House Republican vows to upend D.C. ballot measure legalizing marijuana At least one House Republican says he will do everything he can to block the measure District voters passed Tuesday to legalize possession of marijuana in the nation's capital. Rep. Andy Harris, a Republican who represents neighboring Maryland, said federal drug laws that still consider marijuana possession a crime punishable by up to a year in jail should be enforced in the federal district. A doctor by training, Harris also blasted the vote in favor of legalization as detrimental to adolescents. "Actions by those in D.C. will result in higher drug use among teens," Harris said in a written statement to The Washington Post, after losing his voice this week campaigning for his own reelection. I will consider using all resources available to a member of Congress to stop this action, so that drug use among teens does not increase. Under a voter-proposed measure, known as Initiative 71, residents and visitors to the nation's capital age 21 and older will be allowed to legally possess as much as two ounces of marijuana and to grow up to three marijuana plants at home. D.C. Mayor-elect Muriel E. Bowser said before Election Day that she would vote for the measure and would see to its implementation. Like a majority of the D.C. Council, Bowser has also said that if marijuana became legal, the District must take the next step of crafting a measure establishing a system to sell and tax the drug in the District. The initiative, as well as whatever regulatory system the District approves for sale and taxation of marijuana next year, will have to pass a 60-day congressional review period. The measures will become law unless Congress vetoes them and the president agrees that the local measures should be halted. That complex layer of federal oversight appears certain to thrust Congress - which on Tuesday flipped to Republican control - and President Obama, who has acknowledged smoking marijuana as an adolescent, into the middle of a rapidly evolving national debate. Congress has only successfully revoked four D.C. laws in over four decades through the veto process. But Republicans have been far more successful at needling the District's Democratic majority by attaching provisions to federal spending bills that prohibit the District from spending its own money to enact liberal social policy. After D.C. voters passed a measure allowing medical marijuana dispensaries in 1998, Republicans used amendments to federal budget bills for 11 years to keep the District from enacting the law. Republicans have also regularly blocked spending for abortions in the city, as well as sought to roll back restrictive gun-control rules in the city. Harris this past summer convinced the House Appropriations Committee to back such a rider that would have upended the District's decision to decriminalize marijuana. The D.C. Council voted in March to strip away criminal penalties and the threat of jail time for possession, citing studies that showed deep racial disparity in drug arrests for marijuana in the nation's capital. The rider was backed by House Republicans but died in negotiations with Senate Democrats after President Obama threatened to veto the provision. The council made possession a civil fine of just $25. On Tuesday, District voters went further, overwhelmingly backing the measure to legalize and allow home cultivation by a margin of more than 2-to-1. At a victory party Tuesday night, Adam Eidinger, the head of the D.C. Cannabis Campaign, and one of the lead organizers to get the measure on the ballot, said for the next Republican controlled Congress to overturn the will of city voters would be an affront to Democracy. Residents of Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., voted to legalize marijuana, key victories likely to fuel the legalization of pot movement. "To overturn this would smack of dictatorship," Eidinger said. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District's nonvoting member of the House, said she would fight attempts by Harris and any other Republicans to undo marijuana legalization and she said she viewed Harris's interference with an initiative stimulated by racial injustice particularly objectionable. "The people have spoken," Holmes Norton said. Initiative 71 is not just about the legalization of marijuana; it addresses an intolerable racial disparity in our city that has crippled the life chances of countless African Americans and Hispanics.