Shortly after hosting a large marijuana smoke-in outside the White House, organizers realized they forgot to announce the date and location of a cannabis seed giveaway for residents of the nation’s capital, who are able to grow their own supply under local law.

So on Monday, days after nobody was arrested at the blatantly illegal Saturday protest, the D.C. Cannabis Campaign (DCMJ) announced on Facebook that handfuls of marijuana seeds will change hands April 16 on the pedestrian-only section of Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House.

Returning to the scene of the almost entirely unpunished crime (two people received $25 tickets on Saturday for public consumption, despite a smoke-filled crowd of hundreds) risks poking the bear. But Nikolas Schiller, co-founder of DCMJ,​ says pushing the envelope is the idea.

Schiller says the group – which organized the city’s successful legalization initiative in 2014 and hosted two large seed shares in 2015 when Congress blocked a regulated market – is taking a page out of the anti-Keystone XL campaign, during which regular protests and arrests outside the White House garnered media attention, arguably helping kill the pipeline.



The Saturday smoke-in targeted President Barack Obama for allegedly not doing enough on cannabis reform. Activists demanded he administratively reschedule marijuana – which would allow greater research into its medicinal value – and pardon jailed marijuana offenders.

The large national marijuana reform groups kept the smoke-in at arm's length, but turnout was significant and organizers hope to draw a crowd again.

“We have to maintain and keep pressure on the powers that be,” Schiller says. “This is another opportunity for the president to have a meeting with cannabis activists to go over his plans to work with the attorney general to fully deschedule cannabis.”

Lines for DCMJ's 2015 seed shares wrapped around city blocks, and no police or federal agents showed up as activists handed adults 21 and older baggies of seeds. It's not yet clear if as many distributors will show up to this year's seed share, or if massive crowds of seed seekers will return.



Attendees should not smoke marijuana at the upcoming seed share, scheduled for 4:21 p.m., DCMJ says on its Facebook event page.

Schiller acknowledges it’s theoretically in the power of the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Park Police officers to arrest people anywhere in the nation’s capital on federal charges for marijuana possession or distribution, but he says the group is hopeful they will defer to the local Metropolitan Police Department, which under the 2014 ballot initiative likely could not arrest people carrying and sharing small amounts of pot seeds.

