MD is medically legal, but same issue DC has (I think). The problem that most of these medical states have is no one wants to touch the "license, fees, regulations, etc" so it's shelved (more-or-less).
Not exactly. With DC, its rather weird on the rec side as Fed Congress has prevented DC government from spending any money
at all establishing a regulated system for MJ sales or to collect taxes, hence the "donate/gift" approach.
DC does have a medical system and open patient dispensaries. You need to be a district resident.
Maryland is a different story...as sad story of complete and utter goverment incompetence. Maryland has passed medical only. However, the first version of this law was passed (almost four years ago!!) requiring that only major medical/research institutes could manage, prescribe, and dispense MMJ. Read this to mean specifically John's Hopkins and U of MD. Apparently none of our complete asshole legislators deemed it worthwhile actually talking to Hopkins and U of MD as when this law passed they very firmly declined to participate (for the obvious reason that they do interstate commerce and receive Federal grants and administering an MMJ program would put them in jeopardy with the Feds).
So, the law was amended and now we are progressing toward a system where almost any Dr/practitioner can certify a patient for MMJ. The Dr registry is open. Also, they finally in the last few months issued cultivator and processor licenses but, in an act of supreme incompetence the proposal evaluation decided to bump the bottom two winners of this merit only evaluation off of the list in order to add two applicants because of where in the state they are geographically located. THIS, in turn, motivated the MD Black Legislative Caucus to now demand that the program be completely restarted and licenses be set aside for diversity (read black Americans cause the MBLC sure as shit don't care about getting any set asides for any Asians or Latinos who may possibly reside in Maryland, yeah?).
Maryland just announced the first phase of issuance of dispensary licenses. All licenses are issued in two phases, phase 1 is the result of the proposal eval and in phase 2 there is the extensive background and financial checks needed before final license issuance.
What these fuckers have NOT yet opened is the Patient Registry needed if one wants a MD MMJ card/authorization. They SAY this will happen in the first qtr of 2017 and they SAY that dispensaries should be opened by last summer/fall. However, if you look at the MD commissions website, almsot all information is completely out of date and there is NO published program schedule by which MD may possibly be evaluated for competence and efficiency (hey, if there are no criteria or goals then its pretty fucking hard to fail....this is a politician's/bureaucrats wet dream come true...money for a program and no accountability! )
It would take true genius to fuck this up more than Maryland already has.
Cheers