WASHINGTON — Hundreds of people who support marijuana legalization got high in front of the White House on Saturday in a demonstration aimed at getting cannabis removed from the federal government’s most serious category of illegal drugs.
The mass protest, led by DCMJ, a D.C.-based marijuana group whose activists could be spotted wearing distinctive red Phrygian caps, called for President Barack Obama to take marijuana off the list of Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. The federal government classification given to the “most dangerous drugs” lumps marijuana in with more serious drugs like heroin, bath salts and LSD, allowing it to be prosecuted aggressively.
At around 4:20 p.m. Eastern time, which was chosen because of the number 420’s association with weed, the protesters lit their joints, fired up their bowls and pulled on their vaporizers in unison with little disruption from the Secret Service or the local police. They even inflated a 51-foot plastic inflatable joint with the message “Obama, deschedule cannabis now” that was made by artists especially for the occasion.
Adam Eidinger, a founder of DCMJ and leader of the 2014 campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in the District of Columbia, said that law enforcement initially refused to let the massive inflatable joint into Lafayette Square Park, but they were able to circumvent them by smuggling it in deflated and inflating it in the park.
