U.S. Congress is moving to stop a law being pushed by officials and drug-policy advocates that will make the District of Columbia the first area on the East Coast to use legal pot and to influence other states to make their own marijuana laws.

The lawmakers were first optimistic that there would not be any intervention from the Congress as they pointed out that Republicans are not that unified when it comes to matters about marijuana. However, their hopes about making the law legal has been crushed on Tuesday when the Congress reached a US$1.1 trillion deal that will bar D.C. from legalizing pot.

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The recent deal of the Congress has mirrored the same move when District leaders tried to enact social policies that are disagreed by the conservatives on Capitol Hill. Rather than opposing or voting not to pass the pot initiative law, the Congress has placed a spending bill that will prevent the city from spending any amount of money to push through with it.

Adam Eidinger, the chairman of the D.C. Cannabis Campaign, said he already expected the House to do such but did not expect that the Democrats will give up on it. He deems the move as totally unacceptable.

The voters in D.C. approved the legalization of Marijuana back in November and Alaska and Oregon also voted to legalize it. More legalization initiatives are set to be pushed by 2016 by California and several more states. Marijuana is already legal in Colorado and Washington.

The initiative in D.C. wanted to allow its citizens to possess up to two ounces of pot or have three mature plants for personal use. Legal sale of marijuana was not addressed but the D.C. Council could pass a tax-and-regulation framework for such.

If the spending bill is to be approved, it will put the law on marijuana legalization on hold at least until September next year. As of now, D.C. is left with a status quo and people who will be caught with small amounts of pot are subject to pay a US$25 civil fine. The decriminalization law resulted to one of the lowest fines in the United States.

A Maryland Republican, Rep. Andy Harris, has tried to block the decriminalization law but was unsuccessful in doing so. He argued that this law would only make marijuana more accessible to young people. 

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