As of last Thursday at midnight, marijuana is legal in the District of Columbia. This measure came into effect after D.C.’s city council decided to move forward with Initiative 71, which was approved by 70 percent of voters in D.C. last November.

Initiative 71 is what’s called a “citizen initiative” and by definition cannot alter the expenditure of city funds, meaning it could not establish any type of regulatory system for the sales and distribution of marijuana. This makes D.C.’s law a much more strict and watered down law compared to the similar one in Colorado and the other states where it has been recreationally legalized.

The details of the law are fairly brief but are not very straightforward. They reveal some of the legal gray areas that are popping up in the places where marijuana is legalized.

1. You cannot smoke pot in public. Anywhere. This means bars, sidewalks, restaurants or even your car.
2. You are allowed to carry up to two ounces of marijuana on your person, except on federal land, where it is still very illegal.
3. You can smoke in your own home, if you own the land or if your lease says nothing about complying with federal law. (See where this is getting iffy?)
4. You can give away up to one ounce of pot, but you cannot exchange it for any money, goods or services.
5. Because the new law doesn’t establish a regulatory system allowing the sale of marijuana, you can grow up to six cannabis plants in your home, with only three of those plants being mature.
6. These rules only apply to people age 21 or older. It is still illegal to consume marijuana if you are underage. 

D.C. is the first place to legalize marijuana recreationally east of the Mississippi River, and south of the Mason-Dixon line at that. This law is nothing short of extraordinary, and it has not been left uncriticized by some very important people.

When D.C. voters passed the initiative in November, members of Congress threatened to pull funding from the city if the mayor and city council moved forward with it. Even though Initiative 71 couldn’t mandate it, the city still wanted to create a regulatory system that would allow the sale of pot, but this was blocked by Congress, although this didn’t stop the majority of the law from going into effect.

Republican members of the House have been most critical of this law, which doesn’t affect anyone in their constituency. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, even threatened jail time for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and her colleagues on the city council, to which she responded that she is “acting lawfully.”

In short, the future is very murky for marijuana in D.C. With all its uncertainties, it will be interesting to see how it plays out, especially since the federal government has a hand in all of this. And they still have not removed cannabis from the list of Schedule 1 drugs, placing pot above cocaine in regards to health risks and addiction.

What happens in D.C. could shape a large part of how cannabis is legalized, especially in more conservative areas like the East Coast and the South.

Thomas Carpenter is a junior in classics. He can be reached at [email protected].