Previously, Americans (unlike Iraqis or even Afghans) were allowed to vote in the District of Columbia but were not allowed to have those votes actually affect public policy. Because the District's inhabitants were too black liberal for some of the more hardcore Republicans and Democrats from other parts of the country to allow them to govern themselves. The vote to legalize medical marijuana in 1998 arrived at a 69 percent majority in favor. This was not a narrow vote - it was an overwhelming popular majority more than ten years ago, long before the big increase in public support for medical marijuana over the last ten years.

I'm not entirely sure what the procedural steps are when Proposition 59 is allowed finally to take effect. But it seems to me that the moment the appropriations bill passes, and the block on Prop 59 falls, medical marijuana must become legal in the district.

Europe’s lenient lands

Elsewhere in Europe, the law itself is softer. Personal possession of any drug—even the hardest—is not a crime in Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Czech Republic or the Baltic states. Some German states and Swiss cantons take the same line. Portugal is especially liberal: rather than fining users or punishing them in other ways (such as removing their driving licences), it usually just impounds their stash and sends them on a course of treatment and dissuasion. Since it began in 2001, the policy has led to a rise in the number of people seeking treatment but no apparent increase in use.