A protester waves a marijuana-themed flag in front of the White House at a protest on Saturday. (Photo by Benjamin Strahs)

Fresh off their successful public smoke-in outside the White House, the marijuana activists with DCMJ are planning to return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Saturday, April 16. Instead of joints, though, this time they’ll come bearing cannabis seeds, buds, and cuttings.

The group’s past two seed giveaways have drawn hundreds of people to an Adams Morgan bar and a private residence. But if things go as planned, there will be a free exchange of plant material in front of the White House—and it will be done in “full compliance of the law,” says DCMJ co-founder Nikolas Schiller.

At the 4/2 protest, “people broke the law by openly consuming in order to change the law,” Schiller says, describing the mass smoke-in as an act of civil disobedience. Although he and many others expected mass arrests, just two people were cited for public consumption of marijuana, which is a $25 fine on District property (protesters were careful to stay on Pennsylvania Avenue instead of Lafayette Square, which is under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service).

“The seed share, on the other hand, is about complying with the law and giving others the freedom the law allows,” Schiller says. “This is an olive branch to the other marijuana reform groups to say that we are planning on doing this in full compliance with the law.”

To that end, they are starting the seed share at 4:21 p.m. and imploring attendees not to light up this time around. Because marijuana plants must be kept at home under Initiative 71, DCMJ is also instructing people to bring cuttings, a branch of a mature pot plant that is being propagated in water, instead of clones that have already been transplanted into soil or another medium. Others will bring seeds, perhaps from plants that they grew from a giveaway at one of the past events.

“One of the most common emails we get is ‘when are we going to do another seed share?'” Schiller says.

In fact, they were supposed to announce the the date and location of their next seed giveaway at Saturday’s protest, but they, uh, forgot. That gave DCMJ some time to rethink the planned location.

“We decided to keep the pressure on the president,” Schiller says. So they’ll be heading back to the White House.