It has been years in the making, derailed by Congress three times in about as many years, but medicinal marijuana could soon be heading to the nation's capital.

In 1998, voters in Washington put themselves near the forefront of the budding medical-marijuana movement when they voted nearly 7 to 3 for doctor-prescribed dope — a greater majority than those in any of the other eight statewide ballot initiatives that have passed around the country.(Watch a video about medical-marijuana home delivery.)

But no celebratory smoke-outs have followed — not yet, at least. Instead, poll workers spent that election night obscuring the results of the vote, in deference to a last-minute congressional amendment pulling funds from D.C. for the processing of any drug-legalization initiative. (Ballots had been printed prior to the ban, but the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics decided that to follow the intent of the law it had to withhold the results after the votes had been cast.) "I know of no case where a federal entity has told another entity they cannot even announce the results," says WTOP analyst Mark Plotkin. "We're not even talking about the implementation of the law."