Local
D.C. medical marijuana program ‘getting better’
Some say delays in patient approval encouraged street purchases
Although D.C. legalized the production and sale of marijuana for medical purposes just over 20 years ago, activists familiar with the city’s implementation of the program say it has become known for its long delays in approving patients for medical marijuana use.
People following the D.C. Department of Health’s operation of the city’s medical marijuana program say improvements were put in place in the past two months that appear to be streamlining a cumbersome bureaucratic process that they say discouraged many patients in need of medical marijuana.
Patricia Hawkins, a clinical psychologist and former deputy director of D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Health, said city delays in approving a patient’s application for a city approved medical card needed to allow the patient to buy medical marijuana at licensed dispensaries prompted some patients to resort to buying the marijuana from “pop-up” dealers who operate illegally, sometimes selling marijuana on the street.
“That’s the last thing we need them to do,” said Hawkins, who noted that the purity and content of marijuana bought on the black market is unknown and could have harmful additives such as pesticides.
She said street drug dealers also have the reputation for attempting to sell people other harmful drugs such as heroin.
Hawkins noted that LGBT and AIDS activists played an important role in persuading the city to enact the medical marijuana program in the late 1990s just prior to the availability of effective AIDS drugs. She said marijuana treatment was shown to be helpful to AIDS patients suffering from severe weight loss by increasing their appetite.
D.C.’s medical marijuana program is run by the Department of Health’s Division of Medical Marijuana and Integrative Therapy. Under rules established by the DOH, in order to become authorized to buy marijuana for medical purposes a patient must first obtain a written recommendation from his or her primary care physician.
“This recommendation must assert that the use of marijuana is medically necessary for the patient for the treatment of a qualifying medical condition or to mitigate the side effects of a qualifying medical treatment,” a statement on the DOH website says. The statement says the written recommendation must include the physician’s signature and license number.
The physician must then send that to the DOH. The patient is required to submit to the DOH a completed application form that shows proof of residency in D.C. and include a photo copy of a government issued identification document such as a driver’s license. A $100 registration fee is also required, with a $25 fee for a patient that qualifies for low-income status.
One D.C. patient who spoke to the Washington Blade about the process on condition that the patient not be identified said that in the recent past it took between two and four months for the DOH to process the patient’s application and send the needed medical card.
Under the city’s medical marijuana program, the medical card expires after one year and a new application must be submitted to have it renewed along with the $100 fee.
The patient that spoke to the Blade said only a few doctors in the city have the training or the desire to prescribe medical marijuana as a treatment for a medical condition.
“The waiting rooms are overfull and there’s a long time you have to wait to see the doctor,” said the patient.
“And then last year the Department of Health lost my paperwork so I had to go through the whole process again,” said the patient. “It’s just frustrating and annoying. And it’s way more cumbersome and way more bureaucratic than is necessary.”
Under changes made earlier this year, the DOH website now says applications for the medical card are processed within 30 business days.
Linda Green, owner of Anacostia Organics, one of six licensed medical marijuana dispensaries currently operating in the city, said the DOH last month began offering patients the option of submitting their application for the medical card online.
“The processing time has been cut down considerably,” she said. “The DOH says the process now can take just one week. They are saying it takes five to seven days to get your card,” added Green, who said she’s “very hopeful” that the streamlined process will encourage more patients in need of medical marijuana to enter the program.
The National Holistic Healing Center, another D.C. medical marijuana dispensary located near Dupont Circle, told the Blade in a statement there have been “considerable improvements to the process for obtaining a medical card.”
The statement, which doesn’t identify the person who wrote it, says National Holistic has patients who have received their medical card from the DOH in two to three weeks through the online application process.
Green of Anacostia Organics and the National Holistic statement said there are a wide range of different types of cannabis, the preferred name for marijuana by the dispensaries, from which a patient can choose to best meet their medical needs. Experts at the dispensaries will help the patient select the type best for them, some of which are inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through the skin.
DOH spokesperson Alison Reeves told the Blade in a statement the processing time for a medical marijuana card may vary from patient to patient. She said an incomplete patient application form can result in “increased processing time.”
She said the time of year a patient submits their application may also be a factor in the timing. She noted that the largest number of applications are submitted between February and April, with processing time possibly made longer during that peak period.
“It is our policy to process applications and issue cards within 30 business days, however processing time is normally much faster,” Reeves said. “For example, in the first quarter of this year the average processing time for completed applications was 8.5 business days – six days for electronic applications and 11 days for paper applications,” she said.
About nine months ago, according to Reeves, the DOH began accepting credit card payments.
“Originally, many banks would not allow this for any marijuana activities,” she told the Blade. “This change allowed patients to submit and pay online, which greatly decreased processing time.”
District of Columbia
Taste of Point returns at critical time for queer students
BIPOC scholar to speak at Room & Board event on May 2
The Point Foundation will kick off May with its annual Taste of Point DC event. The event will be hosted at Room & Board on 14th Street and feature a silent auction, food tastings, a speech from a scholar, and more.
Point’s chief of staff, Kevin Wright, said that at Taste of Point, the scholars are the star of the show.
“People never come to an event to hear Point staff speak, they come to hear from the people most impacted by the program,” he said. “At its core Taste of Point is designed to center and highlight our scholars’ voices and experiences.”
This year, a Point BIPOC Scholar, Katherine Guerrero Rivera will speak at the event.
“It is a great opportunity to highlight the scholars out there on the front lines making impacts in almost every sector and job field,” Wright said.
Wright pointed out that this year especially is a pivotal time for LGBTQ students.
“In 2023, there were 20 states that passed anti-LGBTQ legislation,” he said. “By this point in [2024] we already have more.”
Wright said the impacts of those legislative attacks are far reaching and that Point is continuously monitoring the impact they have on students on the ground.
Last month, The Washington Post reported that states with anti-LGBTQ laws in place saw school hate crimes quadruple. This report came a month after a non-binary student, Nex Bennedict, died after being attacked at school.
“So, we see this as a critical moment to really step up and help students who are facing these challenges on their campus,” Wright said. “Our mission is to continue to empower our scholars to achieve their full academic and leadership potential.”
This year Point awarded nearly 600 LGBTQ students with scholarships. These include the flagship scholarship, community college scholarship and the BIPOC scholarship. When the foundation started in 2002, there were only eight scholarships awarded.
Dr. Harjant Gill is one of those scholars who said the scholarship was pivotal for him. Gill said he spent his undergraduate years creating films and doing activism for the LGBTQ community.
As a result, his academic record wasn’t stellar and although he was admitted into American University’s graduate program he had no clue how he would fund it.
Upon arrival to American he was told to apply for a Point scholarship and the rest was history.
“It ended up being the one thing that kept me going otherwise I would have dropped out,” he said. “Point was incredibly instrumental in my journey to becoming an academic and a professor.”
More than a decade later, Gill serves on the host committee for Taste of Point and is a mentor to young Point scholars. He said that he donates money yearly to Point and that when he is asked what he wants for a gift he will often tell his friends to donate too.
To attend the event on Wednesday, May 2, purchase tickets at the Point website. If you can’t attend this year’s Taste of Point DC event but would like to get involved, you can also donate online.
District of Columbia
Three of five LGBTQ candidates win race for DNC delegate from D.C.
32 candidates competed for 13 elected seats in party caucus
Three out of five known LGBTQ candidates running for election as delegates from D.C. to the Democratic National Convention won their races at an April 20 Democratic Party caucus election held at D.C.’s Walter Washington Convention Center.
Ward 2 gay Democratic activist John Fanning finished in first place with 140 votes and Ward 8 gay Democratic activist David Meadows finished in second place with 127 votes in a race in which six male candidates committed to supporting President Biden were competing for three male seats in a section of the city designated as Congressional District 1, which included registered Democratic voters in Wards 1, 2, 6, and 8.
Ward 7 gay Democratic activist Jimmie Williams won his race, finishing in third place with 200 votes in a race in which eight male candidates committed to President Biden competed for four male seats in the Congressional District 2 section of the city that included Wards 3, 4, 5, and 7.
Gay Democratic activist Felipe Afanador lost his race, finishing in sixth place with 47 votes in the Congressional District 2 election for male candidates backing Biden. It couldn’t immediately be determined which of the four wards in District 2 he is from.
The Washington Blade didn’t learn about Afanador’s status as an LGBTQ candidate until the Capital Stonewall Democrats announced it one day before the April 20 party election in an email statement.
In the Congressional District 2 race among female candidates, in which eight candidates competed for three female seats, transgender rights advocate and Ward 3 Democratic Party activist Monika Nemeth lost her race, finishing in sixth place with 49 votes.
The five LGBTQ candidates were among 32 candidates competing for just 13 elected delegate positions in D.C. D.C. will have a total of 51 delegates to the Democratic Convention, but the other 38 include elected officials and party leaders who are considered “automatic” or appointed delegates. The Democratic Convention will be held in Chicago Aug. 19-23.
Observers familiar with the April 20 party caucus election said Fanning, Meadows, and Williams had participated in local D.C. Democratic Party events and activities for a longer period than Nemeth and Afanador and appear to have been better known among Democratic voters in their respective wards as well as other wards. Those factors contributed to their receiving significantly more votes than most other candidates, observers have said.
In his candidacy statement posted on the D.C. Democratic Party website, Afanador said he worked on the 2020 Biden presidential election campaign in Pennsylvania. His LinkedIn page says in 2022 he began work in Washington for the Biden administration as an official in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Nemeth is a past president of D.C.’s Capital Stonewall Democrats, the city’s largest LGBTQ local political group, and has been an active member of the D.C. Democratic State Committee, the local party governing body. She served as a Biden delegate at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
“It is important for our D.C. delegation to have strong LGBTQ representation,” Capital Stonewall Democrats said in its April 19 statement. “There are five LGBQ candidates running to be delegate, and Capital Stonewall Democrats asks that our members support each one,” the statement says.
“Unfortunately, they fell short, but they and all queer Democrats are welcome to attend and participate in convention events and activities sponsored by the national and local party,” Meadows told the Blade in referring to Nemeth and Afanador. “Our shared goal is to unite behind the Biden-Harris ticket to protect our LGBTQ rights from being dismantled by Donald Trump and the GOP,” Meadows said.
“Running for District Delegate is one of the most grassroots efforts,” Fanning told the Blade. “It’s very beneficial to align yourself on a slate with community leaders that have either previously run for District Delegate or have developed a constituency in their community from other civic engagements,” he said, referring to possible reasons for his, Meadows, and Williams’s election victory.
Aside from the D.C. elected LGBTQ delegates, two prominent D.C. LGBTQ Democratic leaders will be appointed as delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Convention in their role as members of the Democratic National Committee from D.C. They are Claire Lucas, a highly acclaimed Democratic Party and LGBTQ rights advocate and party fundraiser; and Earl Fowlkes, one of the lead organizers of D.C.’s annual Black LGBTQ Pride celebration and former president of the Capital Stonewall Democrats. Both are committed to supporting President Biden as the Democratic nominee for re-election.
GAITHERSBURG, Md. — Maryland state Del. Joe Vogel (D-Montgomery County) on Friday held a “Big Gay Canvass Kickoff” event at his congressional campaign’s headquarters.
LGBTQ+ Victory Fund Vice President of Outreach and Engagement Marty Rouse and John Klenert, a member of the DC Vote and Victory Fund Campaign board of directors, are among those who participated alongside members of Equality PAC. Vogel spoke before Rouse, Klenert and others canvassed for votes in the area.
“Joe brings a fresh new perspective to politics,” said Gabri Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, deputy field director for Vogel’s campaign.
Vogel, 27, is among the Democrats running for Congressman David Trone’s seat.
Trone last May announced his bid to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) in the U.S. Senate.
The Democratic primary is on May 14. Vogel would be the first Latino, the first gay man and first Gen Zer elected to Congress from Maryland if he were to win in November.
“We need a new generation of leadership with new perspectives, new ideas, and the courage to actually deliver for our communities if we want things to get better in this country,” Vogel told the Washington Blade last month during an interview in D.C.
Taste of Point returns at critical time for queer students
State Department releases annual human rights report
Dominica High Court of Justice strikes down sodomy law
Smithsonian staff concerned about future of LGBTQ programming amid GOP scrutiny
Upcoming Ugandan Census will not count intersex people
Daniel Zamudio murderer’s parole request denied
Montgomery County police chief discusses arrest of trans student charged with planned school shooting
World ‘isn’t much different today’
‘Amm(i)gone’ explores family, queerness, and faith
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