sheep published in Wired this month found D.C. pays, on average, [...]

Medical Montel: Between infomercials for blenders, financial counseling, and security companies, Montel Williams may soon be busy here in the District. The talk show host is part of a group that's applying for one of the medical marijuana licenses up for grabs; he's the public face of a dispensary in Sacramento, Calif., already. (Williams has [...]

Pot Papers Pending: Medical marijuana moved a bit closer toward reality in the District today, as the city officially began accepting applications (along with $5,000 fees, only half of which is refundable if the application is rejected) for cultivation centers to grow the legal pot. Applications will be accepted for about a month. Each of [...]

Damn The Torpedoes: The Department of Justice recently reminded federal law enforcement authorities that marijuana is illegal in the U.S., no matter what laws cities or states might pass to the contrary. Here in the District, that might have threatened a nascent medical marijuana program—except Mayor Vince Gray has apparently decided he doesn't care what [...]

Yes We Can (Continue The War On Drugs): Advocates of D.C.'s new medical marijuana law were relieved to find the zealous new House Republican majority didn't try to block it while writing the next fiscal year's budget this spring. Turns out they were worried about the wrong end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The Department of Justice [...]

99 Problems But a Motorcade Ain't One: Turns out the list of celebrities who've gotten police escorts through the District doesn't begin and end with Charlie Sheen and Fran Drescher. Internal Metropolitan Police Department records show Jay-Z and Bill Gates have also sped through D.C. with flashing lights. Gates' escort cost $445.68, and Jay-Z's cost [...]

Think the legalization of medical marijuana in D.C. means a new era of permissiveness? Think again. The 30,000-word list of regulations released last week is full of no-nos, ranging from the obvious (District residents only) to the more arcane (no prescriptions from doctors whose role is “limited to or for the primary purpose of the [...]

Rain On The Parade: The more information that comes out about the federal government shutdown, the more ludicrous it seems that a country whose elected officials take great pains to describe—belligerently, at times—as the greatest in the history of the world may just close up shop for lack of money this weekend. Among the casualties: [...]

Vince Gray's deliberateness is shining in a few areas this week—one of which is medical marijuana.
A town hall hosted by the D.C. Patients' Cooperative last night was scheduled a month ago; the advocates that organized it had hoped that by the time the town hall occurred, the mayor would have signed off on regulations approved [...]

For those keeping track of the District's progress in the medical marijuana game, today is not the small milestone it appeared to be.
DCist reports that the medical marijuana rules released in November 2010 will go into effect... not today, but shortly: "It seems that while the rules should be taking effect today due to the [...]

Mayor Adrian Fenty's  administration sparked some heady debate when it announced plans this past summer to put city liquor regulators—not health officials—in charge of medical marijuana distribution in the District.
Oh, sure, patients and doctors would register with the Department of Health, but the growers and sellers would instead be subject to the city's Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Board [...]

Rabbi Jeffrey Kahn and wife Stephanie Kahn have a simple plan for bankrolling their controversial proposed medical-marijuana facility on Blair Road NW. "We plan on financing this from our personal life savings," he says.
How much are we talking? Well, that's a bit, um, hazy at the moment.
The biggest expense will likely be the price of the herbal remedy itself, [...]